The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  Yes, Sylvie was married and had her apartment, but she was pregnant. Becky knew that was an accident, but once Sylvie found out, she had decided she was actually pleased. Becky was disappointed in her friend. Sylvie should have had the strength of character to wait to have babies, to put off a family until they were well established financially.

  What hurt the most, though, as they sat on the spidery rockers sipping diet soft drinks and leafing through Cosmopolitan and Better Homes and Gardens, was that Becky could tell that Sylvie felt sorry for her. Sylvie considered her a basket case socially. Sylvie was always trying to introduce her to some dude Mario was tight with. Thanks, but no thanks. Sylvie really thought that Becky couldn’t meet men. Becky met men every damned day of every stupid week, but they weren’t what she wanted. She couldn’t make Sylvie understand. A man was a potential future.

  “You’re too fussy. Once you get to know a man, you forget all that stuff you thought you wanted or needed. You have to get real.”

  “Why is it real to take what I don’t want?”

  “A man isn’t like a chair you buy because it looks good in your room.”

  “It isn’t looking good I care about.”

  At least Sylvie could understand her frustration at work. Lately Danny White had been calling her into his office, shutting the door, and finding excuses to lean over her shoulder. He touched her too much. She pretended she didn’t notice. He was a decent business manager, but he was married and had two boys. She wasn’t having anything to do with him off the job, and he’d better realize that. She worked hard, she did all the errands he sent her on, she stayed late without complaining when she had to. But she made her body rigid under his hand when he grasped her shoulder or her arm, and she would not meet his gaze when he put his big face into hers.

  If she thought he would do her any good, she supposed she would go to a motel with him, lie down and do it. But she knew better. One of the other girls had an affair with the special programming director. As soon as the affair ended, she was let go. They didn’t give you anything but a hard time when you gave in.

  The other girls did not particularly like her. They didn’t gang up on her the way they had on the woman having the affair, but they would not go out of their way to cover for her either. They didn’t like her not going out after work with them, and she was not about to explain to them that her family was taking just about every cent she earned. The girls bowled together on Thursdays and ate out, even the married ones and the ones with boyfriends.

  She heard Vicki telling Lani she was cold. She did not know how to make the kind of fuss they did with each other. Oh, Lani, that’s the most gorgeous dress, that is just the perfect color for you! Where did you ever find it? What a steal!

  Lani, Mrs. Ledbetter, didn’t gush, but she was a plump motherly woman and she was considered warm and maternal without having to work at it. Nobody thought that Becky was warm and maternal. She did not honestly know what they wanted from her. She covered for them. She thought she was damned nice to all of them. When they made a pool to buy a gift for someone’s shower or whatever, she always put in as much as she had to. It reminded her of school where girls in her classes had signed each other’s yearbooks with cute sayings (Yours till Mrs. Snow melts), and she could only think to write, Best Wishes, Becky Souza.

  The next week was hell. They were replacing the computers and the systems all at once. Everything had to be done on the stupid typewriter, and she had to redo a letter four times to get it right Everybody was cross. Only Mrs. O’Neill was in a good mood, but she was still as a stone. She liked getting her way—like every other living being, Becky thought. She would have liked to get her way too; she would have liked to drown Danny White and take the week off until these people were done playing with the new system.

  Tuesday the techie from the computer company came into her cubicle to install her work station. She pulled her chair out of the way and watched. She could hardly work with him all over her office. “Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked, to make conversation.

  “Long as you don’t ask questions,” he said, glancing at her. Then he looked back a second time and grinned.

  He was a moderately tall man, with wispy blond hair and very white teeth. His eyes were almost too pale, grey-blue, and he blinked frequently, like someone trying to accustom himself to contact lenses; but he wore glasses. When he was bending over the circuit boards, he kept pushing the glasses back on his head. When he smiled, his face seemed twice as attractive. She found herself staring at him.

  “I’m Becky Souza,” she said.

  “You don’t look Portuguese.”

  “Portuguese look all kinds of ways,” she said defensively. “But my mother’s family is French.” She had learned that French-Canadian seemed to Wasps as suspicious as Portuguese. She wasn’t about to say, Oh, I was born with brown hair, but I bleach it. “Do you have a name? Or is it Mr. A-B-C Business Systems?”

  “You can just call me A-there. Terry. Terry Burgess.” Mockingly he extended his hand and they shook. “Such a little hand,” he said, giving it a gentle squeeze and then quickly dropping it. He looked at her guardedly to see if she was annoyed.

  She decided not to be. He wasn’t wearing a ring. That didn’t mean too much, but she would find out. She smiled. “It must feel good to walk into an office and solve people’s problems.”

  “Oh, come on. Am I solving your problems? You probably didn’t want a new system you have to learn. Your boss decided on it, right?” He glanced at the closed door.

  “He’s not there. They’re all in a meeting, killing time while the system’s down,” she said conspiratorially. He really was nice-looking. And he spoke well. He had no local accent. He was clean, well dressed in a slightly nerdy way. The chinos were too baggy, for instance, and the shirt seemed to belong to another outfit. “Since I’m just sitting here watching you, can I help in any way? Hand you things? Maybe you’d like a cup of our terrible coffee. I could make it fresh, which helps.”

