by Marge Piercy
When the DeMotts flew to Sanibel Island, she was at their house within an hour, having looked at the tickets in his top bureau drawer, where he kept cash and tickets to the Celtics and Red Sox and planes. She wouldn’t have minded if the DeMotts had a doggie or a cat, for the company. She cleaned elsewhere every day but Thanksgiving itself, but she had a home to come to right from work. It was dark by four-thirty, so she just unlocked the back door and made herself at home. Thanksgiving she spent a long time in the tub, cleaned it thoroughly, watched TV for a while but mostly just stayed in bed, shaking a cold that had been plaguing her. She tanked up on vitamin C.
By Friday morning, she was fit again. It was those church basements that got her, and hanging around the streets till she could sneak in someplace. Summers had their own problems—she couldn’t close up the houses as tight so that the light wouldn’t show (although in her observation, most people left lights on nowadays), and the sun set so late that she had to wait till eight-thirty to slip into her chosen shelter. But if she got caught short, she could sleep in a garage for a night It was dirty and it didn’t feel safe, but it was better than the streets. Twice she spent the night in a gazebo of a fancy house on Brattle Street.
Winter was a different story. Night came down early, but sleeping outside would kill her. Hadn’t she almost died, back when she was new to life on the streets? It was always dangerous from the weather and from the men who would hurt any woman they could.
Saturday she had a cleaning job at the Mafekings. The kitchen was an incredible mess from Thanksgiving, burnt fat all over the oven, run-over sauce on the stove, a mess of dirty pans in the sink. They had an old dishwasher that couldn’t handle pans. She resented having to scrub pans from two days before, but she didn’t say anything. It would be too easy for them to complain.
The Mafekings had her only occasionally, when the house had got out of control, and they were always there. If she dared, she would have refused the job. One of their kids was visiting with a baby, so the house was full. She had to clean around them.
They gave her some leftovers. She was sure they were sick of the turkey—they’d made one the size of a rhinoceros, and about as tough—but she was pleased. She took the offered turkey and cranberry sauce in an old ice cream carton. “I imagine your daughter makes turkey too,” Mrs. Mafeking said. She was a sly sort always trying to pry, always alluding to Mary’s daughter.
“No, ma’am, my daughter roasts a goose. I prefer turkey, so I do dearly appreciate your sharing a piece of yours.”
“A goose!”
She just nodded, and Mrs. Mafeking went away looking impressed. Mary had no idea where these ideas came from, but they were convincing. She never knew she had it in her to be a champion liar.
Home at the DeMotts, she spread out a sheet of newspaper and ate her turkey and cranberry sauce at the kitchen table with a nice chutney from the refrigerator. Then she toasted a slice of the DeMotts’ bread and ate two sticks of celery. Nobody counted their celery sticks. She finished with an apple. She put her garbage neatly into a plastic bag in her shopping bag. She was always prepared. She carried her own knife, fork, spoon and plastic bowl; anything of theirs she used, she washed at once: compulsive, but part of her daily discipline. She had always been a mad housekeeper who never left dishes in the sink or beds unmade or dust under the couch. Besides, she owed it to the people whose houses she borrowed to return them at least as clean as she found them. Third, she had a policy, leave no traces.
She was stretched out on the couch in the living room, just taking it easy and enjoying the warmth and the soft living. She was lying in the dark, too lazy to get up and turn on the TV, thinking that maybe her daughter Cindy would invite her for Christmas. Twice Mary had saved money for the bus. One year Cindy sent air tickets, and Mary flew out of Logan to Washington and her own granddaughter Marissa picked her up at the gate and took her to their home in Chevy Chase. Cindy wasn’t much at writing, and of course, they couldn’t talk often on the phone. One year Mary had a client with a WATS line at home that included Washington, but his boss didn’t get reelected, and the family moved to New York. That was the year she had really stayed in touch.
