by Marge Piercy
I look at the marsh in the deep lush green of June, the tawny lion color of late summer, the deeper bronze of fall. I stare at the sand, washed black-red in ripples, as if a shadow fell across it, tiny grains of garnet. I watch the clouds pass overhead, much lower than on the mainland. The wind riffles the trees, surges around the house and we suddenly remember we are far out to sea on our narrow sand spit. I observe the rough heavily ribbed leaves of the beech, the slender elegant ladies’ nail leaves of the peach, the feathery delicate intricately cut leaves of the locust, the broad happy leaves of the maple beginning to be splashed with orange. How I enjoy having sight, who know it is on loan. Living here after growing up in the center of cities, I have learned to attune myself to the seasons and the weather. I am trying to learn how to age, something our society seems to know little about. My body has changed, spread out, as my mind has grown more focused. I do not want to fight aging, but to find in it value and a different kind of strength and endurance—something I think particularly vital for a woman, since older women are so devalued and denigrated in our society.
For the last ten years, I have demanded to have late Mondays to myself. Monday I work with my assistant, taking care of letters, bills, interviews—interface with the world—while doing the laundry. I make up a grocery list, and in the afternoon, Woody drives to Orleans, two towns over, to do the week’s primary shopping. He brings groceries home at six. I do not cook supper nor eat with him. He is responsible for his own supper, either microwaving something at his office, eating out with a friend, or picking up takeout. Monday from seven to ten is my quiet time. I will not go to a meeting or see anyone; I turn off the phone. I shut off my computer. I think long and hard about my week past and the week coming and my life. Then I meditate—not the casual meditation of the week, ten minutes here and there, but a long deep meditation that feels holy and healing. This practice is part of how I stay sane and productive and open to others. For the first couple of years, Woody was surly about Monday evenings. He felt he was being kicked out of the house. Now he enjoys the time. Sometimes he will see friends or go to a movie, sometimes surf the Web or learn a new program at his office. When an emergency or a gig that includes a Monday keeps me from my precious quiet time, I miss it in my nerves, my body, my sense of coherence. Deep meditation reweaves my psyche. Once when Woody was in therapy, his therapist asked him if he didn’t think I was having an affair Monday night. I thought that amusing, since the whole purpose is not to speak with anyone.
One year, Woody decided to run for selectman. At first, it was a lark, playing at talking up the issues in the post office parking lot, creating bulk mailings. But when he was actually attacked by opponents, he threw himself into the campaign with ardor and won by a huge margin. He became the first Jewish selectman in Wellfleet history. He enjoyed town government for two years. Then in the third year, the town went to war with itself over someone hired as town manager. People who used to be close friends were ready to kill one another. At the same time, he began to feel that he had gone too great a distance from literature. He had imagined starting a small publishing company; now he talked about it seriously. I listened for ten months, and then I began to push him to do it instead of talk about it.
I had never expected to spend half my life in a small town, nor had Ira. But we are rooted here. By this time, he knows far more people in town than I do, since my only public activity here is the grassroots organization we began after the Brookline clinic murders, ROC—for Roots of Choice. We work on issues of choice, of domestic violence, issues that impact women’s and children’s health and safety. Alice Hoffman and I do a reading every other year to support the work. In village life, people barter and help one another. They also gossip and hold grudges for a generation. Local issues of land use, water, the dump, putting up a cell phone tower, paving a sand road all inspire great passion and rancor. It is livelier than you might expect and more engaging.
That year, Jim Beam was diagnosed with incurable kidney disease. That spring, I also noticed that Colette was beginning to slow down. She would miss a leap that had been easy for her. They were only fourteen—much too young for what was happening to them. I remembered their dubious genetic heritage and wondered what had kicked in suddenly.
