The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  The way to manage in stores was to look intently at the merchandise but be very careful not to want it. She had developed a mind-set where she viewed everything as if she were in a museum. She wouldn’t walk into the MFA and start wanting that Rembrandt. If a salesgirl became persistent, she said she needed a gift for her daughter, and she’d know it when she saw it, as her daughter was very particular. Then she would move on.

  The clothing they sold was often an imitation of older clothing. Therefore it was like a museum, wandering around Filene’s or Lord & Taylor. There was a dress cut just like one she had in 1964. There was a jacket like one her mother used to wear. There was a pin she’d been given in high school, and there was a blue cashmere sweater from her college days. Of course the major difference was that nothing was made as well. It was all shoddy, even the clothes that cost so much she wanted to laugh out loud before she got angry, that people spent on a stupid designer blouse that looked like forty others enough for her to live on for a month in comfort and safety.

  Her ladies would have been shocked to learn she had not only gone to college but gotten her degree. They would have been uncomfortable or even frightened. She had been a nice middle-class girl and she had taken a teaching course. The month she graduated, she married Jim, got her Mrs., as they called it.

  Her husband was a year older, as they thought appropriate then. He had graduated and taken a job with the state of Illinois. He had been afraid of losing her to other boys after he graduated and bought her a ring he insisted she wear. She had sold it long ago for hardly anything. She went to college in Normal, Illinois. She used to say to people, to make them smile, I’m just a normal girl from Normal, Illinois. Actually she came from Centralia.

  When she was sixteen and saw her life unfolding, just beginning to go out on dates to the movies or for sodas and so innocent she believed kissing was only if you really cared for a boy, she assumed she would be married by the time she was twenty-one. To her loving faceless husband, she would bear two children, a boy and a girl, and live in a nice house where she would cook good meals for her family and care for them. Until she turned forty-five, her life was just that way, although the crowd they moved in was more sophisticated and affluent than she would have guessed at sixteen. Still her life was the one she had been bred and trained to lead: by the rules.

  Anyhow, Mrs. Landsman’s house was a mess. Cat toys everyplace. She was spoiling this cat the way she spoiled her son. Mary shook her head. Why did she call this Mrs. Landsman’s house? Probably Mrs. L. thought it was hers, the way Mary had thought her house was hers, but it must be his, like the car and the money and the stock and everything else.

  Mary had thought she was exempt from the adultery she knew had rotted many suburban marriages around them. Those scandals were the problems of other women, who had failed in their marriages. She thought, because she knew how to shop and how to run a house and how to make conversation with a judge or an undersecretary’s wife or a urologist, that she knew all about life. She imagined, because her husband wanted her passionately into her thirties, that he would always want her.

  A housewife didn’t give much weight to boredom, because whether she was waiting for a husband to come home or a baby to be born or a load of clothes to dry or a roast to cook, she spent a lot of time exercising her patience. From one little crisis to the next pressing job, the days unwound. She was worrying about Jaime’s grades in algebra or whether Cindy was going to fit into her prom dress, and she was thinking about how they said a new diet would take off weight or help the heart, and whether she could get her family to eat that way. She was thinking that Jaime didn’t want to go to the Maryland shore this year and where should they take a vacation that would satisfy everybody—not including herself, because she took for granted that if they were satisfied, so was she. She was thinking, the driveway cement is cracking and the dog has to go to the vet for his shots and is it Ed Vickers or Ed Simmons that Dr. Caldwell can’t stand at the dinner table with him? Yes, she had been swimming in a big pink aquarium, and she never thought that somebody would come along with a hammer and break it until she was gasping for her life and everything she had taken for granted, for permanent, was gone.

  So no wonder Mrs. L. was sprucing the place up. She was cooking again. She was doing that trick of making a meal, eating it once and freezing the rest. The empty freezer was filling up with neatly labeled cartons; CHICKEN SOUP 11/14; SPAGHETTI SAUCE 11/16. The leaves were finally raked and the yard and the walk looked neat. The old newspapers kicking around had been burned in the fireplace. The master must be about to put in an appearance. Why didn’t he take off? Maybe it was just too convenient. Mrs. L. didn’t seem to throw scenes or issue ultimatums. She just endured.