Cindy couldn’t have Mary often, because Cindy was thick with her dad. She was always his favorite, his Cinderella girl—not that she ever sat in the ashes. They had tried to give her whatever her friends had that she really wanted. She was the best behaved of all their friends’ girls, never in trouble, never boy crazy. If she went out with a boy, it wasn’t because he had a convertible or a lot of money to spend or a bad reputation, which attracted some females like flies to a pile of dog do. No, if she went out with a boy, it was for sound reasons. He was a good risk. He was steady, reliable, an asset. Cindy married well and was still married, with two adolescent children. She had a little business on the side, a boutique where she sold dresses to oversized women, named the Goddess Shop.
Cindy’s dad lived in a suburb near Norfolk. They were still close. So the only time Cindy could invite her mother was when Jim was away with wife number three on a cruise or something. Cindy made sure he didn’t forget her. Mary couldn’t be judgmental, for her daughter was a woman who always noticed, while the slice was still falling, which side it was going to land on. She looked out for her children first and foremost, it was only natural. Cindy must have figured out from watching Mary that, if a woman wasn’t shrewd for herself, nobody else would guard her. Cindy had no idea how Mary lived. Nobody in the family did. How could she tell them? She would be too ashamed.
A couple of times she had to ask Cindy for help. When she was losing her apartment, Cindy sent a check for five hundred. Another time, she sent three hundred, when Mary had to have dental work done. Cindy also gave her a long list of things her kids needed and the house needed and her husband needed, and made very, very clear that giving her money could not be a regular event. Mary figured if she was in terrible trouble, for instance if she broke a leg, she could ask Cindy; otherwise, she had better not.
She would call Cindy from Logan tomorrow night when she was waiting around. She knew a place there was still phone booths where she could sit and shut the door. She could stay a long time pretending to be making calls, and she would actually call Cindy. Sometimes there was a machine that would take MasterCard, her precious plastic proof she was real. She had never missed a payment For two or three months at a time, she didn’t use it But she had to buy Christmas presents for all her grandchildren. That was the hardest time financially. People went away a lot, which meant she could stay in their houses, but she got very low on cash. Shopping for all of the grandchildren was fun but expensive. It was easy with Jaime’s kids—they were young, and a toy was just fine, although toys too were dear beyond comprehension. Cindy’s daughter Marissa and her son Cole always wanted specific expensive things she could not afford, so she had to find some compromise.
Mary was lying in the dark imagining Christmas at Cindy’s when the headlights pulled into the drive and shone right into the living room and then the car passed. She was off that couch fast and fumbling in the dark for her boots, shoving her feet in, getting them on wrong but stumbling across the floor. She grabbed her coat and bags and raced to peep out the back. Only one of them in the car, Mr. DeMott. She ran out the front door without putting on her coat Then she bolted, still with the boots on the wrong feet, down the steps and dived around the corner of the house, where the big porch would protect her from his sight. Then she crawled under their front porch and huddled there. She could hear the back door opening, slamming. He was going to be surprised it was warm in the house. She had turned up the heat from fifty-five to sixty-five. She hoped he’d think it was their mistake. She cowered there while the lights went on in the house.
She was afraid to move. All the outside floodlights turned on at once from master switches just inside the front and the back doors. If she attempted to leave, she would be clearly visible. She could imagine no explanation for why she would be crouching in
his yard. She wriggled around, putting her boots on the correct feet and buttoning her coat, pulling on her knit hat. Cindy had given that to her seven years ago Christmas. It was royal blue, and she adored it. It had saved her health and her poor ears many a time. She felt cold and rattled. Suppose she had fallen asleep. He would have caught her dead to rights on his couch. She was shaking with a nervous reaction and chilled from running out without her coat on.
Once the Millers had come home early and caught her in the house, but she had told them that Zurich had been throwing up and she had been waiting to see if he was truly ill. She had been afraid to leave him alone and figured that in the morning, if he was still sick, she would take him to the vet’s in a taxi. The Millers had been impressed by her devotion to Zurich.
