Going Down Fast

by Marge Piercy

She thought in surprise of their supper. She was not usually loosemouthed, but his harsh selfabusive honesty drew her open. More common ground than she would have guessed. They were both people who had become aware of the barbs in their own acts.

  “Here’s where I live.”

  “Like last time.”

  He showed no sign of saying goodnight. Reluctantly she asked him up for coffee.

  “Your place is too small.” He slumped in a chair, still wearing his coat. “It depresses me.”

  “Lately it depresses me too.”

  He sat with his big head bowed, his hair the color of tomato soup under the overhead light. As he drank off his coffee and set down the cup he gave her a bleak grin. “You uh … want company tonight?”

  “No!” She spoke without thinking, then got scared she had insulted him. He had asked with the grace of someone emptying a bucket of slops.

  “Good,” he said heartily. “Better. Wouldn’t pry either of us out of the muck.”

  “Why ask then?”

  “Never hurts. After all.” With a broader grin. He looked at his hand, made a fist and hit it on the table. “You’re not going to get mixed up with someone right away. You’re still in shock, like someone with a limb cut off. We just settled the issue between us. But we can be useful. You’re low on bread, right? So I buy a couple of steaks and you fix them. Or we eat in Parks. Like I said, I hate eating alone. We pass the time, going places, doing things.” His voice rose satirically but he watched. “See a flick, eat icecream, toss a ball around.”

  Faintly possible that this was his oblique approach to bed but she was not committing herself to anything agreeing to see him now and then. He had found her a job, he had been interesting to talk to. She was as poorly equipped to endure loneliness as she ever had been: a few weeks in her rooms and she’d be across the street at Woody’s bar seeking proof of her attractiveness, her existence, seeking relief from the pressure of walls and memory and anxiety. “By the way, was that your standard approach?”

  “I have no approach. I let women do what they want to.”

  She laughed. “I don’t know if that’s indifference or the cleverest trap of all.”

  “The door’s open. That’s all. All the doors are open.”

  Saturday, October 25

  A clear racy day with the wind smelling of leaves. Even the grubby sparrows in the gutter showed not uniformly sooty but brown-capped and blackthroated. Content to be alone Anna walked toward the lake, a blanket over her arm and a book Leon had pressed on her—an interpretation of Blake he claimed was his theory of film—tucked in her cow of a purse. As she passed under the echoey railroad viaduct she wondered in which lakeside tower Leon was lunching with his mother, in these blocks almost entirely white and largely vertical. The managers, the lawyers, the middle echelon administration men lived over here in grandiose well kept apartment hotels or new glass walled skyscrapers. Cliffs of money on the lake.

  The point was a crowded rookery of sunning students and neighborhood people sprawled under the small trees. She clambered down from rock to rock, folded her coat and leaned back. In a clean curve the lake arced away to the Loop’s compact facade. Below her a man fished, clutching beer in a paper sack. Once an hour the fuzz patrolled. From daylight on men fished, old men joined on the weekend by young black guys. The old men fished with two or more poles, with pulleys, balls of stout line and bells to warn of a nibble. They muttered encouragement and chaff as if each was afraid the other would quit before he did.

  She turned toward deep water, let her eyes close and the sun melt the muscles in her face. The noises grew discrete, each cry, bike chain, transistor or motor boat. Then they receded and she felt calmer than she had in a month and a half. If only she could live more gently. Her trouble was in overresponding to events, to people, to touch and words and the ordinary flotsam of living. Somehow her volume control had got turned too loud. A giant baby resided in her grabbing at things, then letting go with a clatter—responding hypnotically to stroking, clutching the penis like a breast for comfort. Time and again she saw clearly and acted irrationally, crying, Now what have I done?

  Yes, these rocks. A mild April night with a damp wind lapping over the water. The evening had begun badly. Asher had agreed to take her to a Yeats play in which her friend Marcia was dancing. However, the Independents for Botts threw a party, and they must go there instead in order for Asher to talk to someone who’d be making an appearance. Then he did not like her dress and kept after her till she changed it. She had always suspected that the women Asher approved of were hipless girls with elegant bony shoulders. He had been under the impression the party was to be more political than alcoholic, and he was wrong. After he failed to persuade the man to vote for a park proposal, he wanted to go home. She said no. She did not like the group, she did not want to be at this party, but it was Saturday night and she was not going back to their apartment, not yet she wasn’t.