  If Mary were back in Bethesda, age forty-five, and she discovered all over again that her husband had been getting it on with his secretary for the past two years, what would she do? Would she swallow her pride? Would she be able to act as if she didn’t know? Would she be able to string him along? But he didn’t marry the secretary. He married the ex-wife of one of his best friends, which always made her wonder what had been going on there. They were getting a divorce while she was getting a divorce. Then four years later Jim left that wife also.

  Mary had far more pride than Mrs. Landsman, because she wouldn’t take his crap, which was not a nice expression, but accurate. She had been a good wife and a good mother, and she was entitled to a good husband. Sometimes she still went over and over it, trying to understand what she did wrong. Did she pick the wrong man? But they had seemed happy for twenty years. Should she have pretended she didn’t know? Should she have said, Whatever you want, dear, as Mrs. Landsman did, and just hoped he wouldn’t bring home some disease or get his mistress pregnant?

  What had Mary done wrong? As she cleaned other women’s houses, she tried to figure out where she had gone astray and how her life had derailed, but she couldn’t comprehend it. Watching her ladies’ lives fall apart didn’t teach her much. The only one of them playing around was Mrs. Douglas, and her marriage didn’t seem in danger. Every other woman, she thought, lived in ignorance or in fear.

  TWELVE

  Becky

  One Saturday morning, as Becky was waiting for the bathroom so she could go off to work, Becky’s mom caught her own mother throwing up blood. Everybody was scared and started fighting about how serious it was. Nana held the house together. If Becky’s mother was swamped, she cooked. She cleaned up what got missed in the confusion. She did the extra laundry. She wiped up what the baby spilled while Gracie was putting him to bed. She made up brews of herbs and weeds for ailments and heartaches. She made a piece of beef or fish go further. She could cook soup out of anything edible, and she fermented wine in the basement from blueberries, cherries or strawberries.

  Becky’s graduation was no big deal, because by the time commencement dragged around, Nana was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer. She chose to die at home, but still the bills were like a wasting disease, another cancer that sickened the family. The house smelled of decay and bedpans and medicine. Money, money, every morning muttered. Becky’s mother went around turning off lights while people were trying to dress or read the paper. They lived off whatever fish were running, and an occasional leathery chicken from Mama’s flock that had stopped laying, or trash fish bartered for backyard rabbits from a neighbor. Nana’s garden was choked in weeds. Nobody had the energy to harvest the poor lettuces under the lamb’s-quarters, even though they had to go to the store and buy lettuce. The garden too smelled like death. But Tommy, her favorite brother, took off from fishing to go to her commencement, and he bought an almost-new VCR someplace to celebrate the event.

  Mama was arguing with the phone company, with the electric company, wait, wait. They offered to take Becky on full-time at Lady Grace, and she pretended to be thinking about it, but she had not spent four years and all that effort and money for a job she could have had all this time.

  The week of gradu
ation, she took on three more evenings at the mall and started job-hunting during the day with a dogged insistence. She did not mind working the extra evenings. She had not dated anyone since Ted Topper had fooled her. She felt charred around the edges. She covered all the towns halfway to Boston. She wanted desperately to look in Boston, but there the competition was fierce for media jobs, and she could not afford to live away from home. She had to help her parents now. She had to have a job right away. She used the facilities at school to create a hundred resumés, and she carried them around, mailed them in, dropped them off, did everything but stand, on a street corner downtown and hand them to passersby. Her cousin Wanda gave her an old sick car that Tommy worked on till it ran. It made a funny noise and missed, but it got her from job interview to job interview.

  She looked over the other applicants carefully, observed women in the offices. She got her sister Belle—who worked in a beauty salon—to cut her hair the way she wanted it and slip her in for a permanent. The results impressed even her. That style she had seen on the girl who got the job at Quali-Cable was right for her. Her face looked much softer surrounded by a cloud of curls. Her hair looked fuller and her eyes looked bigger. As for clothing, blue seemed to be the safest color, with grey next, for a nice job-hunting girl. No black, no red, no yellow until you had the job. Small earrings.

