The High Cost of Living

by Marge Piercy

  “You had a real hard time starting out,” Leslie edged away, hoping to turn Sue off. She was not sure how much of this Sue really wanted the others in the kitchen to hear. “I told George I’d bring him a refill.”

  “He ought to be drinking real bubbly tonight instead of that sour-piss white plonk.”

  She took a glass of wine to George, who received it with a quick automatic wink and turned back. He was still talking to Honor, who was baiting him about how boring she found the idea of quantitative history. “Sounds just like painting by number. What happens to Cleopatra’s nose and Napoleon’s personality?” Honor was touching her own long nose flirtatiously. Then she stopped abruptly, looking startled.

  Leslie turned and there was Bernie unzipping his jacket in the foyer. She gasped and tried to compose her face, which felt twisted out of shape. He strode toward them. Then he saw Leslie and came on more slowly. Their gazes crossed like live wires and then immediately withdrew, in shock. They both at once looked away.

  A kind of anger propelled her forward. “Good evening.”

  He choked on an answer. He turned his head as if to look at her, then looked past her.

  She found herself able to smile then, a strange sneering sort of cracked smile she could feel hardening on her face, but she was proud of it: not to let him know how shaken she was. “What a surprise,” she said coldly.

  “I imagine so.” He turned indolent and haughty. He tossed his head. Like a girl, she thought. “Thought you had the field to yourself. Tough titty. Here I am bold as brass.”

  “You always did like to make yourself at home chez George.”

  “Didn’t do you any good, catching Honor without me, did it? I bet you tried too,” he crooned.

  Honor stepped between them. “Bernar’, what are you doing here? I didn’t expect you.”

  “Oh, just thought I’d give you a lift home.”

  “But Cam would. She brought me, after all.” There was an edge of peeve to Honor’s voice.

  Maybe she did come to see me, Leslie thought, and I blew it. He’s jealous of me with her, I can see it. I didn’t flatter her enough.

  “I wasn’t sure, since she’s living with Hot Pants. Anyhow, often you get bored at parties, and want to leave early.”

  “How thoughtful of you,” Honor said with a wash of sarcasm. “I’ll get my wrap. But you know I can’t ask you in. Mama’ll have to suppose Cam brought me back, since otherwise she’ll get terribly suspicious.”

  “Come again,” George said after her. “We do this every Thursday.”

  “I may do that,” Honor called back. “I just may. We have an argument to finish.”

  “Is that her boyfriend?” George asked as they left.

  “Not exactly. She’s seventeen and lives at home. He’s more a friend than a boyfriend.”

  Slowly people left Midnight was the unofficial deadline. As twelve approached, she helped Sue put leftovers away, throw trash into bags, wash up. They were alone in the kitchen. The very last students were hanging around George and the embers.

  “I know what I started to tell you.” Sue gripped her by the shoulders. “About George and how he used to be. It was a big rebellion for me, you can’t imagine how strict I’d been raised. I don’t mean Eastern proper. I always went hunting with my granddaddy. I could ride and shoot from the time I was knee-high to a horse. I mean … what you do and what you don’t. And you don’t marry a pinko Yankee with hair to his waist. It’s a wonder how George has buckled down. Of course I believed in him, but I never did believe it would turn out … I mean, that he’d make it.”

  “Are you relieved? Or … not?”

  “I’d have to be a flaming idiot not to think it’s real nice to have my hubby doing well. Folks admiring him. Better pay. All that goes with it. We won’t stay here long. The weather’s something else. The city’s just a ratty slum; no-body lives there. Just people shooting at each other. I’d like to live some decent place where it isn’t cold and mean two-thirds of the year. It’s nice to live in a place that likes to have you around, where you can ride without freezing to death or getting half-drowned trying to cross the street to get into your car.”

  “You’d like to be in the South?”

  “The schools he has eyes for are in the East. Except California. I’d like that. It’s closer to home and the climate’s grand. I don’t mind heat, I’m used to it. Besides you always have air conditioning.… You know, it was his bossiness. Wanting to get there and being impatient. That’s what it was. I don’t think George was ever properly pink. He was just in a hurry and that’s where the action was.”

  “He’s sure … er … conservative now.” Leslie was thinking of the robber barons. “He still likes to stand things on their head, but it isn’t political.”

  “Oh, it is, sugar, but it’s horse-trading politics. The kind I understand.… He hasn’t taken up with anyone here, but he will. It’s only a matter of time. Isn’t it? Only a matter of time?”

  “Maybe he won’t. He’s busier and busier.”

  “He’ll always find time for that.… You’re the only one around here I feel at ease with. I know you see how it is. You’ve never been interested in him that way and that makes me feel real relaxed around you. His men grad students are scared to look at me. If I say a word about him, they put their tails between their legs and leap over the nearest fence and gone.… But you listen. Cause your heart is in the right place.” Sue squeezed her shoulders, leaning forward.

