The High Cost of Living

by Marge Piercy

  “I’m not looking for a fight either. Maybe he’ll let it drop.”

  “Why does he have it in for you?”

  “I don’t know.” She tried to rise to an analysis, but she felt bogged in self-pity. “He was interested in me at first, I can’t imagine why.”

  “You’re attractive and he’s on the slow side.”

  There goes Mark’s assistantship, she thought, and felt a stab of remorse. She disliked him but felt unworthy of judgment today.

  “I think he’s more likely professionally jealous,” George said, stroking his mustache with that look almost of feeling himself up. “I think it’s more likely my attention he craves. He’s becoming a nuisance. There are at least ten brighter, harder-working students in this department who don’t have assistantships.… My neighbors, the nosy ones, told me you had a young man with you this weekend. Are you branching out? Or was it just someone awfully butch? They’re not too bright either.”

  The neighbors really do talk; she had not thought of neighbors since childhood. The woman next door calling her over: “I haven’t seen your daddy around lately, little girl. What happened to your daddy?” Even at eight she knew enough to lie. “Oh, him.” Her mind hardened to frozen slush. She could think of nothing to say.

  “Who is he? What were you doing with him?” George was watching her with slightly malicious and slightly possessive curiosity. “Are you latently hetero after all?”

  “He’s gay! And I can’t stand him.” To her humiliation her eyes began to burn and two tears trembled in the corners. She sat stark still hoping that if she did not move they would be reabsorbed and she could pretend nothing had happened.

  He patted her shoulder. “This is all fascinating. What have you got into?”

  “Nothing I haven’t got right back out of, believe me. I had a rotten vacation! I want to work like hell and forget it.”

  “A gay young man. What were you doing with him?”

  “Just fucking up things, George! Please.”

  “If it’s work your broken heart requires, we’ve got plenty. That’s a new one. Those in the straight world who used to ponder what lesbians do together can put that in the hopper and bounce it around. I don’t mean to be facetious, Red, but beyond the novelty, I wouldn’t think it a profitable direction.”

  “I’m just going to work.”

  “Fine. Let’s see what you had time to do with those correlations while I was broiling myself like a piece of prime steak.” He put down his feet to signal he was ready for business, but he was still smiling, his eyes crinkled at the corners.

  Leslie was sitting crosslegged. Her thighs were stiff from exercising after a whole week off. She had several bruises on her forearms she had not squeezed out. Usually she took the time to deal with bruises so that they were neither painful nor visible, but she had cut short the treatment, impatiently hating her body too much to tend it carefully. It was Tuesday afternoon and she was studying the history of the cotton industry from 1812 to the Civil War, the slight pain of her body a counterbalance to the unceasing pain in her head.

  The phone rang. She reached to pick it up without moving from her crosslegged position. “Leslie here.”

  “Yes. Honor here. ‘Here’ is a dirty drugstore on your dirty corner. I can’t figure out how to get your attention otherwise. You don’t seem to have a normal doorbell.”

  “It’s broken. Come back and I’ll let you in.” Carefully she put away her book and notecards and glanced at the room. It was neat. There was hardly enough in it to create clutter. Had she known Honor was visiting, she would have got some flowers to soften it. She liked flowers against her stark backdrop. A vase of daffodils decorated an entire room for her. One big yellow rose was furniture. But she had not known and she felt ashamed, as if her room was not good enough for Honor.

  She ran down two steps at a time, waiting so that Honor would not risk being hassled. She watched the girl swinging languidly along in a trench coat, a shiny black bag over her shoulder and a chiffon scarf wrapped artfully around her hair. Her eager stare in all directions contradicted the studied languor of her gait. She looked in her twenties except for her expression, the open, eager, pink curiosity. But she pulled her face into a mask when she saw Leslie, and Leslie felt rebuked.

  “You finally came to visit me,” Leslie said as they climbed. “I hope you didn’t get too wet?”

  “That’s what raincoats are for, even though Mama pretends to think I’ll die of pneumonia if the dew touches me.” Honor stopped so abruptly inside the door Leslie almost ran into her back. “Bernar’ certainly wasn’t exaggerating. It’s a nun’s cell. Every time I think dear Bernar’ is stretching the truth, he surprises me by his accuracy.… Does one stand?”

