Small Changes

by Marge Piercy

  Vi started bellowing from halfway up the stairs. “Food’s on!”

  Phil seemed reluctant to get off the bed but she nudged him. It was important she get some food into him before he went off to Finnegan’s. He never ate enough for the booze he swilled on the job. “Bartenders are all bottle freaks,” he said, hand in the small of her back as they sauntered down. “If you don’t guzzle, the smell turns you green. Your throat dries out, and who wants to stand there setting a bad example with water?”

  Eliot had built the table that stood in the living room, massive and splintery like a picnic table with rough wooden benches. Lately the top had finally got sanded and painted, in the likeness of a large dollar bill with George Washington winking and giving the V sign. Supper was fatty hamburgers, potatoes mashed with the skins left on, and head lettuce cut up with an underripe tomato passing as salad. They ate fast, shouting over the wan little TV with the evening news on. Dessert was a tray of brownies. Desserts were the best part of the meal because everybody in this house had a terrible sweet tooth, and the only part of the meal anybody wanted to put effort into, the only part the girls got praised for, was sweets.

  The pipe went around while they were still at the table and Phil got too involved in a shouting argument about some football player to go back upstairs with her in any hurry. Instead she trailed Dorine into the kitchen, helped to clear, and took up a towel. She wouldn’t let herself be pressed into kitchen service often: it was important to her to refuse that role, and by and large she got away with it. After all she did not live there. But she didn’t like to see Vi and Dorine stuck with everything, and so she helped out sometimes, especially when there was a good chance to talk. This fall seven people lived in the house, five men and two women. Vi was a couple with Rick and they shared a room. Dorine had been a couple with John, but he had broken up with her. Now he was seeing a girl who slept over occasionally.

  Dorine had had to move out of his room, but she could not move out of the house. She could not afford a place alone. What she had done was to move the dining table into the living room and seal off the archway to the dining room with a rug. The kitchen connected with the living room directly so there was no problem serving and eating. The ex-dining room was noisy and Dorine could not go to sleep till everyone else in the house decided to go upstairs, but she settled for that just as she settled for being main cook and main dishwasher and main maid. She was not happy in the house. Vi was somewhat contemptuous of her, because she had no man and tended to be available.

  “I’m the house whore,” Dorine said to Miriam bitterly. “Sex on demand. I wish I could live with you.”

  “I wish there was room.” Though Miriam did not want a roommate, she determined to keep an eye out for Dorine and see if she couldn’t do better for her. One man who cared would be an immense improvement on three who didn’t (Rick having Vi, and John no longer interested). Phil was little better to her than the others. Coming in drunk and late, he might not bother to make it any farther than her bed, conveniently near the entrance. He would bring his groans and lamentations to her and she would wash him and undress him and tuck him in.

  Dorine had dropped out of school because she could not relate to what she was supposed to be learning in psychology, her major. She was making an inadequate living in the typing pool of a local company. Everybody made fun of her because she had to wear dresses and nylons. The men were always putting her down for how she had to dress to go to work, as if she were too bourgeois to understand the relaxed way to dress.

  Rick was a printer in a community shop where nobody cared what he wore or how long his hair was. Terry made some money performing, gave guitar lessons on a deal with a music shop, sometimes he made macramé belts and vests to sell on consignments in a shop on Brattle Street and part of the year he drove a truck for an organic food store. He always had four things going and between them he made it, day to day. Half the calls that came to the phone in the hall were for him, yet he hated to answer it. He was superstitious. He claimed Miriam was lucky for him and it was worth an extra twenty when she picked up the receiver.

  John was still on unemployment from getting fired. Back when things were warmer and looser in the streets, he had used to deal grass and acid. But his sources had dried up and he did not like pushing hard drugs. He had found a straight job in an office. He had been fired, he was not sure why: so many people there were let go. While he was trying to get unemployment, he started dealing again. But feeling uneasy about ups and down and out of touch, he had been busted selling to a nark almost right off. Now he was waiting for his case to come up. Vi was the only one still in college, at Tufts. Eliot made some money doing carpentry, making furniture, putting up shelves and cabinets for people. He also got a small pension because his foot had been blown off in Vietnam. Dorine said he was the nicest to her now that John hated her—except for Phil sometimes—but his niceness was passive.

