by Marge Piercy
“How old?”
“Mine said eighteen and so did his.” Paul shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Were they pretty?”
“At that age, what girls aren’t?” Leon rasped. “Both stacked. Mine had a great ass.”
Wincing Paul leaned out of the game. “She was a cow. They were stupid. Not hip, just dizzy. Always a little confused, sticking together because they don’t know anybody else. Sweating anxious to be liked and getting layed instead. But you should hear them in the confessional act with those clods.” Paul rubbed his chin back and forth on the blanket. “Before the lion we’re all vacuum cleaners with bags that need emptying.”
“Here, have a paper.” She rose gathering the paper high and let it cascade over Paul till she had buried him. “I’m going to make coffee.”
“If the car will start I have a plan.” Leon squeezed a boil on his neck, squeezed grimacing till it bled. “We’re going out to Palos Hills tobogganing.”
“Just so I get back to the dorm for dinner,” Paul said.
“How come you live in the dorm? You ought to move in here. Plenty of room.” Leon gestured widely. “Save money too.”
Paul laughed in surprise. “My roommates tell me I’m a monster to live with. Anyhow, I’m paid up to the end of this quarter.”
In the kitchen Anna brooded. If Paul moved in … Didn’t he distinguish between them at all? In a pique she shouted, “Well, I’m not going to break my neck in the snow. You can drop me home.”
Leon strolled out to the kitchen, tugged on her loose hair. “What are you sore about?”
“Nothing.”
He pulled harder on her hair, drawing her back. “The kid won’t move in. He thinks this is a pigpen. Besides, you won’t do it. I don’t like to live alone.” He released her and went back. In answer to Paul she heard him say, “Course she’s coming. Just wanted coaxing.”
Monday, December 8: When Anna came in from work she bumped into a stubby red-eared man with hair the color of cigar ash wandering in the dim upstairs hall. “What’s your name please?” He approached her.
A little alarmed she fumbled for her key. “I beg your pardon?”
“What is your name? Are you a tenant?”
“As you see.” She put her key in the lock.
“Number two.” He ran down a list. “Miss A. Lev … Levinowitz?”
“Right. And who are you?”
He was Mr. Bradley, her relocation officer. He gave a quick discomforted peek around the kitchen, his gaze rebounding from the Cretan mother goddess to the freestanding nubbly pot a friend had thrown, to the Che poster she had tacked up over the place where there had been a photograph of Rowley used to advertise a concert. Not that she had thrown out the photograph. It was too good. And she hated waste. No, she had put it away in the bottom drawer of her desk under a file of material on courses she used to teach.
“You have how many rooms here?” he asked looking.
“Two.” Swinging her leg in a neat arc of annoyance she sat at the kitchen table across from him. She got her alarm clock and stuck it between them.
“Are these rooms rented furnished or unfurnished?”
“Everything but the stove and refrigerator is mine.”
“But most of the apartments in this building are furnished?”
“But not this one.”
Mr. Bradley made slow copious notes on a form he took from his attaché case. Anna swung her foot in small angry circles.
“How much rent are you prepared to pay in your new location?”
“I pay fifty-five here.”
“But this building is substandard. We will pay your moving expenses—pay the moving company directly, you understand—but only if you relocate into standard housing.” Every word spaced out patiently for her to look at, a typewriter talking who was willing to repeat, repeat, repeat. Because that’s how you make those stupid cases understand the rules.
“Standard housing—a great term. My needs are not standard.”
“Now what are you able to pay in the way of monthly rent?”
“Sixty-five top.”
He made more notes. “Now I doubt we can find anything in this neighborhood, but farther out …” He recited the names of flat parkinglots on the end of buslines.
“I’m sorry, I can’t live there.”
“Why not, Miss Levowitch?”
Who and how is this stodgyfaced clickclack-voiced ass sitting in my kitchen using up my free time, inquiring why I must live where I live as I live? “I expect to look for my own housing, Mr. Badnee.”
