by Marge Piercy
“Jill, I try. I think Milt should carry the ball for a while. He says he’s got his own family. I say I’ll never get a family at this rate. I’ll never even get laid.”
I laugh. “Well, if you stop going to Detroit every weekend, that should be easy enough around here.”
He changes the subject. “Dick told me Donaldson called a PAF meeting for next Thursday. It won’t seem like the same old organization without Alberta. By the way, have you heard from her?”
“She passed her bar exam.” The pizza is gone. We both poke for crumbs. “I had a bit of a crush on her too, Howie, but it was equally hopeless for both of us, frankly.”
Some men when they are angry lower their heads as if to charge. Others throw their heads back and glare down their noses at you. A few, like Howie, turn to stone. “I do not think,” he says slowly, “that misadventures with a couple of idiots make you an expert on men and women. Thinking they do gets you in more trouble than if you simply admitted to yourself a couple of accidents don’t make anyone fit to teach driving training courses.”
“Pardon me for surviving. Of course it’s all wonderfully easy for those born lucky. Or is it only born male? I’ll give you no more advice at all. Fall down your own flights of steps.” Like Donna. I am viewed by everyone as a complete failure in love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
OF THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE
THE SURFACE WITH Stephanie is hectic. She rushes in with skirts flying and tosses her clothes in the general direction of her bunk. “Five minutes to get ready,” she shouts, taking whatever’s at hand, hers or mine, bracelets jangling and petticoat askew. She hums as she hikes up her bra an extra inch, rubs a palmful of perfume into her bronze hair and clatters tinkling downstairs shouting back instructions about what to tell various men if they call. For some time Roger Ardis has prevailed in these messages and in person.
Tonight, Thursday, she curls in the rocker wrapped in a screaming pink Mexican shawl. She loves bright exotic things, Indian bangles, Moroccan blouses, Guatemalan embroideries. Unlike Donna, she will not try to look like Princess Grace or Marilyn Monroe, but has opted out of that game altogether. Of course in the late sixties when Stephanie’s choices became mass fashion, she knew everything about such clothes and started her shop. “Roger says he’ll get a divorce as soon as Dorothy agrees. Besides, he’s amusing.” She clasps her hands behind her head with a savoring smile. “He’s giving a party Saturday. Naturally you’re invited.”
“Thanks, but I hate parties and I have work to do.”
She stretches, sauntering to the window. Watching her own reflection on the dark pane she plays with the cord on the halfway shade. “I’m a trifle nervous. I’m sleeping with him as no doubt you’ve guessed. Don’t read me any lectures on married men.”
“None forthcoming.”
“I didn’t mean to.” She makes a noose to hang her thumb. “The ways he tried to finagle me into bed amused me so much, I forgot to defend myself. He’s a clever beastie.” She pulls the cord tight on her thumb till it reddens and swells.
The expression of her sensuality differs markedly from Donna’s white heat attraction and ascetic repulsion. “Still, the situation sounds rickety. Be careful.”
Over her plump shoulder she smiles at me. “Of what? My reputation?” She yanks her thumb free. “You’ll come, won’t you?”
“Stephanie, I don’t want to.”
“Stu, you’ve got to. For me.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“She does.” She flings herself into the rocker. “This will be my first official appearance under the inspection of all the old friends who know his wife Dorothy. I’m scared.”
“If I’m not at a party to pick someone up, what am I doing? I’ll just get drunk and stupid.”
“Flirt with someone from your classes. Get a date to bring you.” She sighs with exasperation. “Can’t you find anyone? I want your backing, Jill. I can’t believe you won’t turn up some sort of man by Saturday night!”
Little choice for tonight but my red dress, veteran of several years’ campaigns. I am repairing the hem when I hear footsteps climbing. Stephanie forgot something?
“I saw your roommate leaving and thought I might come up.” Donna’s voice breaks high.
I lay the dress on the upper bunk, my nerves stirring as if a cold wind hit them. “Saturday night and you’re here?”
“Yes….” She notices the dress laid out. “You have a date?”
“I’m going to a party at Roger Ardis’, but not for an hour.”
“Stu, do you hate me?”
