The High Cost of Living

by Marge Piercy

  Honor smiled, her lips pulling down. “I know. You’re much too docile. I’m looking for a man who’ll do what you only talk about.” She gave him a sly look and continued at once. “I mean a man who’ll slap my face.”

  “Nonsense,” Leslie said. “If someone really slapped your face, you’d be furious.”

  “You judge by your own standards, Leslie, because you need to feel in control. I’m strong in a different way. I’m only interested in a man until I find out whether he’s pushable. Pushable—that’s a good word.”

  Honor was torturing Bernie in some way Leslie could not grasp. She could only feel the sense of torture. Bernie said angrily, “You picked that up from Paul. ‘Pushable—that’s a good word.’ You have his tone down pat. Did you practice it?”

  “How can you compare me to that old flop even you weren’t attracted to! Really, when I met him I was too easily dazzled—by him and by you.”

  Bernie recovered himself. He lit a joint, he strolled to the window and back with exaggerated ease. “You know, Les, old trooper, you didn’t use half the ammo you had. Bet you didn’t tell Honor I tried to rape you?”

  Honor gasped. “What is this? You never said a word.”

  “Bernie apologized afterward,” Leslie said limply.

  Bernie started to giggle. He laughed too hard, sputtering smoke.

  “Would you have forgiven him if he had succeeded?” Honor folded her arms.

  Bernie stopped laughing. “No, she wouldn’t have. Besides, she punched me in the belly. She’s not pushable, Honor.”

  “Oh, me and Ann-Marie?” Leslie said sideways, only to him. “My model Ann-Marie?”

  “How could you keep that back, Leslie? When did it happen? You must have thought it was very funny when I confessed I had let Bernie … kiss me.”

  “I wasn’t amused, actually.”

  “I seem to have been the subject of many busy hours retelling juicy scenes. What fun.” Bernie cut himself a big piece of cake.

  “More fun than that dull session in your room with you screeching at me and hounding me out of my mind.” Honor screwed up her nose in disgust. “You practically ripped my clothes off. And then nothing! After all that build-up. All that carrying on about how you love me and you just have to. That seduction was a big nothing!”

  “Wasn’t it?” Bernie was eating cake. “For both of us, I mean. You lying there like an overstuffed pillow expecting to have wonders performed on you.”

  They glared at each other. Leslie felt horrible, she felt mangled. They had tried to make love. She did not want it to happen, she did not want it to have happened. It was not jealousy, it was pure pain. They had mangled something between them and she was at fault, somehow she was at fault.

  “We’re embarrassing Leslie,” Bernie lilted. “She doesn’t want to know.”

  “What is there to know? Nothing happened.” Honor looked for a moment as if she would cry. “Nothing at all. Just nothing! After all that carrying on, you wouldn’t do it. You couldn’t! As if I’m not pretty enough, not good enough. Something’s wrong with you, that’s what’s wrong!”

  I mustn’t let him tell her, I mustn’t, she thought. Fast into the breach. What’s a breach? She felt as if her head were flying apart from the inside. “We were friends,” she said suddenly. “Isn’t there something left?”

  “Wash your mouth out.” Bernie gripped her arm hard. Then he let go as if he had been burned. The painful grip of his fingers remained.

  “After what we’ve said, do you think he and I could sit down and drink tea?”

  “Why not? It’s only words!” Leslie said desperately. “Words don’t change anything.”

  “Don’t they?” Bernie laughed bitterly. “There’s no difference between saying I love you and saying I hate you?”

  “I have only one thing left to say to you, Bernie.” Honor picked up her purse and went to the mirror over the bathroom sink to comb her hair. With her back to the room she said, “Goodbye. I know you’ll make sure we never meet again.” Her eyes were expressionless in the mirror, her teeth slightly clenched as she drew the comb slowly through the long lustrous hair.

  “Sure. I got nothing left to gamble with, so I’ll pick up my bod and go home—wherever that is. Bye-bye.” Looking straight ahead, he walked out, still carrying a piece of the cake. Leslie heard his steps cascading down. It was over so quickly her eyes remained on the space he had occupied in front of the refrigerator and she stood with the awkward bridled feeling of having been about to speak and having lost the occasion.