  “I figured out what it is,” Dorine said softly to Miriam, scrubbing the pot in which the potatoes had cooked. “It’s because he doesn’t feel he’s a whole lot better than me. Because he’s into a cripple thing. I try to make him feel good about himself, but I can tell that, coming from me, it doesn’t mean much to him.”

  “You let them con you into accepting their evaluation. They use you and push you around and then, so they won’t feel guilty, they say that’s all you are.”

  “What am I?” Dorine shrugged.

  “You’re kind. You pay attention to others. You’re sensitive and good-natured. You’re smart. You have an attractive face and a beautiful body … Dorine!” Miriam put down the towel and turned the smaller woman to face her. “Ever thought of posing?”

  “What do you mean? Sex pictures?” Dorine wrinkled her nose.

  “No. Figure drawing for a class or a painter. I used to do that in New York to make money. I have a friend who’s looking for a model. I’d pose for him but he’s Jackson’s roommate.”

  “You used to be Jackson’s old lady, didn’t you?”

  “Last year. Anyhow, I just can’t go over there and pose for Lennie and he says the light in my apartment is lousy.”

  “I don’t know Lennie. Are you into something with him?”

  “No! Jackson’s roommate? That would be a bummer. But he’s nice. I mean, if he weren’t living there I might be interested.” Actually she could not imagine being sexually interested in Lennie, thin sad rabbinical Lennie from Crown Heights in Brooklyn. She liked him as a cousin. She wanted him to get off the death trip he was wedded to, the dead blond he kept painting. Maybe he would love Dorine. She was pretty sure Dorine would love him. That might pull Dorine out of the house whore package, and even if it didn’t work out all the way, it would start her off fresh. “Listen, would you do it? He’s kind of depressed and lonely.”

  “You sending me over there to pose for him or fuck him?”

  “Dorine, I promise you, it’s you who’ll make a pass at him. Trust me. If you don’t like him, what’s an afternoon? If you like it, maybe I could find you a job posing, and you can kiss off the typing pool.”

  “That I wouldn’t cry about, Miriam, believe me. Okay, set it up. Any evening.”

  “Has to be in the daytime, honey. Light! Saturday or Sunday?”

  “Either one. I expect a big weekend with my laundry, and I should try to clean up this pigpen, but that’s it.”

  “One thing. I know this sounds ridiculous. But you have to dial the number. If Lennie answers, I’ll take the phone and talk to him, but if Jackson answers, you have to ask for Lennie.”

  “Miriam!” Dorine made her eyes wide. “After all this time! You had it bad for him.”

  “Every time I run into him, it’s like nothing has healed. It hurts all over again.”

  “It’s the same way with John,” Dorine whispered. “When I know she’s in there with him, I can’t stay in the house. Sometimes I go over to Sally’s, but if her old man’s there, he doesn’t want me around.” Idly she picked at
a stain on the drainboard. “Sometimes I get to staring at his new girl and I keep wondering how he could love me and then not. Is there something that gets used up?”

  After the phone call to Lennie, Miriam strolled back to the living room. Rick and Terry were playing bluegrass with Sally’s old man, who was visiting, and Vi was singing with them. Sally, a lanky redhead from Tennessee, was sitting on the floor out of the way. Eliot was nodding out in the corner, John had left, and Phil was sitting sideways across the old armchair with his long legs stuck out. When he saw her he made an impatient high sign and they both slipped out and up the stairs.

  If Dorine did get involved with Lennie, if Dorine moved in with Lennie, if, if, if—she was such a luftmensch. But suppose. Then she would have a friend there, where she could no longer go. She despised herself for wanting so strongly to know what was happening with Jackson; had he another woman, was he happy without her? Phil saw little of him and they exchanged no confidences when they did meet. Dorine would understand her weakness.

