by Marge Piercy
“Well … Bernie said the strangest thing once.” Honor looked down into her lap. “When I told him I’d broken with you, after that awful Tuesday, he seemed glad at first. Then he started pacing and he said in a low nasty voice, I’m quoting him, that I’d be sorry and I’d come to love you.” A golden eye glinted from under lashes, watching her for a reaction. “Why did he say that?”
“I’m so lovable,” Leslie said. “Can’t think of any other reason.” Honor was flirting with her, she knew it. I must not be rigid, she thought, I must be open to her. Better me than Bernie, after all.
“So you’ll come over Monday, the way you used to?”
“This Monday I can’t. George and I have a meeting with the foundation people.… I’m eating supper with them. I don’t know how long it’ll run, but I’ll come over Monday night whenever I get away.”
Sue presented Leslie with a summery outfit, crushed natural cotton pants and a striped natural and brown top, from Greece. Sue said, “Oh, my sister Rosalyn bought it, but it’s miles too tight on her,” but Leslie could see it had never been worn, and the label was from a boutique in a nearby mall. She imagined George and Sue consulting about how to get her into something more acceptable to meet with the foundation people, and Sue concocting the story about her sister.
In the mirror at the Japanese restaurant on the first floor of a local hotel, Leslie looked herself over. She actually liked the way she looked in the loose light pants and the top with its vague suggestion of faded awning stripes. In fact, she looked forward to getting away from George and the two men and going straight to Honor’s in her new outfit. She had an excuse for arriving dressed up, because she was coming from the meeting.
At eight it was not yet dark; the night was mild and felt spacious. Almost, after the rather sumptuous dinner with teriyaki and saki and a plum liqueur afterwards, with her head a bit detached from her shoulders, a balloon on a string, almost she would have liked to hail a cab on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. But she resigned herself to a brisk walk and a couple of buses.
By the time she came down Honor’s street she was sober, but the night was soft and gentle enough to keep her mood good. It was a long lingering twilight, a night she could imagine sleeping outside with a lover. The air felt just the same temperature as her skin. It was neither warm nor cool but perfect and sensual. She wished she could be with Honor in some more pastoral setting, on a lake, on the screened-in porch of a lake cottage; there must be a hundred thousand such objects within two hours’ ride of here. The lake would look lighter than the shores, reflecting the pale gray of the sky that still retained a faint plum glow.… Car in the drive? In fact there was Bernie’s Mustang parked across the street, and in the drive was a ’71 Chevy she vaguely thought she had seen before, right there in that drive.
Damn Bernie. Damn Honor. What was he doing here when Honor knew she was coming? She felt like turning on her heel and leaving. She was furious. Yes, she would simply turn and walk off and leave Honor to her own devices, the little two-faced conniver. She was surprised by the rush of her own anger, ashamed; she must not yet be as sober as she had thought.
She stood undecided on the front walk and then she heard loud voices inside. “No!” Honor was wailing at the top of her lungs. “You don’t understand!”
A fight? She went forward hurriedly and climbed the rickety front steps, hopping over the broken one to bang on the bulging screen door perfunctorily.
“… think I find it pretty hard to understand! I think it’ll take some tall explaining,” said Mama Rogers’ very loud voice.
“Hello?” Leslie said. “I’m here!”
“Oh, Leslie! Come in!” Honor ran to the door and almost embraced her with relief. “Oh, Leslie.… How nice you look. You’re so dressed up!”
“Er, yes,” Bernie said. He was standing in the livingroom barefoot, wearing Honor’s lavender dressing gown, looking awkward with discomfort. “We were actually expecting her some time ago.”
“Oh were you?” Mrs. Rogers said. She was holding something to her face, an ice pack, and when she took it away to speak, her right cheek looked swollen. She wore a baby blue pants suit, and she was shining with anger. She stood very straight, her shoulders thrust back, springy with indignation, her face flushed, her eyes glittering. She looked ten years younger. “Do you always lie on my daughter’s bed in a dressing gown when you’re expecting company?”
“I explained about the bicycle accident. The construction site. I hadn’t expected a big puddle there.”