We went abroad that summer, doing publicity and readings in England, then research for my novel City of Darkness, City of Light in France. We were gone three and a half weeks. When we got home, the deterioration in Jim’s condition was appalling. While we were gone, he had lost a great deal of weight. The person in charge basically left food and disappeared. The cats were abandoned. I had cut down on his time outside to preserve his strength and to make sure he ate what he was supposed to. It was difficult to put him on a low-protein diet. He would turn up his nose at the prescribed food and go hunting.
The disease had gone into a more rampant stage. He needed, and hated, twice daily injections of liquid, administered from an IV bag and needle. He became a house cat, far more affectionate, especially toward Woody. The last three months of his life, he spent as much time as possible with Woody, as close as he could get. He was visibly failing, but we were able to keep him alive until mid-September, when he jumped off the bed to use his litter box and could not move his hind legs. He went into a coma on the way to the vet’s and died a week before Rosh Hashona. We buried him at the edge of the wild lawn area, and planted a rhododendron on his grave. We both grieved for him. He had been the most difficult animal I ever lived with. He kept us awake nights, cost time and money with his fights, made it weird for guests, but he had been a strong presence in our lives, a beautiful cat and the first cat who was really Woody’s. Then Colette was diagnosed with the same kidney disease that had killed Jim.
We went to a cat show in Framingham, really just to look around, for we had to be back well before sundown. It was Erev Rosh Hashona, the Jewish New Year, and we were going to services two towns over. At the show, we considered a Maine coon kitten who looked like a movie star, longhaired, ruddy, absolutely gorgeous. However, he paid little attention to us, and I think cats must want you before you have the right to take them home. Then it was time to head back to grab a quick supper before services.
As we were walking out, we noticed that a local shelter had set up cages in the hallway. I asked Ira to wait while I used the toilet. I have a rule when away from home: never pass a toilet—because who knows when you will see another? He was standing by a cage crowded with motley kittens when a little orange one grabbed him by the arm and came on to him. As I got back, he was talking to the kitten. “What a brave little boy, what a wise soul,” he was saying, admiring the gumption and confidence of the tiny clump of fur clinging to him. The woman representing the shelter had taken the kitten out of the cage and put him in Ira’s arms, where he began to purr at once and tell Ira how wonderful he was. We were both hooked. As soon as we had signed the papers, he then began to cry piteously and to reach out toward another orange kitten, cowering in the cage. That was his sister. I was not surprised, since the night before I had dreamt about two orange kittens. In the end we took her also. We had no idea how truly besieged they were with almost every sign of neglect and malnutrition. We tried to keep them in Woody’s study, away from the other cats, but Colette opened the door and let the male cat, Max, out. The female was afraid to leave. Having liberated Max, Colette took to him. She seemed to adopt him. She cuddled with him and washed him. However, it turned out that Max had a respiratory infection. The vet was not impressed with the kittens, almost reluctant to handle them. They had tapeworms, they had roundworms, they were sniveling, they had fleas and they were skin and bones.
Colette caught Max’s respiratory infection. The vet had diagnosed her already as having advanced kidney failure and did not give her long to live. Now he said with the respiratory infection, we should leave her there overnight while he ran tests on her. In the morning, she was dead. I was furious. I would never have left her to die alone if he had told me how weak she was.
Jim Beam had gradually failed. Colette had been a little less than her usual Amazon self, but until the last week, she did not act sick. I felt I had failed her, letting her die alone in a cage, and I have been determined that should never happen again. We buried her beside her brother under another rhododendron, at the edge of the grassy area near the roses. She outlived him by only a month.
Her death was hardest on me, as Jim Beam’s had the most impact on Woody. Jim Beam had weakened so, we had gotten our minds around his death. Colette I had expected to outlive him by years. She was more stoical than Jim, and I’m sure concealed her weakness. If something was wrong with him—he had been bitten, he had an abscess—he complained vocally. If something was wrong with her, we had to find out ourselves.