  She had an awful suspicion. She was scared. She stood very still. She did not move. She did not take a breath. Tails between their legs and gone, exactly how she felt. Out the window. Down the drain. Don’t move a muscle but say something, anything, quick. She’s drunk and amorous and you’re in trouble. “I do see. Yes, I see you’re a wonderful wife and mother, just a wonderful wife and mother. I think you’re really lucky, but no more than you deserve, to have such wonderful gifted children as Davey and Louise. I really admire you being such a wonderful mother to them. Davey’s doing well in school too, isn’t he? Reading by himself, I noticed.”

  “He’s smart, he takes after his daddy, but he likes to read just like his mommy.” Sue looked dazed, as if she had lost what she meant to do or say, but hung on to Leslie’s hand.

  I’m chicken too. None of us dare touch you. Besides, I don’t like to get involved with straight women. It takes a powerful attraction to yank me through that barrier, and I don’t feel it. Please let go my hand, pretty please.

  “Well, good night, all. See you downtown,” George boomed in the foyer and shut the door. Leslie gently withdrew her hand and went back to washing the glasses in the sink.

  fifteen

  “There’s only two seasons here, winter and the Fourth of July,” George groused and sent her on errands. The sun was glaring from a hazy sky, while bare arms, bare legs, occasional bare chests danced along the streets. Students were sunning wherever they could find a free patch. Everywhere trees grew, Detroit was so fiercely green it oozed. Residential streets were tunnels of green under the stately old trees.

  She was toting her rucksack loaded with books along Woodward, the broad street that ran straight for miles and miles and miles, splitting the city into east and west sides. Woodward was either a slow roiling river of cars gutter to gutter, or it was empty as now at two o’clock in the afternoon. Detroit was a shift city, she thought. People were either commuting or else there was no one on the streets. The sky looked huge overhead, the clouds oversized as they puffed along. Everything felt flat and far apart, as if made on a scale for something other than people: a landscape for beings the size of large combines or earth moving equipment. She was swinging along under her load, feeling good. She was sweating, but to do anything physical on a university day was a gift.

  When she fumbled for her key, she saw someone had stuck a sheet of paper in her box. Probably a throwaway: Madame Nosis, Spiritual Advisor; a special on pants at the Kleen World Kleeners. Lined page torn from a no
tebook. Neat curling handwriting.

  May 14, Sunday evening about 9 P.M.

  Dear Leslie,

  Mama thinks I am doing my homework, but I had to write you at once.

  She looked immediately at the signature, Honorée. Then she started the letter again.

  This isn’t an easy letter for me to write. First of all, I want to offer my sincerest apologies for that horrible day in your apartment when I lost my vile temper. After listening to Bernard pick me apart, I can sympathize with your feelings that day. I realize now why you didn’t fight back—I couldn’t answer Bernard because I was too numb. I had trusted him completely and had no defenses. I know why many of the things I said hurt—it was excruciating for me to know that part of what Bernard was saying was true.

  It wasn’t pleasant to be told I retreat behind a wall of dreams and the security of my home and Mama’s protection. I do not remember what I said to you on that day in question; that incident is hazy in my mind, which proves I feel dissatisfied with my role.

  I wish I could make up my mind about Bernard. It would be easier without nagging doubts. Can you forgive me? You are the only person who can perhaps understand and help me. I hope for the good fortune of regaining your friendship. I have so much to say to you, if you want to listen,

  Your Honorée

  Now what had happened? She, she was to forgive? Leslie found herself smiling. She had permitted Bernie to seduce her from considering Honor; she had let a man distract her from her friendship with a woman. Honor had been correct to be angry and jealous, but not to believe Bernie’s lies. Now he must have lied himself into a corner. She had to know. She had to forgive Honor, if only because she missed her and her life felt empty of everything but work. She was the only person who could see through Bernie’s manipulations, who could unmask him to Honor.

  She wanted to run to the telephone; she found herself fluttering around the room. An excited warmth simmered through her. No, no, mustn’t. This wasn’t a lover. Honor was impossible as a romance, tremendously young and naive. The objections that had obtained still held. No. If she went to Honor, it had to be strictly sisterly. No gain. No blurring of the clear lines of the situation through personal desire. She stood before the mirror over the sink to make sure the smile was gone from her face. She looked serious, responsible. That was how it should be.

  “Hello, Honorée. Leslie here. I got your note.”

  The conversation was brief. She had the feeling someone else was there at the other end. Mama? Bernie? Her scalp bristled. Bernie was there behind Honor, running some tricky selfish number, so that Honor could not speak freely. They arranged to meet in the Art Institute Saturday morning. She noticed that Honor carefully did not use her name.

  Honor was waiting for her in the Rivera Court. “I loathe this room.” She stood immediately, wearing loose white pants and an embroidered blouse, carrying an oversized straw purse.

  “I kind of like it.” Leslie looked around. She’d never been in the building, and the murals were impressive. “They’re powerful.” Monumental benign presences loomed there, all engaged in labor, all producing.

  Honor led the way through the medieval rooms, past a rebuilt chapel to a circular staircase down. “This is one of my favorite, favorite places. You have to understand that the museum is mine. Ever since I was a little girl and Mama brought me here so I’d learn to love beautiful things, even before that, when Mama was carrying me and used to look at paintings so I’d be artistic.” Honor stopped halfway down the stone stairs and sat abruptly near a slit of window. “If I sit just here, I can imagine that outside that window is some wonderfully romantic landscape like the South of France. I’ve been coming here for years to get away from Mama and my sisters. Where I could come and gossip with my best girlfriend Barbara back when she was still a human person with interests other than her dogfaced boyfriend.”