“And then you got off your bicycle, got in your car, and drove over here to take a bath. Of course. I understand completely.”
“Leslie, how come you’re so dressed up?” Honor asked ingenuously. “Where were you?”
She wants me to impress Mama with how respectable I am. Why not? Just so it doesn’t rub off on Bernadine in the bathrobe! She addressed herself directly to Mrs. Rogers. “I couldn’t tell exactly what time I’d get free. I was having dinner with my faculty adviser, Professor Sanderson, and two men from the Rockefeller Foundation. I’ll be working on a project that they’re financing, and I was having dinner with all of them near the University.”
“How fascinating,” Mama said, and turned back to Bernie. “I suggest you put your clothes on and go home.” Briskly she turned back to Honor. “Why don’t you get Leslie some lemonade?”
Honor backed reluctantly out of the livingroom, throwing a glance of appeal to Leslie. What was she supposed to do? And what had been happening? She glared after Bernie’s retreat into the bathroom. “Is something wrong?” she asked Mrs. Rogers. “Your face looks swollen.”
Mama Rogers snorted, still standing with the ice pack to her face. “When I was eating in the cafeteria, I felt this awful sensation, and then a piece of my crown broke right off. I almost swallowed it.”
“That sounds painful,” Leslie said, still standing also. She wouldn’t sit until told to. She did not want to leave, but she was not sure she was going to be asked to stay.
Bernie bounded back in with his clothes on. They did not look markedly muddy, although he had obviously tried to do what he could in that line. He opened his mouth to speak, but Mrs. Rogers cut him short. “Good night, Bernard. I’ll say good night to Honor for you. I know you have to be hurrying along, immediately.”
Bernie opened and shut his mouth and then fled, saying at the door, “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Rogers.… Really, I think you misunderstood.…”
“How stupid of me,” Mama said dryly. “Good night.”
Honor came dashing back in. “Where did Bernie go?” She had made up a pitcher of frozen lemonade, obediently.
“I sent him home. Sit down. Won’t you sit down too, Leslie? I’m sorry you came all this distance to walk into a family altercation. You might as well have a glass of lemonade before you go home too.”
“Thank you,” Leslie said humbly, glad of any delay. At least she wasn’t being kicked out with Bernie. And Bernie was gone. She felt an enormous relief. She had managed not to look at him, not to speak to him. But she felt a loose raw anger in her just pushed down. She looked now at Honor, asking with her eyes what had happened.
“Mama came home early because she hurt her tooth,” Honor said. “Does it hurt terribly, Mama dear? Did you take any aspirin?”
“Were you smoking marijuana too?” Mama asked icily, sitting down on the couch with a deep sigh of exasperation.
“Mama, I don’t know what you’re talking about? I’ve never smoked anything. I don’t care to. He was merely smoking a regular cigarette.”
“You’re not as good a liar as you imagine,” Mama said. “I have a nose. I caught Cam with that three times already, and you know it.”
“I didn’t know what he was smoking, and I think it was just plain old tobacco without a filter. I certainly wasn’t smoking anything.” Honor clasped and unclasped her hands and then forced herself to stop. She shook her hair back and tried to adopt a confiding manner. “Mama,
really, how could you be so rude to him? He lives in a roominghouse, he’s a student putting himself through college. He doesn’t have hot water where he lives.”
“Do you invite every young man you meet to come and take a bath at our house, alone with you?” Mama took down the ice bag and groaned. “I’m ashamed of you. You show no sense at all. There’s something absolutely out of control in a young high school girl entertaining a man older than herself alone in her house at night. Him with no clothes on except her own dressing gown. Her in a provocative dress.”
Honor was wearing the apple green dress with the deep V-neck. “But Mama, you made this dress for me. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not suitable for wearing in the house alone with a man. You know that. Why did you put it on?”
“Well, Leslie was coming, and she was going to be dressed up too.”
“I presume she had a reason, since she was coming from an important dinner.”
“Mama, Bernard’s my friend. He’s not going to … attack me. Really. I’m not ten years old. How could you throw him out of the house without consulting me? While I was in the kitchen making lemonade!”