I will always remember Max with his respiratory infection outstretched on my bed, his long Sherlockian nose pointed into the steam from a humidifier we set up, seeming to understand exactly what he needed to do. Max was a wise and confident kitten, sure he had saved his sister and himself. After she had spent a week under the bed, I named her Malkah, queen, hoping that would influence her to come out. We called her the Apricot Shadow. I had to work hard to seduce her, but she is the most affectionate and responsive cat we have.
The cats are hardly the only animals we see. Deer come on our land sometimes. I have said we exercise in the mornings. I use free weights, a bicycle and a treadmill, although I confess I find all except the weights boring. Ira uses a NordicTrack. But some mornings we walk instead on local sand roads. Nine times we have seen coyotes. The first time I saw one, something in me said WOLF and the hair stood up on my arms. They are handsome but unmistakably feral. When I encountered one in late afternoon in the subdivision where I live, it simply yawned and trotted away, but usually they vanish into smoke. In the blink of an eye, they disappear, leaving you wondering if you actually saw an animal. Occasionally foxes visit, but since the area between us and Pole Dike Road was built up, we no longer have them on our land. I have watched fox kits playing, I have watched adults catching alewives in the streams, I have watched them eating wild grapes. When I was younger and had more leisure time, I would sit in the woods and observe marvelous things by remaining quiet. Perhaps as I age, I will have that time again. I trained myself to be utterly still. Meditation helps. I am not by nature a still person. Every year I do tashlich—at the Jewish New Year, it is customary to toss bread into outflowing waters on their way to the sea to cast with it your sins—which I interpret to be those aspects of my behavior, my thinking, my actions I need to change. Every year I try to throw away impatience. I have not yet succeeded. Like Efi, I want everything now. If I am no longer ruled by sexual passion, it is only because I am satisfied with my lover, not because I became any less needy or any wiser. I have great discipline in my work, but in my life, I have often made a mess and overflowed onto the scenery, attempted too much, thrashed around and bumped into everyone in sight.
After the death of Jim Beam, Oboe became top cat. Suddenly he began to treat the orange kittens with paternal kindness. Dinah was still hostile, but Oboe had his ideas about how he would rule his newly acquired domain. He is perfectly able to chase off intruders without getting into a fight. He makes hideous noises and blows himself up, but basically, it’s just strength of character. He took a particular interest in Malkah. She began to sidle out from hiding and curl up with him. Max and Malkah grew rapidly, from tiny fist-sized creatures to big beautiful cats. I believe they had an orange tabby mother. In Max you can see the Siamese, his long lean body, his long legs and tail, his aquamarine eyes. Malkah has a round face, huge round amber eyes, longer fur. He is darker orange and his belly and the tip of his tail are creamy. Her belly is snow white, and her stripes are a paler, milkier apricot. A starving kitten grew into a cat who does not like to see anybody’s good food go to waste. If you give her a gourmet treat, she purrs as she nibbles.
At the cattery where we acquired Efi, we did not meet her mother, never a good sign. Efi went into heat for the first time when she was four months old. Three weeks later, she went into heat again. She was in agony, driving the other cats insane. Max hated to come in the house, as she had selected him as her sex object and flung herself on him, bowling him over in spite of her tiny size. I called the vet and tried to get them to alter her, but they said she was too young. After she had been in heat for eight days, I called again and insisted. My brief time as a breeder gave me the understanding that something was wrong. Indeed, she had an infected womb. She was burning up with fever and almost died. When we got her back, she was so weak she could not stand. Getting baby food into her was a major task. Malkah wrapped herself around Efi, keeping her warm. Within a week, she recovered. Efi is a being of immense energy. She is forever flying through the house about six inches off surfaces, skimming like a hovercraft. Crash. There goes Efi. There went Efi. Clatter, bang.