“Bradley. But you won’t be able to find anything we can approve in this area. Why won’t you consider a neighborhood where we can locate you more easily? In order for your costs of moving to be paid for by the city—”
“My friends are here, the things that interest me are here. My activities center here. My job is here. This is my web.”
He contemplated her with ashy rebuke. “You could relocate near public transportation for your job. Families relocate every day and they find friends where they go.”
“I doubt it proves so easy for every family, and I’m no family.” She stood. “Good evening. You are not shipping me out past sex.” Out to West Wahoo where I can’t leave the house at night for fear of long dark streets with no people and hedges all over. Streets of boxes with nobody easy but all packed in place, no loose corners for new meetings, no cracks for the shaggy.
She had just got rid of him when Leon arrived. “Never mind changing,” he said, “just comb your hair and let’s go. Leave on your office clothes. You want to look respectable.”
“But why? Where are we going?”
They were going to his Uncle Burton’s office. His secretary had gone home but the evening switchboard operator announced them. Buoyed up next to Leon on a long leather couch she had plenty of opportunities to study the reception room before his uncle, a man shorter than Leon and five inches wider, summoned them. She scanned him without finding resemblance other than the strong bones of his head. In the inner office paneled with driftwood and accessoried in slate another man lounged. Even as Leon visibly caught his breath, stiffening, she knew the man was Leon’s father. About the same size, his shoulders had that chimpanzee slope, his hair was yellowed white with a tinge of carrot, his eyes were hard, opaque and arctic blue: but the features had set in a harder mold. Lantern jaw, baroque nose, firm thin mouth, broad forehead fronting the massive bones. Sheldon Lederman was still a goodlooking man, and his appearance suggested that Leon had started with the same set of features and out of slow infant spite distorted them. Sheldon, who sat like a vain man, who posed his head leonine the moment he became aware of a woman entering, must see in Leon a willful distortion of his own loved face.
“What are you doing here?” Leon whined.
“What are you doing here?” Sheldon mocked. “I’m here more often than you are. I’m here for money and it would not surprise me if you were too. My son, the beggar, the schnorrer, eh, Burt?”
“Like father, like son,” Uncle Burt wheezed. He looked much older than Sheldon, with a sad also-ran cast to his face, well irrigated by canals that drained downward. “Why should I give a thousand dollars to the University for its neighborhood dealings? They’re rich, I’m not. Every day they expand their holdings. I’m having trouble getting tenants in my medical building, since the property across the street changed. They should give me a thousand dollars.”
“The University has, Burt. The tens of thousands they’ve poured into planning to protect their investments and consequently, yours. The time top level people have donated to this. But they can’t go it alone. How would it look for a noted alumnus like yourself to hold back?”
Uncle Burt tilted in his chair swinging slowly from side to side. “Too little too late. Money down a rathole, listen to me.”
Sheldon Lederman polished his firm gleamy jaw. “Burt, you used to be a shrewd operator. You’re not keeping up with the times.”
&nb
sp; “When colored people start getting into an area they destruct properties. They deteriorate properties and the neighbors move.”
“Burt, you know you are making more out of your apartment buildings than you were. Those kitchenette apartments are bonanzas.”
“In fact some colored people are clean. Take the Japanese. It’s people of the deteriorating class, don’t let’s discriminate. Hillbillies are worse than the colored people. Now you take this plan. The do-gooders keep talking about public housing. Now you spend all that money to get lower-class people out, and then you turn around and move them back in. Is that smart? Take a destructive element like that and you’re back where you started, your money down the drain and more burden on the taxpayer.” His cheeks sagged.