  “You could sit on my bed, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I don’t see a bed.”

  “My mattress.”

  “Hmmm.” Honor carefully removed her raincoat, turned several times until Leslie took it from her and hung it in the shower. Then with haughty dignity she lowered herself to the mattress and took up a position sitting with her legs to one side in a neat Z. She was wearing a calf-length dark shirtdress in a small figured print, nylons and built-up shoes that looked clumsy to Leslie.

  “I came,” Honor said with distinct utterance, spitting out the words, “because I gathered I would not see you otherwise. Yesterday was Monday. I waited, of course, expecting you. You neither came nor called.”

  Leslie clapped her hand to her mouth. She had simply forgotten. The week of vacation that had felt months long had thrown her schedule completely off. “I wasn’t feeling well so I had to go to Health Service in the morning. They kept me waiting till noon. I’m sorry I didn’t call. There’s no way I could have come yesterday, but I should have called. I missed my morning seminar, and when I got to our office, George was waiting for me with a lot of work.”

  “I find it interesting. I found it equally interesting on Saturday.”

  “Honorée, do you have a serious heart condition?” God, it seemed weeks since she had sat in the livingroom staring at Honor’s mother.

  “No, do you? Bernar’ said you told him some fairy tale about my mother warning you off because of my heart. Really! That’s a bad Victorian novel. Do I lie on a chaise lounge and cough delicately into a lace hanky?”

  “When I arrived to pick you up Saturday, your mother told me you were at the doctor. She warned me against … She said you were in danger from too much stimulation because of a heart condition.”

  “I did have to go to the doctor, but only because of my stupid gym class. I have a note letting me out, but they said the note was too old. The doctor’s a friend of Mama’s and he doesn’t see why I have to prance around shooting baskets to survive adolescence. He says I’m mature for my age and it’s not surprising I loathe group games. He hated them himself.… I think it’s unfair and rather mean of you to blame Mama for your not waiting. She told you where I was. You could easily have waited. Is it so dreadful to sit in my livingroom talking with Mama? She said you seemed terribly jumpy.”

  “Did you have rheumatic fever?”

  “As a child, yes. But it’s not a major illness nowadays, Leslie! I was anemic for a little while. Mama makes a fuss, but that’s no excuse for you.”

  “Honorée, she said you were at the doctor’s and she implied you’d be there quite a while.”

  “Why didn’t you wait? Why didn’t you come back if you were too nervous to sit in the livingroom waiting? Why didn’t you call? Really, Leslie, you think I’m a child, don’t you? You took my absence as an excuse for going off alone with Bernar’.”

  “But Honorée, you’re the one insisted I pick you up first because you didn’t want your mother to know you were going to spend Saturday with him.”

  “It’s the way you went off with him. You were the driver. It was your car—I mean, George’s—but you were the driver. What could Bernie do? You arrived and told him that fantastic story about my having a heart
attack and then you took him off for the day in the country without me. I think it’s mean. Absolutely mean.”

  “Your mother said you couldn’t go. Bernie was anxious. He’d arranged to get the day off from work.”

  “He would have waited till Sunday, he told me so. He was willing. We would have had to leave early to get him to work by four, but we could have all gone. No, Leslie, it was your choice. And I repeat it, it was traitorous and disloyal.” Honor shifted her feet so she was sitting bolt upright on the mattress. “If you believed your own story, why didn’t you call me the moment you got back in town? But did you call Saturday night? No. Sunday morning? No. Sunday afternoon? Sunday evening? Monday? Did you appear when you always appear Monday? Well, did you?”

  “I’ve been feeling rotten. Ill,” she said, improving on it. “I spent yesterday morning at Student Health Service.”

  “Ill—like my magical heart condition? Really, Leslie, I’m ashamed of you. And deeply disappointed. Why didn’t you simply admit you were romantically interested in Bernar’? It isn’t necessary to connive to get me out of the way. After all, I live at home and it’s easy enough for you to meet. That is, if Bernar’ had proved interested. Oh, Leslie, I am disappointed in you. You go on how you care about women, but you’re just like the girls at school, who’ll do anything for a boyfriend, really!”

