Fly Away Home
Page 50
Her family was still at supper, Sandra María trying to translate what she said was a funny joke she had heard in Spanish that afternoon, when the phone rang. Tom answered it. He exclaimed into the phone and then turned to the table. “That was Mac. The jury brought in their verdict—they convicted! Conspiracy to commit arson, defrauding an insurance company and manslaughter. The judge will pronounce sentence next week. Bloomberg’s sure it’ll be seven to ten years, anyhow.”
At the impromptu party at Fay’s that evening, she kept trying to read her own feelings. She felt a little guilty, although she could not decide if that was guilt by association, from having been long married to Ross, or guilt for having done her small but significant part in trying to bring him to justice.
“If only they could stop him from committing arson without putting him behind bars,” she said softly to Tom. “I don’t know how he’ll survive prison.”
“If he ever serves any time, it’ll be soft time. They’re not going to send him to Walpole,” Tom answered just as quietly. He drew her aside, so they stood near a window on the street. “He’ll sit in a cottage and write a book, like all the Watergate bozos. If there’s money in it, he’ll probably become an arson expert and go around lecturing.”
“But he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit arson and manslaughter.”
“He’ll appeal. He’s married the money to fight the case up through court after court. Nothing will happen to him for years. They’ll fight it on technicalities. The AG wanted a conviction before the election and he just got it. With Walker down, he’ll convict the others easier. But as for what’s going to happen to those cases two years from now—”
Fay threw her arms around Tom’s neck and kissed him. “It’s my turn,” she said to Daria. “You get to do this all the time.”
Sandra María was holding a cranky Mariela, who was rubbing her eyes and pouting. “I’m not sleepy! I’m not sleepy!”
The nightmares had gradually abated, but Daria wondered sometimes if Mariela would ever in her life learn to go to bed willingly again. Sandra María grinned at Daria over her head. “Well, I am. I have to get up for work. And I thought you had school, minina mía.” Sandra María poked Mariela’s obstinately stiff arms into the sleeves of her coat.
Fay was kissing all the men and laughing jubilantly, so happy she shone as if she had sunburn. Sherry looked as if she would like to act that way, but did not dare. Orlando’s older brother Boz was playing his conga drums along with a record and Orlando and Sylvia were dancing. Elroy asked Sherry to dance. She said she didn’t know how, but he offered to teach her.
Daria felt an occasional rush of mutual delight, a sense of belonging to a group that was accomplishing some part of its purpose. Since the night Tom had caught Lou on the roof, there had been no fires in the neighborhood. Against all odds they had proved their case, opposed by far superior financing and resources. Something could be done: they had shown that to other neighborhoods in trouble when they seized their own opportunity to fight back. She felt herself part of a small but significant We.
Looking around the roomful of partying people, all of whom were good acquaintances and some of whom were friends, she realized that none here knew Ross except as a paper villain. She was free of him at last. He might in the future have some dealings with his daughters, although at the moment he was demonstrating his anger with Daria by once again withholding Tracy’s tuition. She would put Tracy through college herself. One advantage of incurring that extravagant cost was never having to deal with Ross again. Robin’s relationship with her father was independent of Daria and would continue without her help or hindrance. But Daria’s own connection had ceased in court. That was her last meeting with Ross and it was over.
When everybody toasted victory, she sipped the cheap Spanish champagne Mac had bought to celebrate. There was something rancid, something wrongly sour in its oversweetness that made her shudder. The pleasures of revenge were overrated, she thought, or else she lacked the temperament to appreciate them. Furtively she felt a little sad. Something she was still convinced had originally been sound—her marriage—and someone she was still convinced had been a fine person, were contaminated and alien to her now. Daria Walker and Ross Walker, I now pronounce you woman and man, strangers to each other bodily, emotionally and in all your values and your lives unto death.
Tom slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Drink up, peaches. It’s wet and cold and full of bubbles, anyhow. When your book comes out, we’ll get you something better.”
“You’ve already given me something better.”
His hand tightened on her nape. “Oh, you did notice that?”
As Fay came around with the next bottle refilling glasses, she raised hers toward Tom, who stood at her shoulder in his lazy slumped pose with his lids half lowered, watching everything while pretending not to but always keeping an eye on her. He didn’t save me, this one, she thought, not even from a burning house. I saved myself. No gratitude other than the daily appreciation of each other’s small and middling contributions to the common good and the common pleasure binds us. And the private pleasure between us. I have my daughters, including Robin back and Tracy maturing nicely if bumpily, I have my work, I have my chosen new community, I have my house, I have my dear family, Tom and Sandra María and Mariela too. She realized she was doing it again, counting her blessings, proving to herself that she was happy. But I am, she thought, and maybe a better woman finally than I used to be, when I was Ross’s, before I was my own.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who answered my endless questions as I wrote Fly Away Home.
I would especially like to thank Anni Waterflow for sharing so many of her adventures in organizing, for sharing the terror and the energy of all she went through; and for showing me the ins and outs at the Registry of Deeds.
I would like to express my thanks to Mark Zanger for his generosity as an expert and as a raconteur. His being equally a connoisseur of arson and of cookery was a surprising coincidence.
Ruthann Robson has my gratitude not as the fine poet she also is, but as my legal adviser, especially in courtroom procedures.
I would like to thank my dear friend Penny Pendleton for searching the relevant psychological literature for me.
I’d like to express public as well as private gratitude to Woody, who drove me round and round and round and round neighborhoods in glaring heat and in ice-rutted glacial blizzards, and who walked with me all over greater Boston as we chased together the patterns that lie behind this novel. As ever he is my shrewdest critic and text editor.
Marge Piercy
About the Author
Marge Piercy (b. 1936) is the author of nineteen poetry collections, including The Hunger Moon and Made in Detroit, and seventeen novels, including the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers and He, She and It, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. She has also written a memoir, Sleeping with Cats; a collection of short stories, The Cost of Lunch, Etc.; and five nonfiction books. A champion of feminism, antiwar, and ecological movements, Piercy often includes political themes in her work and features strong female characters who challenge traditional gender roles. Her book of poetry The Moon Is Always Female is considered a seminal feminist text. Piercy’s other works include Woman on the Edge of Time, The Longings of Women, and City of Darkness, City of Light. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, radio personality and author Ira Wood, with whom she cowrote the novel Storm Tide.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, bus
inesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1984 by Marge Piercy
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3340-4
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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