“I asked him to leave and I don’t want him back. If you want to have him over when I’m here, that’s one thing. You can invite him to luncheon this weekend. But not otherwise. Do you hear me?”
Honor sobbed into her hands for a moment as if experimentally. Her mother did not even look at her but put the ice pack back against her face. Honor put down her hands and stared at her mother. “How can you be so angry at me? I didn’t do anything!”
“Oh?” Mama glared at her over the ice pack. “Perhaps I came home too soon?”
Leslie felt a strange grateful kinship to Mama Rogers, allies in their opposition to the slimy Bernie machinations. As if Mrs. Rogers sensed their bond, she turned suddenly to Leslie without bothering to remove the ice pack. “What do you think about the situation, Leslie?”
“Oh … I wasn’t here … I don’t really know Bernie that well, but I’m sure he’s not … dangerous.”
“I thought you were friends,” Mrs. Rogers said with sly curiosity, putting down the ice pack.
“No,” Leslie said shortly. “We’re not.”
“I thought you were,” Mrs. Rogers looked as if she would have liked to ask a great many more questions, but politeness restrained her. She glanced at her daughter again, her eyes narrowing. “You’re not to have him here again without me. Do you hear me, Honor?”
“Mama! Don’t you trust me?”
“Perhaps you trust yourself a bit too much!” Mrs. Rogers spoke quietly now, but her anger had not abated. Her eyes flicked over her daughter warily, with a certain disgust and almost a certain amusement. Leslie felt as if Mrs. Rogers was rapidly constructing a great many scenarios in her head about what might have happened, and liking none of them.
sixteen
The following Monday Leslie came to Honor’s in her old late afternoon time slot. They were operating in awkward carefully arranged shifts. Leslie was to leave before supper, Bernie to arrive at six for the early evening shift, and he was to clear off by nine-thirty to be out of harm’s way long before Mama got home. Leslie and Honor sat at the kitchen table about five-thirty. The evening was cool again but clear, in the fifties.
“Oh, I admit it looked wicked,” Honor said. “In point of fact, I had a ticklish feeling that something was in the air.… You know, Mama is really unfair to him. He has no hot water at all in that dreadful depressing insecticide-smelling roominghouse—”
“Oh, you’ve been there?”
“Only for a moment! But who would have expected her to get so upset? I’ve never made her that angry. Nothing I’ve been able to say has got around her yet. I’m sure it was her tooth hurting so much. I always been able to talk her around before.… What’s that?”
A key turned in the door and Mrs. Rogers walked in.
“Why, Mama, hello.” Honor sprang up. “Did your tooth start bothering you again?”
Mrs. Rogers kissed her on the cheek. “I had my hours changed. Isn’t that wonderful? Your dad’s not going to be tremendously pleased, but that’s the way it goes. You can’t please everyone, can you? I need to spend more time with my darling daughter.” Mrs. Rogers went to hang up her old black cloth coat, trimmed with fur that had long since lost its luster and most of its hair. “I’ll be working nine to five. We can eat supper together the way a family should. After all, soon my Honor will be going to college. I have to enjoy your company while I can, don’t I, darling? How are you, Leslie? We haven’t seen you since last Monday. Have we?”
“I’ve been working very hard,” Leslie said woodenly. “I’m going to have to get my degree work done faster than I expected.”
“Then will you go back to—Was it Frankfort? Lake Michigan anyhow. It must be beautiful there.”
“I’ll go wherever I can get a job.” With George. Whither thou goest.
“Mama, how does it happen you didn’t tell me you’d changed your hours?” Honor asked carefully. Her face looked pinched. She could not conceal her lack of pleasure.
“I wanted to be sure it was really going through. I didn’t want you to be disappointed if they couldn’t give me the day shift.… I have a surprise for you.” Mrs. Rogers clasped her handbag before her meaningfully.
“Oh, what’s that?” Honor asked dully.
“I got it on my lunch hour today. Heavens knows, I’m a bit overweight, how can it hurt me to miss lunch once in a while?” From her handbag she took a small box wrapped in white tissue paper.
“What is it? Honor took it, excited now. “Can I open it?”