“Hate you?” I grope for an answer. “No.”
“But you’re hurt.”
“You’re hurting yourself.”
“I need him, Stu!”
Outside a fine rain is slipping down; I can hear it in the silence between us. “You have him. Don’t you?”
“He wants me to meet his parents next weekend. This weekend he’s at their house ‘preparing’ them.”
“Have they agreed to meet you?”
She nods. “Official invitation.” She pulls from the pocket of her robe a much fingered but still fairly stiff sheet of notepaper, beige with dark brown printing at the top. It is an invitation from Peter’s mother to visit them, indeed. One paragraph.
Why is Donna less unsuitable than me? “Should I wish you luck? Like they should all die of typhus before next Friday.”
“I’m scared witless…. Did you used to get sick about going to visit in Cold Springs?”
Tall gaunt house. “It was stifling. I couldn’t breathe. Except when you were there too.”
“They daunted me. All those rooms. Elephantine furniture. That big oak staircase, each pillar a tree. Those acres of starched lace curtains.”
“And one shriveled lamb chop for supper.”
“I could always feel the aunts and Grandfather thinking I wasn’t good enough.”
“But at least you’re blond, kid. The right genes.”
“Once when I was little I was sitting on one of those worn plush chairs in the diningroom with my legs dangling, waiting for my mother to get me. I was picking my nose dreamily and I picked out a boogie. I didn’t have a hankie so I stuck it on the underside of the chair—and Aunt Mary materialized in the doorway.” Donna holds herself. “‘We don’t do that,’ she said, ‘you dirty little girl.’”
“They never hurt me much because I didn’t want them. I wanted my mother’s family, my magnificent aunt Riva with her husbands and her hats. My aunt Sarah with her permanent California suntan.”
“Oh, my mother’s family.” Her lips curl from her teeth. “Washboard poor. One of my aunts didn’t even have a toilet in the apartment in Flint—it was in the hall. Towheaded morons sucking their thumbs. Every generation or two they strain real hard and produce a nun who sees angels.”
“It’s true, the Stuarts are respectable. Took us to screw that.”
“Stu, my period’s late.”
“How late?”
“It should have been Tuesday.”
“That’s not bad. You’ve been later than that before.”
She looks awkward in Stephanie’s rocker, small for it, thin. Her hands grip the arms as if she might suddenly fly up and out. “I know, I know. But still I’m scared.”
“Why?”
“Because Peter only started sleeping with me recently and I’ve been using the diaphragm. He kept putting it off at first, I think to punish me for making him wait this summer. He’s never going to believe I’m pregnant by him. And you know if I’m knocked up, it isn’t Peter.”
“From that guy?”
“When he raped me, he didn’t use anything.”
“Oh.” We look at each other. “Get a test.”
“It’s early…. I’ll make an appointment. Will you go with me?”
I want to tell her to ask Peter, to ask Rosellen, but then I think, Oh shit, we are connected. “Sure.”
“Then you don’
t hate me?”
“Donna, why him? Why Peter?”
“He’s everything I try to be and can’t quite bring off. He’s bright, he’s cool, he’s at ease in the world. It belongs to him. He knows as if by instinct what to wear and what to say and where to go and how to be. He has a profession that’s important and everybody respects it, but it doesn’t consume him. He lives … with grace.”
I can’t think of a damned thing to say, but I wonder if she is involved with the same man I thought I knew.
Her voice flat, she asks, “Do you think he’ll marry me?”
“His parents make the rules. Don’t expect fair treatment. I doubt if he’ll ever break with them.”
“Because of the money.” She nods, yet I feel the words do not penetrate. “Stu, do you suppose I could go to Roger’s party? I’d like to be with people tonight.”
“Sure. Why not? But I’m not going till Howie comes by for me.”
“I think I’ll go right over. I know where he lives, by the bell tower. I’m too nervous to sit still.”
After she leaves I dress mechanically. For a few minutes there we touched noses and sniffed as cats will, convinced we were each learning something.
Howie leans on the newel-post. I could warm my hands at his grin as at a brazier of glowing coals. “Very pretty. That’s a new dress?”