  She went for a job at Sound Cable, even though it was across the Canal in Falmouth, a forty-minute commute even in light traffic. It would be murderous crossing the bridge on busy mornings. Cape Cod, full of Yankees and yuppies and tourists, was another world from immigrant New Bedj. Only the fishermen were the same. She was hoping to host the community show, but they wanted a guy. They offered her a job as receptionist. Theirs was pregnant. “Can’t have a bulging receptionist,” said the egg-shaped man who was ready to hire her.

  It was a foot in the door. She took it on the spot. It was better pay and a regular nine-to-five job with benefits. She had laid her resumé everyplace, and if something better came up, she would quit this in a finger snap. In the meantime, she had to dress decently, but it was mostly sizing folks up as to who was likely to matter and who didn’t, learning everybody’s rank and schedule. A lot of the on-camera people just came in one day a week to do a particular show. The management and the technical people were the daily faces. She made a point of learning their names at once and always, always smiling at them. She practiced smiling in the mirror. Her real personal expression was one of intense grim observation. That would not do. A man’s face in repose was supposed to be serious; a woman’s face in repose was supposed to be smiling.

  She kept on at Lady Grace evenings and weekends for two weeks until she was sure she really had the other job. When she finished in the late evening, she was too exhausted for anything but sleep. Often she was not even hungry. Then she gave her notice. They seemed to like her at Sound Cable, and the work was easier. She was able to pay off the electric company. New England Telephone she nickled and dimed, sending five dollars, ten dollars, another seven. She was determined to keep the phone connected, in case one of those job possibilities in media came through.

  She was coasting on the clothes she had, because she really wanted to get the family current before she started spending. At least she had enough fancy underwear to last for years. Sylvie was getting married at the end of June. Becky had bought Sylvie a negligee and nightie while she still had the discount. Sylvie asked Becky to be a bridesmaid, but she didn’t know if she could afford the bridesmaid outfit.

  Aunt Marie stepped in. Becky had been seeing her independently of Sylvie, who was too involved with Mario to bother with her aunt. The first time, Becky drove to Cohasset and parked in a mall, trying to get up the nerve. Finally she called Marie and told her she was just passing by. Marie invited her over.

  Marie treated Becky like her own niece. She knew Becky didn’t have the money for the bridesmaid’s dress. When Marie offered, Becky did not play coy or pretend to refuse. The wedding was going to be all peach. Except for Sylvie in white, Sylvie’s sister, her cousin and Becky would wear peach and so would Mrs. Damato. The reception would be at a big restaurant with platters of Italian food and pastries. There would be a band. Becky and Sylvie danced together, practicing, because they had not gone to many dances. They took turns leading. It made them giggle like the old days. Becky loved having her weekends back. She felt like a lady of leisure, working just five days.

  As she said to Sylvie, “I really envy you. It’s like a movie, and you’re the heroine. Mario is just a prop. There’s nothing like it again. You’re the star and all of us just back you up.”

  “Just as well it’s only this once.” Sylvie laughed. “I’ve never been so worried I’ll get a zit or sunburned or what else awful can you think of? Gain ten pounds. I could, with all the parties. I keep telling Mama if she doesn’t lay off, they won’t be able to get me into The Dress without the help of a cheese slicer.” She mimicked cutting off slices from her hips.

  Becky felt as if nothing was settled in her own life. She could not get away from home, because her parents needed her. She wasn’t making the kind of money where she could live in a nice place like Ted Topper’s, anyhow. She knew what she wanted, but had not come a step closer to getting it. The more clearly she understood what she wanted, the farther away those precious things seemed.

