The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  Maybe an abortion was planned and he simply did not intend ever to mention what he considered a non-event. It was pure accident she had found out. And had she really heard what she thought Sheryl said? Was she making up a whole drama out of a misunderstood allusion overheard on a bad phone connection? She began to feel foolish. Had she misinterpreted Sheryl’s comments?

  “I always wanted to play John Tanner, and now I’m past it. Never will I play Hamlet, and never will I play half the roles I imagined. I wonder if I gave up acting prematurely. But I’m not one of those whizzes who can act and direct at once. It fucks up my head. I have to see the cast in my mind all the time, as well as on the stage, and if I’m acting, I can’t do it. I need to stand back and watch them all and feel the choreography of the scene, and watch the larger movement of the play.”

  “I can understand that,” she said, half-reluctantly drawn into discourse. “Even nonfiction books of the sort I write have structure, and I have to keep that structure in mind. Everything from a class to a lecture has pacing. Even a dinner has its proper rhythm.” It occurred to her to remark that in sex, too, pacing was important, but she felt inhibited with him. Talking about sex always seemed a form of flirtation among verbal people.

  “It’s been praised and attacked. I brought all the reviews for you.”

  She hated reading his reviews, but he liked her to. When he had an opening in Boston, she was the one who scanned them and simply reported to him, good, bad, mixed. He would read them all eventually, but it put off the inevitable bad scene for a while, his obsessive vulnerability to criticism. Experimentally she asked, “Do you want me to see the play before you leave New York?” Sometimes he liked her to come in toward the end of a run. She always felt it had something to do with detaching from the cast, from whoever he had become involved with. She was summoned to signal his retreat.

  “I’m conflicted about it,” he said, grabbing hold of her and pulling her onto the couch beside him. “I’d like you to see it, for sure. Who else can compare it with the production here? How do you feel about coming down?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said honestly. She would have to weigh the possible pain and discomfort—and the loss of time she didn’t have to spare—against her own curiosity, the sense that not to know what she was up against was foolish. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Fine,” he said with obvious relief. “You decide and let me know.”

  Why was he leaving it up to her? If she did come, he could honestly tell Sheryl and company that she had been determined to see the play in New York. Nick and she were in agreement: she preferred to make her own decision. Another woman might rush to confront Sheryl, but she could see no purpose in such a scene. Nick was her problem, not Sheryl.

  His arm around her, he was talking about Shaw. “When I first read him, I was smitten by the prefaces. It wasn’t till I saw an excellent production of Major Barbara that I began to realize that the plays were rich. If Shaw were only the polemicist of his essays, we wouldn’t keep putting on his plays. It’s because they’re full of marvelous roles, especially for actresses. Kinky juicy people marching around the stage being witty and perverse but seething inside. His characters have a great deal of inner stuff.”

  She was drawn irresistibly into conversation. The sexiest thing about him was the way he talked. She could not help but be flattered that, after all these years, he was still interested in communicating with her. She was one of his favorite sounding boards. Reluctantly she found herself warming toward him.

  She could read his body language clearly: he was trying to be open and close. Only spite could armor her against his appeal, and what use was spite? It felt good for a moment to reject him, but the damage could be long-lasting. What she most desired was for the two of them to be a couple again. Love was not a constant, she had learned that years before. It swelled and shrank, it grew weak and recovered into vigor. Vronsky sat on the small Oriental staring at the two of them, as if at a puzzle he was attempting to figure out. His eyes were fixed and very yellow. He was a question in the form of a furry tabby.

  The answer to the question, she told him silently, was a tentative but optimistic yes. Yes, I will try to love Nick. Yes, I will let you try to love me, Nick. She let herself lean into him. At once his hand clasped her shoulder more firmly and his thigh pressed against hers.

  In bed she enjoyed herself more than she had thought she would, but she felt oddly detached, as if she were studying each gesture, each kiss, each embrace, familiar and yet slightly distant, as if she were watching them from above, from the perspective of absence. There was something elegiac about the lovemaking. It might be that this time, something was broken beyond mending between them. She had worked hard at the relationship for years, and perhaps she simply lacked the energy to continue that labor. She felt some deep fierce grasping in herself slowly beginning to relax. It was not over, but neither was it as it had been.