  If Dorine did move out, the pressure would mount on her to move in. Everyone seemed to think it would be fun to have her in the house. She loved to have Phil nearby and to come over and hang out. But she had a strong feeling that the camaraderie would disappear if she were actually living here. She could accept each of the men in his roles and egotisms and passions and prejudices, so long as there was that necessary space. Any closer, and there would be first friction and then conflict. She had no intention of crossing the street to live.

  Upstairs Phil showed her a song he was working on, played it through roughly on his pawnshop guitar.

  GOING THROUGH CHANGES

  You get bigger

  and I get smaller.

  I get shorter

  while you get taller.

  Oh baby, oh mama, where does it end?

  What did I spend?

  Baby, now I’m going down,

  nice and easy, nice and slow …

  “Sometimes I think you hate me!”

  “It’s just a poem, pigeon. You science types are so naïve.”

  “A poem you wrote.”

  You get stronger

  while I get weaker.

  Oh baby, oh mama, how far am I gonna bend?

  Is it the end?

  Once I had a name, I don’t remember.

  Every month is cold December

  yet you wear a suntan.

  When I ask, you say you can …

  She got up and began to pace and he paused, his hand on the strings. “Come on, pigeon, we’ve fucked each other over a few times. It doesn’t go away. Better I should love you in bed and put the anger in a song. Think you’d like it better if I knocked you around the room?”

  “I think things are good between us, and then the poison comes out!” she held her head.

  “Come on, what harm does a song do? I pay my dues.”

  “Words, words, you’re so big on them! All right, go ahead. I can’t stop you!”

  “Why should you want to? They’re my only way out of here, don’t you see that?”

  Sighing, she sat down on the bed. “I see that. I’m glad people like them and I hope that macher Hal does record your songs. But I wish you’d write nasties about somebody else for a change. I get tired of being the villain. Every man around here thinks I’m an absolute bitch to you.”

  “Baby, if you knew how little I care what anybody thinks. If I go through changes out loud, it suits me. Besides, it’s made you a legend.”

  “Oh, great. I really dig that.”

  Phil grinned. “I think you do. You take care to live up to it.”

  Playing with appearances was a pastime he had taught her, starting that first summer in New York when they had played together in the streets and boutiques. Phil, always conscious of his audience, had taught her that consciousness. Still she was always first tuned to him when they played, for fear the game would turn into a destructive pavane, into a sudden catastrophe. Every time they went into public together, whether that meant simply downstairs into the living room on a hectic night or to a party or a concert or into the streets, she must always be tuned to that interaction with Phil. Yes, she was a scandal: they were both figures in their microcosm. Often people thought they knew her before they met her, and often she took pleasure in confirming their terrible expectations. Her public self at bad parties, at moments when she found herself on display, was not her but a mask. But sometimes the game threatened to trap her and she felt caught out there, exposed and bare and forced to act ever more provocative and extreme because she did not know how to slow down the pressure. Then she felt her life with Phil had turned her into a dancing poodle-woman that people expected to entertain them. Sometimes a sudden sense of shameful exposure would strike her raw. Then if she could dance she could escape it, if she could get close to Phil it would help, but if he were off from her, unreachable, then sometimes she did bad things: she ended up with men she had resolved to avoid, in just the ugly scene she had anticipated.

  Bitterly his song said she had grown bigger and he had grown smaller. But she felt he vanished. Sometimes she lay chained to a skeleton. Sometimes he left her nothing, nothing at all except her noisy life clattering around her and herself crouching in the midst of it wondering why. Wondering who was she, this Miriam? What did all these people want from her, but to grab a piece and run off with it and gobble it down?

  “Phil? Phil!” She started to tell him of the panic sticking through her chest like a long needle when, rising on her elbow, she saw the time. “Phil, you’re late to work.”