He has never seen it. A pang, as if I have put something over on him. I take his arm. The rain is fine and penetrating with a cold ammonia smell. Leaves float in the puddles, fish belly up. As I cling to Howie’s solid arm worrying out loud about Donna, my blood thaws and races, warming me back to hope.
“Of course if she’s really fallen for that nebbish, she won’t listen to a thing you say,” Howie says. “Sure you want to go to this party?”
“I promised Stephanie.” Like Donna I want to be digested into a crowd. I want a loose easy alcohol high. I want to chatter and flirt and evaporate.
I dig out the address, wondering if I got it wrong. We are heading among a mix of university and town buildings near the bell tower. Then we come to a standstill in front of a courtyard. A yellowish bulb in a wrought-iron cage throws its light on the opposing stucco wall, where ivy climbs among the windows: Mike’s “damned French” scene that first night. I stop abruptly.
Howie turns. “Changed your mind?”
I’m being a superstitious idiot. A tantalizing babble leaks from the windows of a second-floor apartment, open to the October air. What do I expect to happen at parties? Some encounter? Some transformation? I am drawn, a fly to flypaper, by the press of bodies. “We can always leave in half an hour if we’re bored,” I offer.
Stephanie dashes to meet us, jiggling my arm in excitement. “Look what a mob we have! This is the party of the month, obviously. If you don’t see the booze you want, yell, and I’ll steal it. Roger even had a whole turkey roasted. I’ve been having a ball playing hostess.”
Roger leers at me, plucking at the no-colored lichen on his chin, his eyes bright as shards of broken glass. “Jill Stuart, eh, Stephanie goes on about you by the hour. You have her thoroughly conned.”
Uncomfortably close to the truth. The apartment is civilized for a graduate student’s, for they usually live in warrens like overpopulated and underfed rabbits. He has only the pallor. The furniture is turn-of-the-century with nouveau art touches—glass vases, a lamp base, some Beardsley reproductions. Some person actually exercised a dominant taste in this room, with its grey walls and maroon and navy accents, a taste that hints of money, of leisure, of confidence.
Rosellen tagged along with Donna, whom Charlie, her boyfriend of last spring, has expropriated. They are all sitting on a plush couch with Donna in the middle. Charlie is doing an imitation of the sociology department chairman while the two women laugh wildly. Howie goes off to the kitchenette to open our wine.
“Hi, Jill. How’re you doing?” With a tremor of surprise I look into Lennie’s lean rabbinical face. He appears any age in a dark suit, his beard longer and more formal.
He backs away from my cry of welcome, his eyes suspicious. “This is my girlfriend.”
No name given. Clinging to his side she is dark and shy as the running shadow of a doe. An exchange of still greetings. Then with a squirm of shyness she draws his attention and they walk off. I look to see if Donna has noticed him, but she is shrieking with that steel mirth. Charlie is her necessary evil tonight. He watches her with pride and a daddy’s darling look; she does not glance at him, but looks around. They are all drinking screwdrivers from a pitcher Charlie mixed. Rosellen, not used to alcohol, has a belligerent uneasy gaze as if she felt something dangerous inside beginning to hurt. Myself, I am drinking whatever anyone offers me. I have had a glass of red wine from Bolognese, with whom I talk about Being and Nothingness, which we are both trudging through, a labor of love. The two of us, to the amusement and contempt of Dick and Howie, have taken to calling ourselves existentialists.
Then I have a glass of white camel’s urine offered by Dick. Then I have a Scotch from Grant Stone, who carries the only real flask I have ever seen, inlaid with silver. He leans into me. “Spore Press is always looking for … eager young writers.”
“To plant your spores in?” I ask, already too drunk to be polite. I don’t believe he’d publish me no matter what. If I believed for a moment he might, I would lack the courage to insult him.