  She rose from their bed and ran the bath water, listening to make sure David had not come home in the meantime. She went from Nick loose and easy from her orgasm, yet thoughtful and detached. She had used to wonder how he could go from her bed to another woman in another city, but now she could almost mimic his ability to be intensely with her, then quite gone and forgetful.

  She had much to consider. She had much to decide, alone.

  TWENTY

  Mary

  Mary spent an unquiet night in an ex-client’s apartment. Mrs. McNamara no longer used the cleaning service—she was saving money and had moved into a three-room apartment near Washington Street in Brookline—but she still needed her schnauzer Serena fed and walked whenever she went to New York to see her son. Mary didn’t sleep well, because she was far more nervous in an apartment than in a house. She’d have no warning at all if Mrs. McNamara suddenly returned. Neighbors’ voices, their TV laughing, water running in the tub, the whir of a blender or the whine of a vacuum, made her wonder if, no matter how quiet she tried to be, they couldn’t equally well hear her. She kept her carry-all by the back door, to retreat quickly if need be down to the service door.

  As she rode up out of the Porter Square subway station the next morning, she knew something was wrong. Five policemen milled around the parking lot of the shopping center across the street. They were going through the contents of a large Dumpster. Last night it had snowed. Crossing to pass near the police, curious, wary, she saw that the snow near the Dumpster was maroon. Blood?

  She wondered if someone had been run down in the parking lot. Sometimes local kids used the lot as a shortcut and drove through as if the checkered flag was down at Indianapolis. Her ex-husband had harbored a weakness for races. He saw himself as a racing car driver, vroom, vroom, taking the corners at Monte Carlo in his Ferrari. He drove a Lincoln, too fast and too aggressively. Only after she and the children had been in two minor but terrifying accidents was she able to persuade him to drive more reasonably when the children were in the car. But he resented her interference. He sulked for months. “Okay, you do all the driving” was his response if she criticized.

  She was a serviceable chauffeur for children needing to be taken to ballet lessons, basketball practice: she was a capable delivery boy bringing suits to the dry cleaner’s and bags of groceries home. But trucks made her nervous, fearful they were going to drive right over her car. Enormous and male, they made her car feel small and feminine and in danger. She had a moment of longing for her last car, a green Datsun station wagon. It had been part of her.

  She realized she was standing there flatfooted beside the parking lot staring at a white car and paying no attention to how she appeared. She glanced around quickly, but many passersby had stopped to watch the police. She was early this morning, because of being anxious in the apartment and because she had slept poorly. Well, at least she had been warm and safe. Two inches of snow had fallen during the night. Now the sky was a spongy grey, just below freezing, but nothing more was coming down. Tonight she could count on another
anxious night at Mrs. McNamara’s; then tomorrow early, she must get out.

  Two people were asking a third what had happened. She edged close to hear. A hale elderly man in a tweed overcoat was holding forth loudly. “It was only a bag lady. Happened late last night apparently in the doorway of the video shop.” He was one of those self-important types who like to be in the know, so he was in his element, people pressing to hear him.

  She clutched herself. She could not keep from asking, “What happened? Is that the lady who always hangs around here with a shopping cart?”

  “I don’t know her personally,” the speaker said loftily. “I wouldn’t know. She was sexually assaulted. Isn’t that unbelievable?” He shook his head with a grimace of disgust.

  “Is she alive?” she asked.

  “She was beaten, stabbed, then pushed into the Dumpster. A security guard noticed the blood. She was taken away in an ambulance.… I couldn’t tell if she was alive—I really wouldn’t know.”

  She was going to have to take a chance and make herself talk to the police, no matter how fearful of calling attention to herself she always was. “Sir,” she approached the youngest. She made it a policy to be super polite. She prided herself on keeping the manners of a lady. Anyone hearing her voice could tell she had a good upbringing. “I work near here and I used to see that woman who was attacked. I wonder, is she all right?”