“Certainly, darling. What else is it for?” Mrs. Rogers moved closer, standing at Honor’s elbow. “Do open it.”
It was a watch. “Oh, Mama! I can’t stand it! It’s beautiful. Oh, Leslie, look! How does it go on? What a darling bracelet! It’s a real bracelet too, not a cloddy band. Mama, it’s heavenly, it really is. It’s exactly what I wanted.”
“It’s a good watch. Don’t leave it on while you wash your hands. And don’t forget it on the wash basin. It’s a lady’s watch, Honor, its not meant to take a beating.”
“I’ll be ever so careful, Mama, truly I will! It’s exactly what I’ve dreamed about. Exactly.”
Hmmmm, Leslie thought, what a clever bribe. She felt sorry for Bernie and automatically she glanced out the livingroom window. It was about time for her to leave and she was about to say so when she saw his broken-backed Mustang parking across the street. Oh, shit, she thought, and moved right up against the window. He got out of the car and began to cross the street. It hurt to see him, it hurt. She felt a little dizzy, as if something was pressing hard on her forehead. He saw Mrs. Rogers’ old Chevy in the drive and slowed his steps, looking hard at the house. Leslie held up her hand in a stop sign.
Bernie waved back. Then he saw it was her and he stopped abruptly, scowling. Thinks I haven’t cleared out on time. She tried shaking her head.
“What’s wrong, Leslie?” Honor asked. “Isn’t it a beautiful watch?”
“It’s lovely, lovely.” Leslie jumped away from the window. “My goodness, it’s close to six. Isn’t it?”
“I can give you the exact time on my stunning seventeen-jewel timepiece. It is now six oh five exactly.” Honor was imitating an operator. Then she listened to herself and her eyes grew larger. “Oh.” Casually she drifted toward the front windows. Bernie stood across the street, leaning on his car and watching the house. Honor winced. She tried to make a concealed go-away wave as she turned back to the room. “Why don’t we invite Leslie to stay for supper? I’ll make supper for a special treat, Mama. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I don’t much feel like scrambled eggs tonight, and I’m sure Leslie, if she accepts your invitation, would want something more substantial.”
“Mama, I can do more than make scrambled eggs. You go change and relax and I’ll make a tunafish casserole. You’ll be surprised!”
“I wouldn’t mind the surprise at all.” Mrs. Rogers chuckled. “I’m weary enough. All right, I’ll change. My feet are killing me.”
As soon as Mama shut the bedroom door, Honor flew to the window. Bernie was slumped across the street staring at the house. Honor waved wildly, Go away. He waved back briskly. “What’s wrong with him?” Honor asked. “Standing there like a prospective burglar casing our house. Like a peeping tom! Leslie, go out and tell him to go away.”
“No.” Leslie shook her head. “I don’t want to speak to him. I won’t run errands to him for you.”
“Leslie!” Honor pulled the blinds shut. “Let him stare at a blank wall then. What’s wrong with him?” She got busy in the kitchen as Mama came back and dropped on the couch with a sigh. She was wearing a flowered housedress and old blue mules. “Maybe I’ll watch the evening news,” she said, flicking on the television. Then she frowned. “Honor, why did you shut the blinds? It isn’t even dark yet.”
“Oh, let it be. It’s cozier this way.” Honor came quickly back to the livingroom carrying a stalk of celery. “Who wants everyone looking in from the street?”
“Really, if you’re that nervous, I don’t know how you stood it alone in the evenings. It’s high time I changed my hours.”
Leslie did not want to encounter Bernie, but she had work to do and she did not want to eat what she saw Honor putting together with a self-important frown. It did not look edible to her—cornflakes and tunafish and celery and pimientos and mayonnaise about to be baked in the oven. She decided to take a chance on Bernie. When she walked out, he was sitting in his car. He had the radio turned to a rock station and he was sitting in the driver’s seat slumped over the wheel glowering, drumming his fingers on the wheel. She grimaced and walked on, staying on her side of the street.
Then she stopped. It really was absurd. It was still broad daylight at six-thirty and Mama might decide to put the blinds back up at any moment. She could not help seeing Bernie—or hearing him. Honor would be in more trouble.