The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  She turned on the espresso machine and checked her messages. Blinking light. Nick. “Since today is Saturday and I haven’t heard from you, I gather you decided not to come. It’s not like you to be so uncommunicative and to hang me up. Are you angry with me? Is everything all right with you? Are you depressed or is something bad going on with David or with Shana or with any of the fifty people you worry about? Give me a call and let me know.”

  “This is Cathy. This is Cathy on Saturday, I don’t know what date it is. Zak has absolutely forbidden that you see Sam, so I’m afraid it’s off. He’s the one paying for the lawyer, and I couldn’t afford that guy, he charges by the minute like a parking meter. So you have to fight this one out with Zak, please, and not with me, because I can’t make him change his mind when he gets like this. My husband was the same way. I’m really sorry.”

  “Shit,” Leila said. “Shit, shit, shit.” She let herself down heavily in her desk chair and cursed for five minutes. Cathy did not have an answering machine, fortunately. “Hi, it’s Leila.”

  “Leila, please don’t be angry with me. Sam wants to talk with you. But Zak has forbidden it. Maybe once he’s home, I can sneak you in.…”

  “What I need is directions to Zak’s. He descended on me without being invited. I intend to do the same to him.”

  Cathy did not argue but gave her the instructions. “But you won’t tell him I let you know.”

  “Do you think he’s likely to be there tomorrow?”

  “Sundays the clinic is shut except for emergencies. I’m really pissed at him. He acts as if Sam is his kid, like he’s taken over from Mike raising Sam. I think it’s because he lost his own daughter.”

  “You said she died in a fire?”

  “With his wife, Corinne. They lived in a big flashy house up in a canyon near L.A. She was a studio musician, gorgeous redhead. Sang backup, played electric violin. That’s one bad-luck family. Anyhow, he ought to be home.”

  Zak might be good at getting dogs to obey, but if he thought he could get rid of her, he was going to learn differently. Tomorrow morning she was going to poke right into his life, the way he had appeared in hers, and she was going to stand there arguing until he agreed to stop interfering. She had learned years ago that, because she was a big soft-bodied woman, people often thought of her as more pushable than she was. When she stood her ground and fought back, often men and women both were taken by surprise. As Zak would be.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mary

  Mary had never before stolen from her ladies, never anything but a yogurt or some jam or a slice or two of bread, some leftovers they wouldn’t miss. But Mrs. Landsman had been getting rid of old clothes from her son’s room. A lot of dust had come down with the boxes, and she asked Mary to clean the room.

  When Mary was putting suitcases of winter clothes up in the closet, woolens she guessed he scarcely needed in California, she ran across something jammed in a corner. It was a tiny sleeping bag. It was the normal size opened up, but it squished into a small roll. No one would ever know she had it in her carry-all.

  This had been a hard week. Snow was the worst, because she left tracks. She had to sleep in a church basement three nights. One night she spent at Logan. Another she slept in an unlocked garage behind the Anzio house, in their Volvo, curled in the backseat. If only she had a car of her own: she couldn’t stop thinking about it lately. She’d have her shell like a snail to carry with her, and on nights like this week she’d know she could survive. When she got too cold, she could drive around with the heater on. Her savings grew with infinite slowness. Once or twice she dropped hints to Cindy, how an old car would make her life easier. Cindy wrote back that she was sure with the repairs and insurance, her mother was lucky not to have to keep up some old clunker.

  All week she kept thinking about that sleeping bag. Her clients owned things that were exotic to her. Ten years ago, she had been an avid and knowledgeable consumer. She never used to buy a blender or a toaster without looking it up in Consumer Reports, to make sure she was getting the best for her family. Now she kept up with the latest consumer products by watching what her clients bought. The dishwasher at the DeMotts had to be programmed like a computer. It beeped when she touched the front. Their oven was the same.