  Honor snapped her purse shut. “Oh me, oh my, that was awful, wasn’t it? Now cut me a little piece of that cake. I just couldn’t eat with him here.” But Honor nibbled only half. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t feel like enjoying it.”

  “He left so quickly.”

  “He knew it was blown. Do you think he’ll leave me alone now?”

  “I think he will.”

  “Leslie, look outside. Make sure he isn’t hanging around in the street.”

  She looked out obediently. “I don’t see him. What would he be waiting for?”

  “If you’d gone through these past weeks, you wouldn’t ask. Is it really over? I’d better run.” Honor stood up, rather slowly, and looked around as if she had forgotten something. “Oh, my books.”

  “Yeah.… What did you get?”

  “Never mind. I’m late.”

  “Oh, where are you going?” She had thought Honor might stay. But she didn’t really care. She felt listless, exhausted.

  Honor paused in the doorway. “I’m almost scared to go down. I just want it over and done with! I’ll see you Leslie, soon.” Then she screamed. “Oh, look what he did!”

  He had smeared the chocolate cake all over the wall. Leslie got a rag and sponged it off as well as she could, but the stain remained. Then she sat down on her mattress, her knees folding stiffly. She felt obsessed by a sense of cheated anticipation. All had gone off as it must that afternoon, and the struggle was over. But something she could not define had not happened.

  nineteen

  Finals were over, the streets sizzling all day. Night was a lid clamped on a boiling pot. Leslie kept hearing gunshots. She kept trying to persuade herself she was hearing firecrackers, but she had grown up in hunting country. Half the city must be at war. Yet the police had never looked more sinister to her, cruising by armored, as if from a different entirely mechanical planet. She was sweating in her tee shirt and working on interminable computer runoff, trying to catch up on the project work she owed George. When she discovered she was missing a whole file she needed to proceed, she felt a mixture of dread and pleasure. Her room was so hot that to walk outside would be a relief; yet walking on the streets at night was popularly supposed suicidal. Not even the men she knew used these streets where a predominantly white army of occupation fought it out with a predominantly Black population in a rotting network everyone with money had fled decades before.

  She had to walk to George’s office to pick up the file, or give up for the evening. She was behind, she owed him two weeks’ work, and it was too hot to do anything pleasant. It was her own stupidity she must blame. It wasn’t that the hour was late: nine Friday night. She had to go and that was that.

  When she arrived a light was on in George’s office, the inner office. She was startled and afraid. Burglars? But who would steal what from George? She felt like slipping away leaving the mystery to solve itself, but she forced herself to knock. It could be a cleaning lady. There was a longish silence and then George asked in a loud hostile voice. “Who is it?”

  “Leslie. Just picking up a file I forgot.”

  Conversation inside, a light female voice consulting. Oh, shit, she’d walked into it. But why on earth was he meeting his girlfriends in his office? She’d never known him to do that.

  “I’m leaving now,” she called and started out. The inner door opened.

  “Hold on,” George called. “Just a moment.
Come on in.”

  Reluctantly she crossed the outer office to the inner. He had installed a couch recently on which Honor was sitting, brushing her silky hair. “Hi, Leslie. I’m supposed to be watching a play Cam’s in. Fortunately I went to rehearsals.”

  “Foresight, that’s what I like. Smart cookie. Listen, Leslie, could you walk Honor over to the play? Then I can take off. I’m running a little late. She can slip into her seat and Cam will take her home afterward and everything will be fine and cool and nice.”

  “Sure,” Leslie said. Her face was numb with novocaine. She could not smile back at them. Her face would not work. It felt as if pain and anger were braided with spikes into her gut. She wanted to say, I’m a woman too. Why am I supposed to walk her around? And if you think lesbians don’t get raped, you’re crazy. But she could not help being aware that had nothing to do with her anger. Honor with George. No! She was very angry, and she had no right to be. She wanted to say to Honor that now she knew why she had been willing to get rid of Bernie suddenly, to let him go, to send him away. Yes, he had got in the way at last. Damn them both. Damn them.