  The policeman grimaced. “She got stabbed and beaten up pretty badly. She was unconscious when we got here.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where the ambulance took her?’

  “Cambridge City Hospital. When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Last week, Wednesday. I’d just see her near the subway. I never even knew her name,” she said truthfully and backed away. She hastened across the street, afraid the policeman would decide to question her further. She didn’t slow down until she’d turned off Massachusetts Avenue. She had three routes between the subway and Mrs. Landsman’s house. Today her priority was getting out of sight before the policeman decided she might have valuable information.

  The house had not returned to its abandoned air. Mrs. Landsman seemed to be eating regularly and keeping things in reasonable order, although untidy. She tended to read the paper all over the living room and kitchen and leave open books on half the surfaces, as if she was reading seven books at once.

  Mrs. Landsman didn’t expect her to take out Bronskee’s litter box, which she appreciated, although she had to do it for other clients. Mrs. Landsman had a frozen pint of homemade spaghetti sauce and a quarter pound of lean ground beef defrosting on the drainboard of the sink. She had been stocking the refrigerator with juice, skim milk, lots of fruit and vegetables and bakery bread. Maybe the husband was coming home soon.

  Mrs. L. was reading about murder lately. Mostly she read academic books and journals downstairs, but her bedroom reading was usually recipe books and autobiographies of women. Most people had going-to-bed rituals. Some of her couples slept together and some slept separately. It did not seem related to whether they made love. Mrs. Stone used to have her change her sheets when she came in Mondays, and her bed always smelled as if they’d spent the whole weekend in it; but Mr. Stone had his own room. Some people kept the wand for the TV right on the bedside table, so Mary knew they dozed off to “The Tonight Show” or David Letterman. Others, she saw a movie in the VCR partway played. Some, like Mrs. Landsman, read. Romance novels, mysteries seemed most popular for putting her ladies to sleep. Mrs. DeMott had a white-noise machine.

  She used to favor steamed milk with nutmeg. She slept poorly when the babies were little. After that, she had an off-switch in her head, and once that was thrown, it was good-bye for eight hours. Now she must remain alert. She never slept soundly. There was no unbroken peaceful rest for those without their own safe place in the world. Even mice had their nests in the walls and squirrels in the trees.

  She rushed through the cleaning so that she could call the hospital. She had been putting it off, out of embarrassment. She did not even know the woman’s name. Her concern was superstitious; she cared about the woman lest she become like her. Mary had slept on the street and barely survived, wouldn’t have but for the kindness of other women who had shown her how to manage.

  At twelve, she did call. The desk was suspicious of her. She had to give them her name and a phone number, so she gave them Mrs. Landsman’s number. Yes, the victim was admitted. They would not give out her name, although they seemed to know it now. The victim was still unconscious.

  She reflected as she cleaned how odd it was as a job. She was paid the same for cleaning the house after Thanksgiving, when mobs of people seemed to have been camping there and every room was overused, as she was for the weeks it was just Mrs. Landsman and her cat. Today she took some time out to shower. She always had her towel and wash cloth along in her carry-all. Fortunately no one seemed to find it odd for a cleaning lady to tote the equivalent of a suitcase with her. Mary had not dared bathe at the apartment, for fear the neighbors would overhear.

  She could not get that woman out of her mind. She kept telling herself it was no business of hers. The victim, as they called her, was probably crazy and weird—weird the way she was during those months she lived on the streets with people looking through her as if she was a hydrant. Mary couldn’t stop seeing the woman’s prematurely lined face, her soft brown eyes, hunched over the shopping cart to make herself smaller, to take up less space. She could not stop imagining some brutal hoodlum forcing himself on her, into her, her trying to fight but scared to make too much noise, because wherever she was, she wasn’t supposed to be there.

  Her mind would not obey her and forget. That was how it happened that she was on the downstairs phone when Mrs. Landsman rushed in. She was home early. She almost never got there before Mary left. They communicated through notes. She seemed surprised to see Mary on the phone, and Mary was mortified. She had a policy of not letting her ladies catch her using anything but the vacuum cleaner. “Go right ahead,” Mrs. L. said. “Is something wrong, Mrs. Burke?”