  Asher left, and she glared around the room waiting for one of those stuffed green olives to ask her what had happened. She got herself another drink and stood backed into a corner, a grimace of desperate malaise spreading over her face. The next morning she could count on Asher’s voice regular and relentless as dripping water:

  “Now let’s try to understand why you did that. You’ll agree, I think, that it was a strange thing to do? A little immature? What did you plan to say when someone asked you where I was?”

  She swallowed her drink and went to get her coat, as Rowley came in with a group. He lagged behind to speak to her. “Where’s Asher? Out there fighting for a cleaner Chicago?”

  She felt silly enough to tell him. Smiling he took her arm. “I’d give you a ride, but I came with Cal. Come on and I’ll walk you home.”

  By the time they had gone the few blocks to the townhouse she and Asher were exorbitantly buying, they had come alive to each other and besides the night was mild with spring after the long craggy winter so that one or the other had suggested walking further. Eventually they had strolled out on the point and sat talking on a rock. She felt feverish: she thought she could feel the blood fizz through her veins, the hair growing in her scalp. She had told herself her joy was a freak of the thaw, but she felt a desolate loss when suddenly she saw the the east was turning gray and sat bolt upright remembering she was married.

  “God, it’s morning,” she had interrupted. “I have to go, now. I have no idea what I’m going to tell Asher.”

  In answer his face went somber, heavy. She thought she had angered him. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. When she drew free the rim of the sky was lighter, and she knew with a fierce pleasurable terror that she wanted him. She was shocked and gratified. Standing she gave him her hand, and he took her home. She did not expect to see him again unless she ran into him with Asher.

  Asher was asleep, and she made her bed on the couch. In the morning when she told him she had gone out for coffee with Rowley, they had one of their bad arguments. She had felt no guilt that morning, only a sense of delight she was hard put not to try to share with Asher. She could not keep from telling him she had been with Rowley not only because truth was her habit but because saying his name was a sharp pleasure. Somehow she expected Asher to understand: a walk with Rowley in the spring was not to be disparaged. As if she had been on vacation, she perceived in herself new readiness to try to fulfill Asher’s ideas of wifehood. She longed for a chance to demonstrate her strengthened patience, promptness and fortitude. She got it.

  Three days later Asher had gathered data on Rowley. He reported it with obvious distaste for the resemblance of this transfer of information to gossip. She listened in squashed fury. She had to question the night and ask if he had been simply on the make. His words and gestures began to haunt her. All of the time like a steady lowpitched hum she found herself thinking of him. She felt raw and sore, she wanted to call him to account, she wanted to justify him. The next time she saw him, by accident in the Loop, she had formed defens
es.

  Not, to be sure, sufficient. Her marriage just might have been salvageable had she not seen him at all, but she could not let go feeling alive. Each time she saw him she resolved to give nothing, to take nothing. Each time he met her believing she would break off. That tension had perhaps never died.

  She opened her eyes and watched a gull maneuver and dive over water blue and soft as morning glories. A pity they could not be friends because there was no one like him. She was glad to have come through the pain of breaking and out the other side without resorting to hatred. She was heartily glad.

  The afternoon was turning chilly when Leon found her.

  She walked with him to the car. “How did it go with your mother?”

  “Okay, okay.” He scratched his head in annoyance, his voice surly. “Fern gave me a lecture, but she gave me some money too.”

  “Does she do that often?”

  “Not often enough. Think I’m ashamed? They have more than they know what to do with.” He snorted. “Not that he ever hands any over. Fern does it on the sly.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the backseat was filled with packages. Frozen sirloin and porterhouse steaks and lambchops they loaded directly into the freezer. The bag Leon toted in with care held a pot of stuffed cabbage. “Put that on, heat it up for supper. Fern’s stuffed cabbage is the greatest.”