A couple of years ago, we began our press. It is mostly Woody’s—he does 80 percent of the work. The press has an office in town, for he needs a place to meet with people, and the press needs more office equipment than we have room for. I like having the house to myself on the days my assistant does not come in, to be free of conversation and interruptions and Woody’s recurrent moodiness. He does not deal well with rejection, with obstacles, with disappointments, and sometimes his depression feels to him global and requiring much attention from both of us, even while I know that in a week, he will not remember he was in despair. As I grow older, companionship is precious to me and so is solitude. We are always working to balance them. Many friends have dropped away as time has gone by. There are periods in my life that have blown down friendships like the wake of tornadoes leaves a swath of broken and upended trees. My intense involvement in the antiwar movement was one such period; my early militance in feminism was another; my blind period was another. Friendships of many years vanished with my disability, but I have retained several deep friendships and made new ones. Some friends live on the Cape, but many of our best friends live elsewhere, and we must make appointments to get together or rely on e-mail. I have more friends who are poets than those who write fiction, although Ruthann Robson does both: Diana der Hovanessian, Martin Espada, Elizabeth McKim, Celia Gilbert. With all those women, I exchange poems regularly. That feedback is vital to me. Etheridge Knight was a friend too, still sorely missed, as is May Sarton, whom we used to visit every August at York, Maine, bringing her a bottle of the champagne she loved and a jar of my jam. But other friends are naturalists, scientists, fishermen, carpenters, women judges, Web-masters, theater and radio people, academics, lawyers, shellfish farmers, a lobbyist, a cook, a chief of police, other publishers of small presses, journalists, painters.
Leapfrog Press has forced Woody to learn new skills, and he relishes the knowledge and ability he has gained. I would never have started a press, knowing how much time reading manuscripts takes from other reading I would rather be doing, but I believe in the importance of small independent presses and I am delighted with his success. After we had begun the press, we learned gradually that almost all the small presses we most admired had inherited or otherwise earned money behind them. We go hand-to-mouth and have no idea how long we can afford to carry on, but it still feels good.
We teach workshops together when we can, separately if I am doing poetry; we give readings, usually separately but sometimes together. I spent a lot of effort learning to perform well, but I do not really want to come across as a performer. I don’t want the audience to focus on me but on the poem. My voice is my instrument. Woody and I wrote a novel together in 1996–1997, Storm Tide, the first time we had collaborated since 1977, when we wrote our play. This was a smoother collaboration. It’s easier to write with someone than alone, if you respect each other and communicate well. But editors don’t like it. Serious novelists, like poets, are supposed to work alone—as opposed to the theater, film, opera, where you are expected to work as part of a team. Now we are collaborating on So You Want to Write, a craft boo
k that comes directly out of the forty or so workshops in fiction and personal narrative we taught together.
Writing about my life has been strange. I have always considered myself a good friend, but I see how many people have fallen out of my life or been pushed. I also recognize that frequently I have not inspired loyalty or deep affection. I think of friends who have dismissed me, used me, treated me as a resource. Then I think of others who have stood by me in emotional and physical trouble, who have given of their own precious time and scarce resources to succor me, and I am grateful and delighted to have such friends. I think of those willing to read manuscripts and give feedback in busy lives when nobody really wants to read a manuscript, no matter how eagerly they may read the book it becomes.
Memory is such a tricky baggage. Sometimes it comes unbidden and shakes me. I will hear my mother’s slightly husky alto voice. I will see my grandmother letting the braid of her hair down like Rapunzel as she sat on the bed’s edge, the rickety sagging double bed with the maple headboard that we shared. I remember the pattern in the curtains that hung over us—cacti in blue and gray, what I now know to be the saguaro cacti I have seen in the Sonora Desert. The taste of sheep’s cheese or mango or pâté brings into focus an adventure in Crete or Cuba or the Dordogne. I put on a pair of silver snake earrings and remember a party and the giver. But my mind is a rough sieve and much escapes. It dissolves in time as in running water and rushes away, lost. The bad times blur and fade. I remember the pain but few particulars.