  He looked surprised. He must not have a bunny assistant to fetch and carry for him, the way all the men here did. “I’d like that a lot.”

  She did make fresh coffee. After all, charming T. Burgess was a way to pass the morning. Terry was actually a nice name. He had neat buns, bending over the connecting cables. “I went to college with a woman who married a Burgess. Crystal. I thought he was in computers too. Crystal isn’t your wife, is she? I’ve lost track of her since commencement.” Thus letting him know she had gone all the way through college and also trying to find out the Big Question.

  “I’m not married,” he said with an even bigger grin. “And I was planning to ask you out.”

  She gave him a warm smile back, drawing her eyes very wide and tilting her head. “And I was planning to say yes. How nice we agree.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I don’t need to go home first, unless you do. I live way the other side of the bridge.”

  “I figured you’d want to change. We’ll eat out, take in a movie.”

  She couldn’t think of any way out. She was silent for a couple of minutes, trying to figure some excuse for meeting him.

  “You don’t want me to pick you up. What gives? Do you live with a guy?”

  With this one she decided on total honesty, or some fraction thereof. He seemed to like frontal assaults. “I’m the first person in my family to go to college.” She looked him right in the eyes, rising to her feet. She did not smile. “My father is a poor fisherman. I find that whenever I go out with men who come from different, more affluent backgrounds, they have a tendency to look down on me when they see where I come from.”

  He flushed. He actually reddened. She watched carefully to see if her tactic had been successful. “I wouldn’t judge you because of that,” he said quickly. “I can see what an unusual girl you are. I’m not such a crazy yuppie as to think everybody’s as good as the labels on their clothes. I want to pick you up at your parents’. I admi
re people who overcome obstacles.”

  She couldn’t wait to tell Sylvie. She crouched in the rocker, knees drawn up to her chin in one of her favorite positions since babyhood. “He’s tall …” She never cared about height, but other women always mentioned it, so she did. “He’s blond and good-looking and he has a terrific job. He’s a programmer and he installs computer systems at companies. They have a system especially for cable TV companies. He wears sport jackets and nice sport shirts and expensive sneakers. He looks like money, Sylvie, he really does.”

  “How did the date go?” Sylvie was as excited as she was. “Are you going to see him again?”

  “Friday. We’re going into Boston. He has tickets to a Red Sox night game. I’ve never been to a real ball game.”

  “What do you know about baseball?”

  “Nothing, but I asked Tommy. He promised to fill me in at supper. You know Tommy, I can level with him. He doesn’t make fun of me the way Rennie or Laurie do. He understands wanting to make something of yourself.… I don’t want to act like a fool in front of Terry.”

  “Do you think you’re really interested in him? I mean, for real, like you were with Ted Topper?”

  “I’m crazy about him,” Becky said, but she knew she was lying. He was the best thing she’d ever had a chance at. He had a real professional-type job. He drove a Subaru with a fancy tape deck and four speakers. The sound could have blown her through the roof when he turned it on. Everything about him was superior. He did not smell of sweat or beer or tobacco, but discreetly of lemony aftershave. He wore tassel loafers shiny enough to slide on or good sneakers. His hands were always clean and his fingernails trimmed evenly across. She could have eaten him up one finger at a time, but she was cool, very cool.

  She got him talking about his job and tried to memorize key phrases. She knew girls who asked men the right questions, then spaced out on the boring answers. When she wanted someone, no answer was boring that gave her information she could use. His conversation was like a set of instructions to his world, his ideas, his habits. He was a course she was taking, and she planned to ace it.

  Sunday morning, she and Sylvie drove past his house. His parents’ house, where he lived, was at the end of a road, on what Sylvie said was called a cul-de-sac. It was a huge house that went along on ground level, occasionally putting out wide decks. The marsh was just beyond it. She could not wait until he invited her home so that she could see the inside. It was a much bigger house than Sylvie’s aunt Marie lived in. She began to revise her notion of the good life. There was room between this house and the next for a whole row of houses like her parents’. She smiled sourly. He must really have been taken aback. Lucky she had given it to him right in his face first.

  He asked her about herself. She gave him little facts, with a slightly pathetic air she noticed went over with him. He was becoming protective, which she encouraged. He saw her as brave but fragile. That was a persona she could live with. She gave him a few carefully chosen facts or equally carefully constructed anecdotes, and then she quickly nudged the conversation back to his interests. He was far more interested in her than Ted Topper had been. Nobody had ever looked at her like that. Oh, guys had wanted to get into her pants, sure, and they had come on like a truck out of control down a mountain road; but it was not her they were staring at, just body parts.

  Here was someone beginning to fixate on her in the right romantic way. She was not going to screw up. She was not going to do anything with him she didn’t study first and work out with all the intelligence she could muster. She knew she was bright, and while she was less well educated than he was (he had gone to better schools, including Babson), she suspected she was sharper. She certainly had a much clearer idea what she wanted, and that was Terrence Burgess to be her lawful wedded husband. She wasn’t going to do any better than this. She had to capture him without raising his suspicions that she was engaged in a campaign. She had a big reputation with him already for being blunt and honest. She didn’t care about Danny White at work any longer, although she planned to confess to Terry that evening how her boss had been harassing her. She had been right to wait and watch and be careful. Terry Burgess was her prize. She had only to collect him.