  Her desires were far more modest: a hot plate, a tiny refrigerator, a cot. Or just a car to live in. But she coveted that sleeping bag. All those freezing nights with her feet getting numb and her nose running, she kept thinking how snug she would be in that light warm little sack. The son didn’t use it. Maybe he’d slept in it once or twice at some meeting or group event, but that was the sum of it. It still smelled new.

  She couldn’t get that sleeping bag out of her head. It was like being back in college and having a crush on a fellow she had met and talked with and knew would be just perfect for her, but he didn’t acknowledge she existed. She had a physical longing for it. She bet it cost seventy-five dollars at least. She couldn’t explain to Cindy why she would like a sleeping bag. Cindy wouldn’t believe that she had taken up hiking, and then Cindy’d probably buy one of those big ones. She couldn’t walk around Boston or Cambridge or Brookline or Newton with a sleeping bag in a roll on her back. Try carrying a sign reading HOMELESS. That bag would make such a difference in her comfort and safety these winter nights.

  On her next day at the Landsmans, she didn’t mean to do more than look at it. She cleaned the downstairs at a breakneck speed, scrubbing furiously, bashing that vacuum to and fro like a speeded-up video. Before she let herself touch it again, she cleaned the master bedroom and its bathroom. Finally she let herself go into the son’s room. It was just where she had put it, at the very back of the shelf. She took it down. Then she pulled it from its little nylon sheath and spread it out She couldn’t resist getting into it. Oh, it would be heaven itself.

  She couldn’t put it back in the closet and walk away. It was as if she was holding life in her hands. This flimsy thing could keep her alive some cold night when her luck was bad. She felt ashamed of herself. Mrs. Landsman always paid the service promptly, always did her own dishes, had never asked her to do laundry or anything else she wasn’t supposed to, that her other ladies tried to get away with. But Mary had to have the sleeping bag.

  Every day she had been calling the hospital. Today they told her that Beverly Bozeman was conscious and off the critical list. She was no longer in intensive care and could have visitors at the regular hours. Mary was being foolish, but she could not help identifying with the woman lying there in the hospital bed, maybe remembering nothing, maybe sick to death with fear. Beverly must be terrified of going back on the streets and ending up dead.

  She couldn’t stop thinking of Beverly, maybe because her own life had been hard this week. The holidays were coming, and her clients would start to travel soon. Already today Mrs. Williams told her they’d be in Florida the first week of January. She apologized for not needing the house cleaned. “Oh,” Mary said, “then you won’t be having anybody stay that I can clean up after?”

  So if she could survive the next three weeks, she’d have a roof over her head, a place she could spread out in. It gave her something to look forward to. She was waiting to see who was going away for Christmas. Last year she had a choice of two places.

  Being Friday, she was going to try Logan again, a different terminal from last Sunday. Friday was a big tourist and family night, so they were used to people in all states of disarray snoozing here and there. Also if she was lucky and a storm hit as it was supposed to, the airport would be full of people sleeping. She could even lie down.

  Storms were scary. They made people change travel plans. For those who lived on the streets, a storm could kill. She didn’t feel smart this week, she didn’t feel like such a great survivor. It was wonderful to sleep in her new bag. She felt secure that she wouldn’t die of exposure. She’d always been afraid when she was sleeping in a very cold place that maybe she’d never wake. She couldn’t afford to buy Be
verly Bozeman flowers, but she brought some magazines Mrs. Williams was discarding and a nice wool sweater Mrs. Landsman had been going to give to Goodwill. She said perhaps it would fit her daughter’s boy, and took it. She tried it on in the garage, but it was too big. The sleeves were too long and it hung below her belly. She couldn’t wear something so obviously a man’s and so obviously a discard, but she bet Beverly Bozeman could use it.

  She had a supper of leftovers from Mrs. Williams—rather dry deli roast beef, a couple of slices of bread, an apple. It didn’t quite fill her up, but she’d be all right. She went to Chestnut Hill Mall. It was nice to rest her feet. They had carolers and she sat and sang along. She had acquired a brand-new Bloomingdale’s shopping bag, which she had at her feet along with her carry-all and her purse clutched on her lap. Although she would rather have had someplace warm and secure for the night, and she would rather have had a meal instead of two bites for supper, she wasn’t discontent. Free entertainment was something she loved. It was the season when she liked to pass time around Faneuil Hall shopping area too. But tonight promised to be a little cold for outdoor sitting.