  George had his briefcase packed. He seemed not to want to walk out with them but to send them ahead. Leslie tucked the file she had come for under her arm and walked with Honor to the elevator. As soon as the doors wobbled shut, Honor burst into an aria of self-congratulation. “Aren’t you going to ask me millions of questions? Aren’t you surprised? I was going to tell you soon as I got the chance.”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  “The ‘it’ would need definition.” Honor tossed her hair back, smoothing her muslin dress. “I’d say in some measure from the first time we met in front of the fireplace in that gloomy house. I always knew a real attraction would be just like that: immediate, overwhelming, unmistakable. Like a thunderclap.”

  “George is into the thunderclap business,” Leslie mumbled. They crossed the lobby, where a security guard sat reading a newspaper, looking up to eye Honor’s behind long and carefully.

  “Oh, he’s certainly experienced. I was right about that too. You see, Leslie, I did know what I was looking for in a man.… Things really got going the week Bernie broke my watch. I was trying to find you. You weren’t home, so I went to the University. Neither you or Cam was around, but there was George.… I could tell he was waiting for me, looking for me, just the way I’d been looking for him. It was so immediate, Leslie. From the time our gazes crossed that day I knew something was happening at last! He called me into his office and he shut the door, he wasn’t hesitant at all, he had that wicked grin on his face.”

  “He’s always looking, you’re right about that.”

  “Leslie! You’re jealous. How disappointing. I know he’s dreadfully attractive and it must be hell to work with him. I’m sure I couldn’t. Besides we have such different relationships with him.”

  “Damn right. You’re in the relationship of being exploited.”

  Honor swished her hair in annoyance. “Leslie, you’re being absurd. I know what I’m doing. Just what I always said I would. And he’s crazy about me. He’s told me he loves me. I’m not a fool. I’m still going to college in the fall. I’ll go to Ann Arbor and it’ll be even easier to see him than it is living at home. Ann Arbor’s only half an hour from his house. I’m patient. I only regret I didn’t have the courage of my instincts all along. I’m ashamed I ever let Bernie touch me, I’m really ashamed. He isn’t a man. It’s not as if I expect George to leave his wife tomorrow, after all—”

  “You asshole!” Leslie grabbed Honor by the arm and then she slapped her. Immediately she was horrified. She did not slap hard. She pulled the punch as she swung so that as the hand landed she was only tapping the cheek; but the will, the wish, the anger were there, ominous to her.

  “Oh!” Honor stopped short. Her hand went to her face. She stared at Leslie and then she began to weep.

  “I’m sorry. Forgive me, I’m terribly sorry. Look, I’m worried about you. I know George.”

  “No you don’t! How could you? You’re only his employee.”

  “Ah, poor lamb, I do know him. And so will you. I’m sorry I hit you, Honor, I had no right. You’re correct saying I’m jealous, but not of George. That academic fucker with a mustache and a rich wife.”

  “She bought him, didn’t she? Ten years ago he was a handsome dashing young radical, just the sort of thing a rich girl needs to make her life complete. I see more than you think I do. I see he’s trapped in a life that frustrates him, with a rich redneck of a wife like a millstone around his neck. I see that you hate me!”

  “Honor!” Gently she touched the girl’s face. Honor turned away. “I’m sorry I hit you. Say you forgive me.”

  “I could say it, but it wouldn’t mean I did.” Honor felt her cheek again. “You’re right, I mean you were right when you said the time we had that awful scene with Bernie that I wouldn’t really like having my face slapped. It isn’t anything like my fantasy.”

  “Well, one more fantasy down the drain.” She felt as if moment by moment, slow step by step, she was staving off a sleetstorm of images. Maybe she only wanted to believe George was using Honor for a quick affair. This time he could be in love. He seemed to be breaking his own rules: Never in the office, not on weekends, reserved for family. Maybe he was madly in love. After all, she loved Honor; why shouldn’t he? Who wouldn’t prefer Honor to Sue, when you came down to it? He’d have to be crazy not to. “There’s the theater.… Does Cam know about George?”