  She decided to try the truth. After all, she was allowed to be concerned, even if she could hardly explain why she was fixed on that poor woman.

  Mrs. Landsman was indignant. “That’s savage. And he stuffed her in a Dumpster? How is she?”

  “They won’t tell me,” Mary said. “I don’t even know her name. I pass her whenever I come to clean. I used to say hello. I felt sorry for her.”

  “Of course. I’ve seen her near the subway.” She took off her coat and sat at the phone, frowning. “I’ve done a lot of favors for people around here over the years. When I was researching rape victims, I ran sessions for the police—now there are psychologists who specialize, but then it was too new. Make yourself a cup of tea and sit down for a while.”

  Mrs. Landsman turned into somebody else. She was calling and chatting up people and insisting. She talked to someone at the precinct, she talked to a reporter on the Globe, she talked to a doctor at the hospital. She was galvanized, talking fast. Mary was bemused. She drank her tea and waited. She was terrific at waiting silently and almost invisibly.

  Finally Mrs. L. put down the phone and handed Mary a note. “Your woman’s name is Beverly Bozeman. She was admitted under Jane Doe, but when they went through her coat, she had an expired driver’s license sewn in the lining. She’s suffering from concussion, a broken arm and two stab wounds, exposure, shock and loss of blood. She’s not conscious, and she’s listed as critical. You should be able to get news of her now when you call. Here’s the extension for her ward.”

  Mary left a bit dazed, with that note tucked carefully in her wallet. The way Mrs. Landsman went at it took her aback. People in authority did not impress Mrs. L., and she had no trouble asking for what she wanted. Mrs. L. must have two personalities, one in the family and one in the outer world. Mary had always thought of her as a long-suffering woman. It seemed stranger than ever what she put up with, but Mrs. L. mu
st be crazy about her husband. Probably Mrs. L. figured the way things are that she wouldn’t find another. But Mary was impressed. She appreciated Mrs. L. taking the time to find out the facts, and she was grateful that her client didn’t think Mary was foolish.

  Beverly Bozeman. The poor creature had a name. Tonight from Mrs. McNamara’s apartment, she would put a blanket over her head to make a tent that would muffle her voice, and she would call the hospital again. Let the hospital know that somebody cared about the torn body of Beverly.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Leila

  Leila was sitting at Cathy’s kitchen table drinking spearmint tea out of a heavy and strangely squashed mug of spotted maroon. She did not ask for coffee, as she remembered that Zak had been required to produce that, and she finally had Cathy to herself. The table was glass on wrought-iron legs. The chairs had wrought-iron backs in the shape of hearts. Leila found them painful, but Cathy seemed comfortable. She was wearing jeans and a sweater with a blue background and large white and orange daisies knitted in. Her hair hung straight, no longer in a ponytail.

  “Sam’s lawyer told me to get it cut,” she explained. “He said I couldn’t go into court with a ponytail. I don’t see why. I don’t think hookers wear ponytails, do they? I’ve worn my hair that way since college.”

  “Lawyers have some kind of science of what you should wear in court to influence juries. I always think, how do they know? But then maybe they pick out people who fit the profile that likes the kind of clothes they tell you to wear, so it’s a self-enclosed system. When I’ve had to testify, I’ve been told to wear a navy or grey suit with a white blouse, small earrings.”

  Cathy giggled. “Yeah, he told me I have to wear a flowered dress. I don’t own a flowered dress. So he said, Go buy one. Up to the neck, with a white lace collar. I don’t have money to waste on clothes I’ll never wear again. But Zak said I have to do it for Sam, and he’s going to give me the money. He said, go to Talbots in Centerville and you can pick out something Waspy. I am a Wasp, I said, and so what I wear is Waspy enough!” Cathy’s habit of widening her eyes as she spoke was disconcerting. Perhaps years ago, she had been told she had beautiful eyes, and that widening them made them more prominent, but Leila doubted she had any notion how often and how automatically she did it.