“You know, I get on the phone and talk to anyone else of your rank in the business community and they’re tickled to do what they can. There’s prestige in being associated with top men in the administration. Would the trustees be wasting their time on a losing proposition? I’m being kind to you, Burt. Wouldn’t you like to find yourself at a luncheon with John Curtis on your right hand and Gideon Moss on your left? We didn’t wait till we were dealing with a slum, because Moss and Curtis and Barker and the chancellor went to Washington and talked to the President and got the enabling order to go ahead. Top flight cooperation, Burt. There’ll be token public housing on the side toward the Black Belt and whatever else goes up will be financially sound, to bolster the tax base. If I didn’t know we could persuade the commercial money world that investment in the area is sound—that renewal will prove profitable—if I couldn’t count on capital, you think I’d be wasting my time?”
“Should I come back later?” Leon drawled. He sounded fourteen. “It’s dandy how you guys got eminent domain to pack the unwashed into dumps where you can pile them seven deep. A lot of them burn up every winter anyhow. Maybe you can schedule a selective second Chicago fire to finish off the rest.”
Sheldon was annoyed at being interrupted. His macher’s charm disappeared and he grew testy. “I hear you’ve been pestering your uncle with schemes for getting back in school. Still can’t make it in the world, eh? Think it would be easier to get yourself supported for killing more time. And you’ve been begging money for your girlie movies.”
“Did you complain to him?” Leon turned to his uncle.
“I didn’t complain, Leon. I’m glad to see you. But he kept hoching me to tell him why you were coming.”
“Burt, money poured over that one washes nothing off. That is real money down a rathole. Thousands spent on him and he’s like something the police pick off the dirty streets.” Sheldon blew his nose in linen.
“Thousands and every penny counted. Every day you asked yourself if we deserved all you were doing for us, and every day you slapped yourself on the back and said No.”
“Remember, Burt, when we were starting off, I’d finished law school so green birds would perch on me and you’d bought out old Busby to find the books had been queered? That set you back on your ears. And the only place I found was with that incompetent shyster nincompoop who couldn’t stand brilliance and competence. What kept us afloat when the going got rough and the nice boys went down for the third time? The idea that our sons would rise on our shoulders, that here in America we were building something they would take over and take farther—right, Burt?” His hand played over his brother’s sleeve. They were both well tailored, but Burt’s clothes rumpled on him as he sat. Sheldon’s voice deepened, mocking again. “Now see this manly object slinking in to beg for something he’s ashamed to ask his father for.”
“I wouldn’t ask you for a rope to hang myself with.”
“You’d flub that too. Don’t pretend you don’t go wheedling around your mother for whatever you can get.”
“I see her because I like her—you wouldn’t understand.”
“Burt, promise me you won’t throw good money after bad. The University won’t take him back. Nothing but a matchcover tradeschool would let him in, someone his age who can’t earn a living, his wife left him, the court took away his son—if it is his—”
Anna stood. She could hardly believe the acid wash of anger that scalded her chest. “Come on, Leon. We have to leave.” She took hold of him and half dragged him out, out of that field of magnetic hate and soured love that fixed them head to head.
“Leon, you call me again. You come out to the house and have a good meal with your aunt and your cousins and me.”
Sheldon craned after them off balance. “What does he want to study this time, or pretend to? Why is he running out?”
“None of your business. I had something to discuss with you, Uncle Burt, and advice to ask. But I see I can’t trust you, so just forget it.” Leon marched out. Going down in the elevator, she could feel the waves of lavathick humiliation coming off him. “They pretend they want you to submit,” he muttered, “but you can never crawl low enough. Because they don’t want to help. They want to pretend to offer help and make you refuse.”
The depth of her response alarmed her. She felt bound. She felt condemned to try to mediate between him and the world. His face was gutted with anger, dark and swollen. When the car reached the lobby she had to lead him out. On the sidewalk heading into the rasp of the wind, she took his arm and he let her guide, bumping blindly against her as they walked.
Friday–Sunday, December 12–14
The first tape waiting to be transcribed was an interview with a local politician who was for urban renewal but against its abuses, for the planners but against their mistakes, in favor of public housing but not in his ward. He favored responsible government on all levels.