I have been considered pretty too short a time not to relish the casual lust of men eyeing me. Like Stephanie, I can enjoy being looked at, for it is novel and makes me want to giggle as if I am getting away with something, knowing that it is really me under the coat of flesh. But sometimes I cannot handle the brute hostility that peeps out of the lust, that taint of despisal. I have a glass of purple passion punch (grapefruit juice, Mogen David wine and lab alcohol, a local specialty that mutates genes with each sip) offered by a vaguely familiar man who promptly tries to pinch my right breast and does not like being kicked in the shin. Howie is making his own way through the party, talking now intently to Bolognese who is permanently bent over the diminishing turkey. I appeal to Howie with my eyes to come, for I feel a little too vulnerable.
“Did you want to be rescued?” he asks, plowing through to me.
“Actually, yes.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Everything in its particulars.”
Immediately before us Roger leaps up from his wing-back chair. The newcomers are the tall ash-blond Dorothy Ardis and a local dentist Dr. Ashburnham, who grasps her elbow with clothespin fingers. She leans away from the dentist, smiling blandly at Roger, gazing about with large maple-walnut eyes. She surveys the room, touching her fur collar to her throat, strolling among the suddenly invisible guests from the navy plush couch to the Beardsleys. “Why, you have your auntie’s furniture out of storage. And so neat. When did you start being neat?”
“I cleaned it,” Stephanie mutters to me. “Did he invite her? I’ll kill him.”
“I’m surviving.” Roger walks on Dorothy’s free side, his chin grazing her collar. “I’ve learned to make spaghetti. But tell me, how do I keep the refrigerator from turning into an igloo?”
With a slow smile Howie looks after her stately strut of a crane, a long-necked and long-legged water bird. “She’s beautiful. Who is she?”
I answer, “His soon-to-be-ex-wife Dorothy.”
“He can’t do this to me. He’ll introduce me, or I’ll break his neck publicly. They’ll hose the pieces off the ceiling.” Putting on a glittery smile Stephanie marches after them into the kitchenette.
I have lost my glass, so Howie and I drink from the bottle in turns. He asks, “Is Roger trying to make his wife jealous? Or is he just being friendly in a friendly divorce?”
“Your guess is worth mud, like mine. He’s a bastard, I think.”
Dorothy has handed her coat to her escort and is peering into cupboards while Roger watches her like a dirty movie. The room is contracting, people stretching to the ceiling i
n poses of fun-house-mirror despair. Donna is pinned to the wall by a spidery man, all arms and legs, surrounding her with his outsized paunch rubbing against her breasts. She looks about to faint, while a cracked smile of immolation distorts her face. Charlie watches with bleak sadness past Rosellen, who lies half sprawled across him, crying.
“I shouldn’t drink. I shouldn’t go to parties. It unpeels my skin,” I tell Howie. That midnight moment has arrived when my skull is lifted off and on the wet grey convolutions of my brain are printed directly the misunderstandings and mismatings in this room. “It’s hopeless.”
He takes the bottle from me. “So stop.”
Stephanie is gallantly trailing the married couple, bringing up the rear with the dentist. Charlie has taken Donna by the hand but she pulls from him. “I’m just starting to have fun!” she whines. Her face is sharp with forced gaiety. Her eyes pass blindly over me. She will never listen.
“I don’t know why I feel so naked, looking at people.” I sway forward, bump Howie’s arm. Room, a funnel of wrong noises.
“You want to leave?”
“Yes … but… I feel sick.” I hate the room, the people with open sores jostling each other. I push blindly at him until he guides me into the hall, shutting the door of the apartment behind us. The sudden chill, the dimness of the stairway bulb suspended like a dying sun in limbo, the collapsing of roar into murmur, only increase my dizziness. He looks so familiar bending over me—“Are you sick, Jill? Do you want air?”—that I burst into tears. As he puts his arms around me, I burrow into his chest and cry harder against his sweater.
His chest is warm through the wool. Warm and broad. If I move forward half an inch, it will be a simple embrace. He is holding his breath. The tears dry on my face as I stand and desire rips at me as if I had walked into a giant cactus. “There, there,” he mumbles. Points of heat flare where we touch. If I raise my face, I could kiss his mouth. Want to. But like this? Sodden, stupid, like grabbing a hot-water bottle. Desperate as Donna grabbing at Charlie. I stand suspended in desire holding my breath till my fingers and breasts ache. I wince against his chest and step back.