  She felt as if she were sinking in mud. She could not rouse herself to indignation, for she felt guilty. She had acted badly. It was hard for her to think how to defend herself, because she felt indefensible. “Is that what Bernie told you?”

  “He came to see me Sunday. He came over yesterday. I didn’t have to confront him in his lair like a wounded animal. Really, Leslie, you must think I’m a complete fool! Did you have any friendship for me at all?”

  “You’re being foolish now. I feel a lot closer to you than I do to Bernie, believe me.” That at least was true and her voice sounded convincing for the first time. “Bernie and I had a fight, did he tell you that?”

  “What about?”

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “Why not? Bernie can.”

  “I’ll bet!”

  “What is that supposed to imply?”

  “That he lies compulsively. Continually. It’s a reflex action.”

  “And you don’t lie by commission. Just by omission. You let silence make the implications you won’t stoop to make yourself!” Honor tossed her head back, her eyes glittering. Her face seemed to shine with anger, to become clearer and brighter until it burned on the air.

  Leslie had a sense of avalanche, of things starting badly and then gathering a strength of their own momentum and plummeting down gathering trouble. She had the feeling if she could only break from her daze of guilt she could stop Honor. If she could speak firmly, she could abort the scene; but she could not summon the strength. Her guilt seeped like gas through the air, and Honor caught it in her nostrils and was infuriated.

  “Beyond your facade of strength is just weakness. Self-pity and mushiness. You’re a fake, that’s what you are. You’re just as silly and weak as Cam!”

  “Has she moved away from home? In with Mark?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject. Yes. Isn’t that ridiculous? Mama is furious. Now she’s practically chaining me to the wall. She’s terrified I’ll suddenly elope with the mailman.” Then Honor remembered she was angry. “You appear strong, but inside you’re weak and conniving. You’re trying to make trouble between Mama and me, between my best friend and me.”

  “I don’t trust Bernar’ any more, you’re right, and I fear your mother’s possessiveness. I’m concerned for you.”

  “I don’t believe you. Not after Saturday! I’d looked forward to that all week. You’d just gone on a trip, but you were too piggy selfish to wait for me. Then you took Bernar’ back to George’s house. Keeping it all to yourself! You lie to me and patronize me and impugn Mama and Bernar’. They’re the ones who love me. All right, what’s your side of it? What happened so you aren’t speaking to each other?”

  “Nothing that matters.” She could not even look at Honor.

  Honor sensed her guilt and it maddened her. She looked beautiful and cruel, her teeth avid. Leslie could not break free: the scene was a nightmare coming true. Honor blended with Valerie. Both fused into one beautiful woman she loved who would not love her because she was not worthy; she was guilty, ugly, vulnerable, her guts spilling like garbage on the floor. She had ruined things again; she had let the woman down. She had failed her beloved, and now she was to be punished. Her mother shouting, “Get out of my house!” She felt guilty before the woman, unworthy; and self-pitying guilt welled through her, making her weak.

  She could not justify to Honor forgetting her existence for three days almost entirely. In no way could she make that pass away from between them. Between them also lay the corpse of the night with Bernie. There were too many questions she could not bear to answer.

  “You won’t even lie to me! You don’t care that much. You disgust me! Stay in your cell. Lock yourself in your little jail. You’ll be ashamed to show feeling, but you can have a good cry anyhow. Really, you’re a complete fraud. I don’t ever want to see you again. Ever!”