  NINETEEN

  Leila

  On Saturday morning, Leila graded papers. David was visiting a friend from high school. Nick had gone out. She had managed to keep from having an intimate conversation with him; she suspected that he was also avoiding her. However, just before noon, she heard the door bang open and his resonant voice filled the hall with her name. “In here,” she called, but like a good wife, got up to see what he needed.

  He bowed and presented her with a large bouquet of red roses and white carnations. “Flowers to my peony.”

  An old love name. She put her hands on her hips, not yet taking the bouquet “If you want to go back to New York early, you don’t have to bury me under forty dollars’ worth of flowers.”

  “I don’t want to go back early, but I have unfinished business. The cast hasn’t completely settled into their roles. I’m not quite ready to let go.”

  “Of them or obviously of Sheryl. I’m sure she wants you back.”

  He sighed. “It’s an unfortunate situation.”

  “You can say that from my heart.” She wondered if he was going to tell her the truth. “Exactly what sort of situation is it?” she pressed.

  “But I don’t see why it need affect us. It’ll be over soon.”

  “Are you sure?” She decided to push the envelope. “What if she should happen to get pregnant? When you have an affair with a woman, you choose the possibility she may bear you a child.”

  He looked at her warily. The silence stretched taut and hummed like a live wire. Finally he said, “Why discuss something hypothetical? I’ll be home soon. We can iron all this out then.”

  “That will take some doing,” she said dryly. Then she began to feel guilty—not toward him, but toward the flowers. They must go into water. She knew it was ridiculous to feel a sense of obligation toward cut flowers, but she was what she was. She took down two vases, dividing the flowers between the table and the living room. “They do look inviting.”

  Vronsky, who had been watching all this, walked up to the vase, sniffed and then bit a rose experimentally. It proved disappointing and he backed off, shaking his head with bared teeth of disgust.

  “I wish you’d be a little more inviting, yourself.” Nick sat in the middle of the couch with his arms extended in both directions. “I’d like half the tender looks you give that cat.”

  “Vronsky sleeps with me, and only with me. That creates a bond.” She sat stiffly on the edge of an adjacent chair. “He lives here.”

  “We never felt we had to be together seven days a week fifty-two weeks a year to prove our affection.” He sat forward, letting his hand close on her knee. “I may travel around, but I come back. I always come back to you.”

  “But I don’t stay in the same place. I’m not exactly the same river you step in,” she said, not moving her knee away but holding rigid. “Perhaps because I’m growing older or because David has left—I feel the aloneness more acutely. This affair with Sheryl—it seems different and far more serious.”

  “Maybe it is a good idea to have Shana move in. When will that happen?”

  “Didn’t you hear her say she’s moving to a school near Amherst?”

  “She’s a sweet kid. I like to look at her, but she runs off at the mouth. Too bad for you. It was an appealing idea.”

  “Perhaps,” Leila said noncommittally. Her period of intense loneliness had diffused. Vronsky was company, as she had hoped. She was frantically busy. She had begun to enjoy setting her own hours and eating when and if she chose, letting her stuff lie about, having music when she wanted music and silence when she craved the air to be still.

  She could let herself go after work, loll about in a bathrobe and put her feet up. Maybe this was the pleasant side of middle age. She realized
, looking at Nick, that she wasn’t desperate for him to return. He would surely come home well before Christmas. His classes resumed after the New Year. He liked to teach, and he enjoyed his position at B.U. Why did she feel at most a sense of acquiescence? If Sheryl were really pregnant, why hadn’t he taken the opportunity she had thrust at him to tell her?

  “I can’t get over your mother, coming out at her age. It’s kind of cute, although your sister didn’t see it that way.”

  “Debbie’s all over the road, but she takes sex roles religiously. We each set out to be a WOMAN, all caps, but we made up different models. I think it’s a great choice for my mother. She’s not the recluse type.”

  “Do you think if something happened to me, to us, you’d be a lesbian?”

  “I doubt it. I’m too invested in the mama-daddy-child family.”

  “But you don’t really like most men.”

  “Well, failing polyandry, I only need to like one.”

  “I have to confess, I find it flattering that you are such a one-man woman. In the theater, that’s scarcer than genius.”

  He was frowning at some private thought or recollection, still holding her knee in his hand. His hands were large, strong and always warmer than hers. She often felt a wave of sexual feeling when she looked at his hands on the steering wheel or even picking up a book or a bowl.

  “One of the jack-hole critics said that the second act was paced too slowly in the first half. I can fix it. I have to work with them, but I know I can pick up the pace. On the train I marked a few cuts, and perhaps there’s too much business—people physically dancing around each other. I may have overdone it. I can fix it, I know I can. Then it’s time to work on the Wendy Wasserstein I’ll be casting here. Because of the Don Juan offer, I’ve been thinking about Shaw’s Man and Superman. We need a whole new way of staging Shaw.”