  She had a college degree. She had learned how to speak correctly and how to dress like one of them, attractive girls born to the right suburbs, and she had learned to use makeup, by watching, by reading magazines, by imitating, and how to wear her hair in a flattering fashion up-to-date but not extreme. She had given herself those advantages, and here she was, a receptionist at a cable TV office, which was better than the mall and better than New Bedj but not even halfway where she wanted to go.

  She could not see any way to climb the glass mountain. She could see no route, no toeholds, no place her carefully kept not overly long but always polished nails could grasp. They had her on a shelf. She had to find someone to pick her off that shelf.

  The first way was to crawl up the cable company ladder. She smiled and she smiled and she smiled. She had taken typing in high school. She began to practice again. She got Sylvie to teach her about computers. She made herself available to everybody to run errands. The secretaries were always being told to pick up something on their lunch hours. She brought her lunch and ate it in the women’s John, quickly. She would gladly drive to the next town and buy flowers. She would gladly pick up the soundman’s dry cleaning. She would wait for the package supposed to come.

  When she did a little job for one of the secretaries, she tried to make sure that the particular boss or beneficiary knew it was her. She couched it in terms of, I hope this is what you wanted? Mr. White’s secretary, Rosemary, said to her, “Look, as far as I’m concerned, when I leave, you can have my job. Not before. We’re trying to have a baby. I know what you’re pushing for. Just don’t try to push through me. Understood?”

  Becky could see no reason to pretend to be stupid when her bluff was called. She nodded, and when Rosemary went on fixing her with a hard stare, said, “I’m just trying to position myself to make a little more money. My family needs it, frankly.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Most of the people who worked here didn’t, not like she did. She priced their coats when they walked in. She saw their cars in the lot. Some of them had tape decks and two had cellular phones. But she smiled and ran errands and flattered them and waited for someone to slip, so she could move up.

  One cameraman was leaning on her desk whenever he could, but he was married. She smiled and played the old Nice Catholic Girl game. She pretended she didn’t understand sexual allusions. No payoff in being some married cameraman’s bimbo, really. They must think she was even more desperate than she was. She said nothing about herself at work except that she had enjoyed college, that she loved cable TV as a business, and that she lived at home with her family. Then she would immediately a
sk them questions, and the need to lie would disappear. People liked to talk about themselves.

  Most of the girls in the office were married, but Gwen was divorced and one was single, only two years older than her. They asked her out with them on Friday, once to pizza and once when they were going for Chinese food and then to a movie. She went for the pizza, but everything they did cost money. They didn’t just hang out as she always had with Sylvie. The way things were at home, she could not waste money. She said she had a date.

  Sylvie and Mario were married on the Saturday just before the Fourth of July. The weather was hot and sultry. It had rained the day before, and Sylvie had burst into tears. There was a low lid of clouds, but the rain had stopped. It was ninety-three and the air felt like hot glue. Becky could scarcely walk in the voluminous dress, and she felt ready to pass out. Discipline, she told herself, discipline. She imagined she was being taken to her own wedding. She was marrying … no, not an old man like Ted Topper, the lying lecher. Someone just three years older, a successful lawyer in a high-rise in Boston who drove a Mercedes like the sales manager Mr. Corman, who had wavy blond hair. She would marry her lawyer and move into a beautiful house in Cohasset, like Aunt Marie. Except when she was watching TV, she seldom saw a life she wanted, a situation, even a place in which she could imagine inserting herself. When she was daydreaming, sometimes she borrowed the sets from her favorite shows, but she could never control what the family watched, and their set was old. The picture had dandruff.

  Aunt Marie winked at her. “You look gorgeous, kid.” But never did she say things like, you’ll be the next bride. No, Marie told her, take your time. The world is full of men. They all want one thing, so be sure that’s what you want. Marie did not know about Ted Topper. Marie was the only person she sometimes thought of telling, now that they were friends, but she did not want Marie to think less of her. Better that Marie should think of her as sensible: she had learned to be. She might daydream, but she did not let any man come close, for she was watching for someone worthy. Daydreams were cheap. Sylvie asked her once if she ever touched herself. She had trouble understanding what Sylvie meant. Then she said, “I share a bed with Laurie. How could I?”