  Honor gathered her wet raincoat, slipped it on wincing and banged the door wide to leave. She did not bother to shut it but clattered downstairs. After a while Leslie closed it. She had not the energy to cry. She simply went back and sat down stunned against the wall. She felt as if she had been turned inside out. Then she picked up her book and resumed studying. She did not study well but she studied. She could not imagine trying to do anything else at all.

  fourteen

  It rained for two weeks, every day. She sat in her room working with her jacket on. She went to class, she went to work, she went to George’s, she went to the dojo and she went to the bars. Of the two likely bars, she hated the Queen of Hearts less than the Pig’s Whistle. She went after karate, regularly, and on Friday and Saturday nights. The smoke gave her a splitting headache and the bartender glared at her while she nursed her one beer. She did not approve of one night stands, thinking them a male mode of sexuality, yet that was all she went to the bars for. She stayed one hour. At the end of that time she had a partner or left. “Your place or mine?” “Yours,” she said. It was easier to get out of a strange apartment than to pry someone from her bed. “I have to go to work,” was her exit line.

  She spent one night apiece with perhaps eight women. Only one of them kept turning up, Debra, a small wistful ex-acidhead with sad blue eyes and an air of feathery vagueness. Debra decided she was in love with Leslie and fastened on her from the time she walked into the Queen of Hearts. She liked Debra but didn’t want to sleep with her again. She recognized she was still too involved with Honor and Bernie to care for anyone else. It had stopped, suddenly as a film breaking and with that same sense of coming abruptly out of an anesthetic in a strange glaring room, with pain too, unfamiliar pain everywhere through her, occupying her entirely.

  Finally she called Tasha, who invited her over for Sunday brunch. Because of the rape project and meetings, Tasha’s social times tended to be mornings and lunches. Tasha lived in a house with four other women on the east side, a few blocks from the river and the waterworks. They lived in a pleasant neighborhood, racially mixed and working class, with good-sized houses that came cheaply and big bosomy trees, all leafed out now. It was strangely lush, the grass tending to be less clipped than in the suburbs, the fat old trees meeting over the streets and shooting up tall and green behind the houses too in the ample yards. The neighborhood had a staid seedy bucolic air. As Leslie climbed the shallow wooden steps of the big front porch, she felt a pang of regret that she had given up coming regularly to the house, with its mellow easy atmosphere, that she had not spent more time with Tasha, who liked her so much.

  Music played upstairs; a woman was singing plaintively. Another woman chatted on the phone in the front hall, sitting on the stairs in a
yellow terrycloth robe with her hair in a turban, laughing into the receiver and eating a piece of toast with marmalade, while a white and tan dog lay at her feet with its tail thumping and its eyes on the toast going down.

  Tasha took her into the diningroom, a big room with a bay window lined with shelves of plants. A big blond in a kimono nursing a baby nodded at her: Sherry, a straight woman she vaguely remembered. Leslie said, “You had your baby.”

  “April nineteenth. Look at him, isn’t he something?”

  “We’re not an all-woman house any more.” Tasha was smiling, bringing in from the kitchen a pitcher of café au lait and a fruitnut bread, still warm. “You want some cheese too?”

  “If you have some.”

  “I remember you’re a cheese lover. This is Rae.”

  A Black woman with honey brown skin had followed her out of the kitchen. Rae was big, much bigger than Tasha, with square-rimmed reading glasses she tucked now in a pocket of her long dark red and white djellaba. Was Rae the same woman she had seen with Tasha putting up posters in the gay bar that time? Yes, she thought so. A big stately woman with a round smooth face, Rae looked her over slowly and carefully with a not entirely friendly regard. She must be living in the house. “You’re living here?”

  “No, I live over on John R.” That was all she said.

  Tasha came back with the cheese and this time Leslie looked at her more carefully. Tasha was wearing a new-looking blue version of a mechanic’s jumpsuit that did not conceal her figure. In fact she looked good in it. “Where did that come from? I’ve never seen you in anything but overalls.”

  “I stole it off the rack in Hudson’s,” Rae said before Tasha could phrase an answer, flushing as Rae went on: “But I would have paid for it even, if I had to, worse luck. I don’t like going out with a woman who wants to wear a paper bag over herself.”

  That little fantasy she had carried over of getting involved with Tasha all conveniently now and assuaging her loneliness went pop like the hot air balloon it was. She was in a mood too to feel assaulted by the image of women coupled off. Rae sure was taking care to inform her she was Tasha’s lover. She drove it back and forth like a truck. As if she could read Leslie’s mind, she flashed a big smile, her first. “Just making things clear. I like to be real clear, you know?”