  She would make her stuffed cabbage for him. She would not be outdone by anybody’s mother. Out of another bag came two sportshirts with pins still in them, a Scottish sweater with a mothhole, a bottle of good men’s aftershave used perhaps twice, recent issues of Commentary and a pair of ice-skates. Another bag held Chinook salmon, kosher soups, sardines, asparagus, fancy mixed Chinese vegetables, water biscuits and red caviar.

  The kitchen table was hidden by a grove of empty pop bottles, forcing them to eat in the livingroom. “Film’s expensive,” he mumbled as he ate. “Those damn foundations swimming in money, you’d think they’d give a little but they wait till you’ve made it halfway, and then who needs them? Scared of being caught wrong. Fern can’t see my stuff for shit but she tries, anyhow.”

  “You’re closer to her than to your father, right?”

  “At least she’s a human being, or she used to be. Sheldon sounds like a vulture, he acts like a vulture, he thinks like a vulture. He even smells like one. Fern married him for security, and I bet she’s sorry. They stayed married for the children’s sake, my poor ball-less brother Sidney and me.” He had turned up cranky but now he was relaxed. She did not set out to adapt to his moods or shape them, but she could not help taking on a certain amount of protective emotional coloration from a man. He was old to be wrapped up in his family, but perhaps seeing his mother stirred up a swarm of annoyances from the past. He was still talking about his father, a passionate bitterness thickening his voice. “Sheldon’s in love with the dirty work he’s doing for the University—facilitating renewal. Like pulling strings and putting the pressure on where it hurts. He thinks the University is pure and that makes him pure. He’s always been self-righteous, but now he’s impossible, he’s leading a damn holy crusade against the lowdown and the unworthy.”

  “Tell your father he’s forcing you—and incidentally me—out of our snug homes.”

  Leon laughed: the teeth of a saw catching one by one on his larynx. “That’s the idea, gang. Sheldon believes in the good, the true, and the beautiful. He wants to be where the good people are—only heaven is here and the points are bread and status. He’s prepared to sacrifice for his ideals. Like old Abraham he’s all set to knife his son. Anyhow, he has another.” He got up abruptly. “Let’s get our asses out of here. Let’s wash all this rot down with some beer.”

  She should not have let him talk so long about his family. On her side of the rusty Buick she curled up. Leon was likable once you came to know him: prickly and stubborn but loyal. He always had some project afoot to get a friend something he thought they needed, a job, a woman, away from home, back into school, into analysis. Coming near him she stepped into a palpable field of interest. The converse was an equally strong pull for sympathy, a tugging at the breast she suspected him unaware of. She did not mind that pull for nothing came more cheaply than empathy with a man. He had only to capture her attention.

  “When Joye and I got married he offered us a thousand bucks if we’d swear to keep a kosher kitchen. Ace, I told him to shove it. You don’t give presents with clauses. He’s such a barefaced hypo. You know, when I was getting bar-mitzvahed, I got hooked on Hebrew and serious about the stuff and I was even thinking about being a rabbi, dig that. He made me feel like a worm. You don’t take that shit seriously, he let me know, it’s bad manners, it’s only poor schlumps like your mother’s family who really let it get in the way.”

  Woody’s bar was jammed. Once in the door they were brought to a halt. In the lead he forced a slow way, squeezing between the tables and the crowd along the bar. As he inched forward gouts of words came over his shoulder in the uproar. “Always got to be right … bigoted old bastard … got me thrown out of school … tell you some time.” Then he turned. “There’s your friend,” he hissed.

  She followed the direction of his gaze and ran against Rowley’s table. A hot wave of confusion flooded her. All in green Caroline leaned toward him, the fingers of one hand just grazing his. Outstretched graceful hand of possession. She snagged almost at once on his eyes. She caught her breath, shocked at the anger in his frowning stare, shocked that he had not, did not greet her. Blood knocked in her temples and throat.

  “It’s crowded, it’s too crowded. Let’s go!”