  “Are you serious? I can’t trust her. She’d get excited and flap around terrified about Mama. She wouldn’t see how much in control I am. I said I wanted to sit at the back to watch the audience. What reason would she ever have to suspect I met George in the lobby ten minutes after the play started?” Honor laughed, and Leslie knew she was forgiven. On shaky ground. Honor needed a confidant. She needed someone to listen to her talk about her romance. “Really, Leslie, I feel like a heroine in a spy movie, clever and mature and wonderfully cool. It’s fun. I always knew life could be like this, if I had half a chance!” Honor slipped into the theater and Leslie set off at a brisk march for her apartment, the file still clutched under her arm. If I ever got drunk, it would be tonight, she thought, their bodies crushed together in her mind. She felt ill. Obscene, that couch in his office! She would never sit on it as long as she lived. Why not get drunk? Always as she entered or left her room, she passed that chocolate stain, suggestive as old blood on the wall of the stairwell.

  She bought a bottle of red wine, random red she thought, and set out to drink it lying on the mattress. She waited for it to blot her mind but nothing happened. She did not feel drunk. After she had consumed half the bottle, she trotted into the bathroom and suddenly threw it up and felt better. Then she lay on the mattress trying not to think. She kept seeing them together, George on Honor. She felt battered.

  Finally she must have dozed, because she woke from a dream with no sense whether she had been asleep a minute or an hour. Bernie was lying naked in the cultivated earth of a flower bed, a bed of day lilies. Their long grassy leaves bent over him and the orange trumpets nodded above him. She was leaning toward him. Was he asleep or dead? He was beautiful lying there on the brown loamy earth with the orange bells tolling over him and pollen smeared on his chest. She bent closer to him, filled with tenderness that rent her, and when she touched him she woke.

  She got up slowly, kneading the muscles of her abdomen which protested having vomited. She stood at the window looking out on the fire escape and the flat asphalt roof and the skyshine beyond, the neon sign blinking on and off in magenta and green. She had to do it. She had to. Pain and love braided irrational and spiky through her. She had to. She dialed his number. She hung up, terrified at what she was doing. But pain freed her, jealousy freed her, everything was tearing loose as if in a storm and floating free. She dialed his number a second time and this time she did not hang up.

  “Who?”

&n
bsp; “Bernie Guizot.”

  “Oh, Bernie. He gone.”

  “Gone? Oh, he’s out. I’ll call back later.” It must be late now. “Tomorrow. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “He move out. Gone to California hitchhiking with his thumb stuck out. You a friend of his?”

  Leslie had trouble answering. Finally she said, “Yes.”

  “Well, he left a lot of books and school stuff here. He says he don’t need it where he going. He done with school, I guess, but it seems like a real waste to me. I could give it to the Goodwill, but if you a friend of his, if you want any of it, you can come on over and get it. He paid up to the end of the month, so I didn’t clear out his room yet, if you want any of that stuff for school. You a student too?”

  She put down the phone, resonating in all her nerves, ringing to her finger ends. Gone. Lost. She had the same scrambled sense of being bottled up, of unfinished business, of connections hanging loose she had had ten days before when Bernie had turned and left the room, the building, their lives. He was crazy, he was a liar, he was devious and desperate and emotionally violent, but they were connected and now the tie was roughly cut. She was bleeding into the air. He had given up on respectability, on academia, on getting ahead, on clambering into the college-educated working class—the degree-bearing home-loving regularly paid medically insured so-called middle class. He was gone, back on the road, on the streets. He had been straight for almost two years and what had it got him? There was plenty of room at the bottom.

  It was George’s last Thursday night, for he took a summer vacation from them. Although she wasn’t feeling social and dreaded standing around and making conversation, she looked forward to getting out of the city, to sprinklers turning on lush lawns in Farmington Hills, where George lived. Green velvet in the twilight. The night hummed electrically. She had done well in her classes, top notch, and in celebration and in recompense for what she would not think about, for what she was blocking from her mind daily to function, to go on working with George, she had given in to herself and she had done it; she had bought a small red bike, a Honda, from a departing student. A little beauty.