Why had Mr. DeMott come home suddenly? Why did he turn on the outside lights? She was terrified that perhaps one of the neighbors had noticed something and called them in Sanibel Island. She was wary of neighbors and tried to remain invisible. But had she slipped? She heard the door open in back of the house again. She would have liked to make a run for it, but she was too scared of being seen in all that light. She huddled in the dirt under the porch. This night, it was not fiercely cold, perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, but it was damp and she was tired. Her poor hams were aching from the chill.
She heard him shut the garage with the automatic box. Still he left the outdoor lights on. She had to squat beside the porch, clutching herself and growing colder, crawling way under the porch to pee from the cold, until finally the downstairs went dark and then at last he shut off the lights outside. Now she was free to go, but where?
Here she was on the street at eleven twenty-two, and what the hell was she going to do? It was too late to wander around. An old lady invisible in daylight was all too obvious now. Saturday night was a poor time to hang out at Logan. Sunday night would be fine, because there would be Thanksgiving traffic. The subway in Boston stopped running just after midnight, so she had little time to make up her mind. She couldn’t even go find one of her church basements this late. The trick was entering while things were unlocked, or when someone circling a church caused no suspicion. This late she would risk notice by a policeman or a watchman.
She was really in trouble. She huddled there under the porch trying to come up with a solution. Clearly she would get no sleep. What she needed was someplace she wouldn’t freeze. She waited until the light had gone out in his room upstairs. Except for the bathroom light upstairs, always on, the house was dark. She gave him another half hour. She was leaning against the wood of the house by now, her legs drawn up under her coat, shivering. She did not dare fall asleep under the porch.
Then she crept round the back. She knew the garage opened and closed by an electronic device, but old garages in Cambridge often had a side door, usually unlocked or held with a lock a sixth grader could open. However, their garage had no side door. There was a window, nailed shut.
It was twelve-ten now and she was sunk. There was absolutely no place to go this late at night in the winter. Very quietly she went to the back door and moving so slowly her hands ached, unlocked it with her key. Their back door was what she had grown up calling a grade door, in between the basement and the kitchen. The kitchen door was closed. With infinite slowness she let herself down into the dark basement She sat on the bottom stair. It was dank but a lot warmer than out of doors. Then she took out her tiny flashlight and made her way to the furnace room. It was warm with a little space next to the burner, even if it reeked of oil. She folded her coat and sat on it She did not dare sleep. She dozed from time to time. Her back ached. Finally she let herself curl on her coat on the cement floor. It was not cold because the furnace radiated heat to the cement, but it was hard.
Every time she heard a sound, her heart started trying to break out of the wall of her chest She was scared. She could be arrested for this. Her life would be over. She would be on the streets like that woman she passed in Porter Square. She could not see why he would come down into the basement first thing in the morning, and she planned to get up long before he did.
She dozed off now and again, but her head lolling forward would wake her or she’d jump with anxiety, her sleeping mind conjuring up footsteps, doors opening. It was a grim night She found herself remembering the basement of her parental home. They had a coal furnace. After all, it was coal-mining country. Everybody burned soft coal. The fire would always go out during the night, so that when they wakened, her father’s first task would be to tramp downstairs and get the furnace going. Her older brother Donald, rest his soul, used to send her fifty a month after her divorce. Anyhow, Donald had the task of hauling out the ashes and the clinkers. She remembered the harsh dank smell of the coal bin. She remembered the roar the day the coal was delivered through a window chute. The whole house shook.