The second interviewee was Tom Lovis. She did not recognize him until he had talked for a while. Yes, acquaintance of Asher who’d been publicity director for UNA, the neighborhood organization (University-Nesting Affluents, Rowley called them, Ur-liberal Node-seeking Ass-kissers, and Us-Nice-Animals, and Universal Nose-Clean Aunties, and so forth). Had a tall blond wife and a pretty kid named Rhoda. Whole photogenic family. The tape announced that Tom Lovis was now a member of Penman, Bates and Lovis, Associates, Communications Counselors, retained till recently by the planning unit.
Mellowly Tom Lovis told the interviewer that he did not think himself as a PR man, for the work of his organization was largely education. They kept the public informed, a vital function in a democracy and never more important than in our increasingly complex exurban civilization with its heavy reliance upon mass media.
With respectful voice the graduate student nudged him subjectward. Were they satisfied with their consulting for the planning unit? “We came in there,” said Lovis sadly, “prepared to engineer a favorable response and we’ve handled a number of consulting activities in the field of community projects. We’ve lent our skills to some of the biggest corporations in the Midwest, as well as serving municipalities and governmental agencies. But from time to time we run into a real lack of understanding of the importance of carefully manufactured consensus in a community. Stone age minds.”
Tom Lovis described successful community organization. “You go in and identify the potential sources of conflict. Then you set up a committee and invite spokesmen from those groups that could cause dissent to sit in on it, being careful to keep it balanced and maintain its prestige. Now if the University had taken the trouble to negotiate consent, say, from key Negro leaders—businessmen, professionals who live in the area, plus the leftlibs in the unions—that would have nipped charges of racism in the bud, and you’d still have the same plan. You take some of the black business interests, real estate investors, insurancemen—they have sound business sense. They aren’t looking for a quarrel with the banks or the mayor’s office.”
The graduate student, in phrasing a question, referred to Sheldon Lederman as a decision-maker, and Tom Lovis chuckled. “He’s just a crude noisy lawyer. Mind you, he’s devoted to the job and moderately inventive—but he has an oldfashioned style. He charges i
nto battles wiser men wouldn’t need to fight. He’s useful now. But the only power he has is who he represents, and after the bulldozers are through, Lederman will be through too.”
The graduate student asked Tom Lovis who then he would credit with the success of renewal in Chicago.
“It’s a case of really topflight men getting involved in saving our central cities. The same thing is going to have to happen in every major city in the country. We’ve just been luckier here to have the local talent ready to move in and act before the situation reached crisis. While other cities are rotting at the core, look at the new construction going up here in the Loop and around it—new office buildings, new apartment houses. We’ve reversed the cancer some oldfashioned types were calling inevitable a few years ago. Here’s a case where you have the banks, the utilities, the topflight insurance companies, the industrial giants, all giving of their best administrators or directors to take a hand in civic responsibility. Some of the most important men in the Midwest are sitting on mayor’s commissions, serving on the boards which have prepared the urban renewal plans and mapped strategies. That’s why urban renewal here hasn’t been simply a matter of tearing down a few slums and putting up a few cheap housing projects. We have men here with the vision to see how the city could be revitalized starting with its economy, using urban renewal to bring back industries and keep the ones already here, attract the prosperous back from the suburbs and into the center of our city again. You have here a mayor with an efficient machine friendly to business interests, able to get the legislation we need through, and a business community shrewd and able enough to see its interest and plan for it. There isn’t another urban renewal program in the country that’s been as skillful and efficient and profitable as ours.”
They went step by step over the consulting, discussing what should have been done. The words flowed in her ears and out her fingers. When Tom Lovis said, “Rowley,” she jumped and the tape advanced several sentences before she could reverse it.
“… Harlan Williams and the socalled Defense Committee. There are a number of longterm reds or fellow travelers—I don’t know what you’d call them—who’ve operated in the neighborhood for years. Tried to infiltrate UNA. They’ve captured Williams and they’re using him in an attempt to obstruct the plan.”