  She was coming to know a secretary who worked at Tech Square, Beth, young and tiny. Their appearance together amused her; she told Beth they were Mutt and Jeff. While she was waiting for a free terminal, to go on the computer with her group’s work, she would talk with Beth. At first Beth mainly tickled her—such a combination of intensity and ignorance, shyness and clarity—but quickly she began to like her. Above all she appreciated that Beth responded to her warmly and openly and seemed to admire her. Admiration from a woman was more of a gift than from a man: men never admired her so simply. They desired, they suppressed desire and resented, they acknowledged desire but felt unwilling to respond, so condescended. Phil came closer to liking her than any man she knew, and they had woven together such a complicated pattern, who knew any more what to call it?

  Once while she was changing at Tech Square to go out afterward with a bass player she had met through Rick, Beth stood and watched her in the women’s lounge.

  “Miriam, what does it feel like to be beautiful? I mean it. Does it feel good?”

  Miriam looked Beth in the eyes, a little threatened. She never knew what to do when other women began to be jealous. But Beth was really asking. “It feels better than being ugly. I like the attention.”

  “If I was a painter, you’re what I’d paint for a beautiful woman.”

  “But once I wasn’t, and someday again I won’t be. And I’ll still be me, and it will be like it was when I was fifteen and ugly and I’ll still want people to admire me and want me, and they won’t. Think of all the beautiful black women born in white cities before there was a black movement to let them see their faces in the mirror. Other people give you beauty and take it away. It’s being given a ticket for a while to get away with what you want to do, to get the things you want.”

  “I want to be beautiful but not in a magazine way, not in a sexy way. I mean I want to like myself. I want to feel that I’m what I want to be.”

  “I think I am what I want to be.”

  “But you’re always flirting, always playing games with people, always acting.”

  “That’s just the social thing—how I act with men.”

  “I don’t want to be that way with anybody,” Beth said fiercely. Then she repeated it, maybe as much for herself as for Miriam.

  Off she went to Rochester with Ryan and Owasa and Woods and Manganaro of her group. The meeting was mainly for biochemists, but there wa
s a section on applications of computers and they were giving a paper on their work. She went partly because her name was on the paper and partly because she’d gone to only a few scientific meetings and still found them exciting. Because they would all be staying in a house that had been turned over to the conference and because she would be driving there with Owasa and Woods, it would cost little for what would be almost a vacation. She had never been in Rochester. Every time she got to visit someplace new, that was one more thing checked off the list of what she had never done, a small but measurable accomplishment. At the very least she would get to some parties, she would eat out, she would get to meet a lot of men and be amused.

  Owasa and Ryan and Manganaro were all married, and Woods was friendly but gay; so she had simply omitted them from her calculations of pleasures to be enjoyed. Actually the only one she liked was Woods. Owasa she had respect for, he was very good, very fast. He had a faculty appointment already. Manganaro was plodding and out of his depth and bigoted and vain. He was handsome and left her unmoved. He never finished anything properly. Ryan was touchy but quick and always looking for an angle. When she had to instruct him about something—after all, she knew her side of the project, that was why she was working with them—he would begin to grind his teeth. She found that boring. Otherwise he was satisfactory company.

  But Ryan had other ideas about his vacation as she found out the second night when there was a party in their quarters. She realized vaguely that he kept handing her drinks. He was always at her elbow with another cocktail. She was not used to cocktails, not used to anything but California wine and beer. She had no idea how much she was drinking except that she always had a glass in her hand. She was laughing too much, she was talking too loudly. No one in this group danced, they just stood and went ya-ta-ta-ta to each other. She felt as if Ryan were showing her off, this strange little man was suddenly pushing on her in some way she could not maneuver around. She was uncomfortable and she drank more, trying to regain her equilibrium. After a point the evening ran quickly downhill, everything seemed to tilt and run together. He was always at her elbow and everything else was up by the ceiling, swirling away. Everything kept receding from her. She was lying on a bed. Ryan was pawing at her. Pushing him away, she kept laughing. There seemed to be no one else around.