  Leslie leaned against the dark stone wall near the window, which had a yellow bulb behind the lattice, waiting for Honor to stop bubbling irrelevancies.

  “Mama never minds if I’m going to the Institute or the library. But if I’m going to a movie she wants to know which one and is it a good movie and why do I want to waste my time on trash and the ads sound suggestive and so on. The museum’s a free place where I’m allowed to go and escape.”

  Leslie shrugged. “I’ve never been in a real museum before.”

  Honor got up, dusting her pants. At the bottom of the stairs she craned to see her behind. “Did it leave a smudge? I think just because it’s a castle stairway it won’t be covered with good old Detroit dirt.”

  On the ground floor Leslie followed Honor into a cafe. The walls of the courtyard were brick and the architecture Romanesque, but the roof three stories up was a modern glass fantasy and the food came from a cafeteria line. By the time they were seated with orange juice and tea at a table, Leslie was annoyed. “Did you really want to talk to me? Or did you just want to see if I’d come when you called?”

  Honor cupped her chin in her palm, her big golden-brown eyes melting with remorse or a good imitation. “I’m dreadfully sorry for how I acted.… But you know I felt quite hurt.… Now I need your friendship. Did you come only to sit around acting aloof?”

  “You seem cheerful enough for both of us.”

  “I’m chattering. It’s a defense. Can’t you sense that?”

  Leslie sighed. “What’s up? I saw Bernie come to get you at George’s.”

  “I swear he did it to check up on me.… I scarcely know where to begin. Right after that dreadful week when you and I quarreled, Bernie told me he loved me. I said, of course, and I love you too. Even more than Cam, next to Mama. And of course Dad.”

  “And he said that wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.” Leslie’s voice rang out shrilly in the closed-in courtyard, louder than she had intended over the murmur of flirting couples and the muted clatter of dishes.

  “What he means isn’t clear.” Honor frowned at her bitten nails. “I must stop that, it’s an ugly habit.… He confuses me. Sometimes he seems to mean as a friend, a brother. And sometimes—you know—as my lover. It keeps shifting; Every time I think he may possibly, just possibly, mean he’s fallen in love with me, I think I’m wrong and I must have a dirty mind or something.… Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Not for an instant. I recognize Bernie’s touch at work.” She sat up straight. “Has anything happened between you?” That weasel, he was making love to Honor. As soon as she was off the scene. As soon as he’d got rid of her. As soon as he’d hopped out of her own bed—But don’t think about that. Bury it quick. Raw mistake.

  “Oh, dozens of scenes every week. My life is much more thrilling. But how can I tell if I’m imagining half of it? You don’t understand. Mama has a tremendous imagination and I know I inherited it. We’re terribly alike, Mama and I. In some ways.”

  Yeah, she imagines wasting diseases. “You’ll admit she exaggerates sometimes? About your being sick and things?”

  “Oh, you know Mama, she’s always worrying.… But when I was, oh, nine, ten, she got a notion that Dad was seeing another woman. She’s always trying to find out what he’s doing, he’s so secretive. It’s because she doesn’t want him throwing away money on wild inventions. But she overheard some conversation with one of his cronies about an Adeline.… He was staying out late at night, disappearing weekends—like he does half the time anyhow, you never know where he is. Finally she confessed to me what she thought.…”

  “Your mother told a nine-year-old?” But of course she’d always known too what was going on between her parents, even when her mother thought she was successfully lying about where her father was for two weeks.

  “Mama always confided in me.… Anyhow, we played detectives. Yes, we honest to God followed Dad.… Adeline turned out to be a stupid motorboat one of his friends had on Lake Saint Clair, and they were rebuilding the engine together.… I could be just as full of nonsense about Bernie.… I think Mama writes novels in her he
ad too.”

  “Has he … made love to you?”

  “Not yet.” Honor smiled as if she was quite proud of herself. “But I think he’s thinking about it.… Mama’s getting very suspicious. It’s such a drag, I feel like saying, But, Mama, he’s homosexual, you know. I’m disgustingly safe.”

  “But you don’t quite believe that.”

  “Oh, he’s been more open with me now that he doesn’t have you to confide in. I don’t believe he is anything, like some fate off an astrology chart. But he told me more of his experiences.… Besides, I’m discussing what I feel like saying to Mama.… It’s part of what confuses me, Leslie, about what’s happening!”

  “Why don’t you ask him what he has in mind?”

  “Leslie! What am I supposed to say? Voulez-vous accouchez avec moi? Really!… Leslie, what did you quarrel about?”

  “Thought you believed what he told you.”

  “If only you’d tell me your side! Don’t you think you owe that to me?”

  “I’ll think about it.” Leslie had no intention of doing so. “It’s not something I feel I can talk about just yet.”

  “Did you quarrel … about me?” Honor leaned forward, her lips a little parted.

  Leslie was startled. “About you? Why do you ask that?”