When she was in high school, they got an automatic stoker. Then the furnace would run all night. It was a big machine that stood in front of the furnace and blocked the passage that, when she was little, she used to ride her tricycle through, round and round on rainy days. By the time they got the stoker, of course, she no longer rode a bike in the basement. Round and round, past the wringer washing machine, past the wash tubs, past the workbench where her father did home repairs and Donald built model airplanes, past the fruit cellar and the pantry where canned goods were stored, past the coal cellar and around again. It was soothing to remember being that little girl with the barrettes shaped like ducks or butterflies, with the blond shining hair and the crisp pinafores. How did this ever happen to her? How?
She had been a good wife and mother. She didn’t drink secretly, like other women in the neighborhood, or spend all her husband’s money, or gamble even at bingo, or have affairs with her dentist or her husband’s best friend. She didn’t abuse her children or beat them or try to make them feel bad. Sometimes on “Oprah” there were these women or men saying, My mother locked me in the closet for five years, My mother beat me with a tire chain, My father made me wear girls’ clothes at home. She rarely saw her children. Why? She was too proud to beg them to take her in, but would they, even if she begged? What was going to happen to her? She tried not to think about it. What good did it do? She tried as hard as she could to save money to buy an old car. Then she would have her own shelter.
As dawn was breaking she let herself out. It was still dark enough for her to slip around to the front of the house—stiffly limp, was more like it. She had the day to kill. She never worked Sundays. The service didn’t give out jobs, and nobody had ever asked her to work off the books on Sunday. The best thing that had happened recently was that the malls opened at twelve. In the meantime, she would slip into a church—any church. She had a little bread in her carry-all and an apple. She shuffled along, eating her apple as slowly as she could. She had counted on breakfast at the DeMotts. What she wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee. She might even have to buy one, to warm herself, before she could slip into the first church she saw open.
Her whole body ached for a warm bath and a warm bed. Her eyes kept shutting as she lumbered along on her sore feet. Tonight it was Logan again. She might have to break down and spend a day-and-a-half’s wages on a motel for a night tomorrow or Tuesday, but then she would save nothing at all, not for her fantasy car, not for presents. She knew the Rogerses were skiing next weekend, and she was set to feed their parrot and stay over, but she had Monday through Thursday to solve. It looked like a week of church basements for her. She remembered when she used to enjoy winter.
EIGHTEEN
Becky
Becky’s wages disappeared into the family need like bath salts dissolving. They were still paying off Nana’s illness and death. Rennie—Lorenzo—joined the army, so they had one less at home. Almost a year had passed since Becky had got the receptionist job at Sound Cable. Now she was secretary to Danny White, the business manager. She had her own cubicle before the entrance to the offices of Mr. White and the bookkeeper, Mrs. O’Neill,
a thin silent woman of forty-five, whom Becky had never seen eat or go to the bathroom. Mrs. O’Neill had an immovable will. She wanted a new computer system for billing and running the station, and they were getting one.
A year and Becky was making more, but standing still otherwise. She could only move up from this job to be the station manager’s secretary, another buck-fifty an hour, the same benefits and twice as much work. Lani did not get out of the station before seven some nights. Becky at least got out at five, except when there was a bad crunch.
Becky loved to hang out Saturday afternoons at Sylvie’s when Mario was off playing tennis or on somebody’s boat It was a condo in a three-story building that still smelted oaky and clean with an aroma of polished wood. Sylvie’s apartment was a blend of big ornate furniture-store pieces her parents had given her, showing wear but still, as they said, as good as they’d ever been. Becky agreed. They were as good as they’d ever been. There was nothing in her family home half as respectable, but still, lamps with fringe? Tufted sofas. Tables with odd knobs and flourishes. Becky was a furniture snob. She never gave up studying How Things Should Be, in case she ever had a crack at making something nice in her life.
The bedroom had furniture Sylvie had selected. It was a sunny room with a king-sized brass bed and everything else Shaker. It was elegant, all light blue and lighter grey. Becky adored it. When Mario was out and she came visiting, she and Sylvie always sat in matching rockers there, facing the windows or else outside on wicker chairs on the little deck. Sylvie told her that her parents thought the room dreary.