  Leon turned, looked her full in the face, and then took her arm and led her out.

  Leon brought out a bottle of scotch that they attacked in the island of light on the couch set in his dark lofty apartment.

  “What did you expect? You annoy him. It’s damned inconvenient of you to turn up in his world.”

  “But I don’t hate him! Why should he hate me?”

  “You will. You have to. He rejected you.”

  “But we loved each other.”

  “Rowley never loved anyone but Rowley.”

  “You don’t know!”

  “Nobody has ever loved you.” He chuckled dryly. “If someone had loved you, you’d never have left him.”

  “How could he not speak to me? How could he do that to me in front of another woman?”

  “Why not? You’ll cut him dead next time.”

  “Now I want to. I want to march past him with fourteen other men.”

  “You couldn’t make him jealous. Seeing you with another man probably relieves his conscience.”

  “My, you’re cheering me up.”

  “You want lies or reality?”

  Scotch and shock were breeding a sponginess in her brain, but through it she studied him. He was trying to tear from her what she considered her history and he considered illusion. He was strange and dangerous and this peculiar struggle was not healthy: but it was absorbing. She was not confident she was fit for anything better than to sit with Leon late at night over the wreckage of her own and other lives.

  “You keep saying he didn’t love me. All right, he doesn’t give a shit now—granted, after tonight, granted! But he did care. You don’t know how well we got on. Just simple things like eating together …”

  “Sure, he’s easygoing, long as he has his way. So why didn’t you get married?”

  He buffeted her with questions from retreat to retreat. “Why should you care?”

  “I believe in caring.” He lay back plunking his feet on the abused and stained teak table. “When we die we’re meat, and in the meantime nothing’s worth bothering about but people. Not words, actions. Anybody can say love, love, love, but will he cross the street to do you something? First he has to find out what you need. Who you are. Right?”

  Yes. The slow warmth of recognition. He talked on and her murmurs of agreement rounded his sentences.

  “Wha
t matters is handling others not like things but setting up a connection. A live circuit. You have to keep trying to get through. When you give up, you’re dead: walled in.”

  He told her a story. “Once upon a time there was a woman came to a man and said, Baby, love me. He said, Ech, you? A plain dumpy broad like yourself? Go on. She said, Baby, love me and I’ll be anybody you want me to be, please. Man said, How about Cleopatra. So the woman turned into Cleopatra, and the next morning, man said, That wasn’t half bad. So they got married. After a while, man got tired of all the snakes in the bathroom and he had her turn into Marilyn for a while, and then he had Harlow and Garbo and Lucretia Borgia. Everything went fine till one morning he woke up first and there she was too pooped to play her role. Who the hell are you, said the man, and where’s my gorgeous wife? I am your wife whom you love, said the woman, but he kicked her out of bed. Women are ever deceitful, he said, and went to bed with his officeboy. The woman went to a fortuneteller to ask, Why did he stop loving me?”

  She was lying on the couch. She rose on one elbow to look at him through narrowed eyes. “You’re clearly not talking about Rowley now.”

  “Or how about this one? A man got himself a pretty bright-colored bird because he liked the way it sang. He took it home and put it in a cage, but it wouldn’t sing where it couldn’t fly around. Every day the bird got smaller and smaller, it wouldn’t eat and drink, and finally it got so small it flew out like a mosquito through the wire mesh. That goes to show you, the man said, I should’ve invested in a better cage.”

  “Or a better behaved bird.” She was sitting up. “So you knew Asher?”

  He laughed like a kid. “I saw you with him. That’s all.”

  She shook her head wonderingly. “I don’t remember meeting you.”

  “I’m an old girlwatcher. You know. But I was just figuring the odds. I’ll tell you one thing. That whole year with Rowley was just a game. The problems you have to solve were the ones bound up with your marriage.”

  She lay back on the couch. She had kicked off her shoes and slowly she flexed her toes. “Sometimes I feel as if I killed some small, pretty, fluffy but vicious animal—like a rabbit with fangs—and I go around with it hung in my hair wondering why I smell something bad and what hurts.”