  They had poinsettias and baby evergreens all over and some white and pink camellias. She knew the Southern flowers from Bethesda. They had sometimes taken family vacations in the spring to Savannah or Charleston. She remembered touring those lush Southern gardens. She was never much of a gardener—more the petunia-and-marigolds-from-the-supermarket type, plus an occasional rosebush bought in bloom that died the first winter—but she loved the ambience of a well-planted, well-kept garden.

  Nobody looked at her twice, sitting with her new shopping bag in her twelve-year-old wool coat still serviceable, her hat that Cindy knitted her, gloves she got from a lost-and-found in Logan last year. She hit the bigger lost-and-founds regularly, for umbrellas, mufflers, gloves. A plaid muffler always turned up, as would a pair of black fur-lined gloves. She had three mufflers, only one visible. The others were wound around her thighs to keep her warm.

  She realized she wasn’t going to arrive when visiting hours started. She was delaying going. It was warm and cozy in the mall. She loved hearing the carols. It took her back to her childhood in Centralia. Sometimes she found herself concentrating on her childhood, to feel happy briefly.

  She got up and made herself leave. She knew it was superstition. She knew it was ridiculous to visit Beverly Bozeman. Beverly might be crazy. She might be a blithering idiot. She might be a hopeless drug-addict drunk who couldn’t count past three. Mary recognized the foolishness of her quest but felt compelled to take the Green Line to the Red Line to Cambridge and trudge through the snow already beginning to come down jerkily and fast.

  When they said a ward, she envisioned a huge room full of beds, but Beverly was in a smallish room with three other beds, all occupied by women. One, a Black woman of perhaps thirty, was in traction. Another Black woman had a head bandage on and seemed to be asleep or unconscious. The other white woman, even older than Beverly Bozeman, was watching the small television suspended above their beds.

  Beverly Bozeman was sitting up. She did have flowers. Beverly stared at Mary blankly, frowning, and then a nod of recognition. Mary felt embarrassed, not sure if it was better or worse that Beverly knew she had seen her before. “You’re the lady who talks to her in the morning or late afternoon, twice a week maybe.”

  “I came past the morning you were attacked. I thought you’d like a visitor. But I see you have a friend.” Mary waved at the chrysanthemums.

  “The rape crisis center gave her those.”

  Mary’s gaze dropped. She could not think about rape and look at Beverly. It was too frightening. It was foolish to pretend that anything that happened to Beverly Bozeman could not happen to her. She was a little distracted by the way Beverly talked about herself, but not surprised. On the streets, people developed weird quirks, tics, compulsive routines.

  Beverly looked tiny in the hospital bed. It was the hospital gown. She was no longer wrapped in ten layers of old clothing. Her grey-brown hair had been partly shaved and cut short, with a rakish towel-turban around her bandages. Her hands lay before her on the hospital blanket, small hands, very clean now and completely still. Bruises were just fading on her wrists, exposed by the gown.

  Mary tried to think of something to say. “I wanted to see that you were alive. What happened to you is so frightening.”

  “Why would it frighten you? It’s what happens to women on the streets.”

  “Any woman could end up on the streets,” Mary said evasively. “Will you really be all right? What do the doctors say?”

  “As little as they can.” Beverly giggled. “She gets her information from the nurses.… How old are you?” she demanded suddenly.

  “I’m sixty-one.”

  “Forty-seven.”

  Mary blinked, trying to keep her face from registering her reaction. “Forty-seven?” she repeated.

  “You think she’s twice that.” Beverly grimaced.

  “I thought you were … in your fifties.”

  “The nurses didn’t believe her till they checked her records from Maine. She comes from Bath. They build ships there. Her husband had a job in the yards. Then he lost it.”

  “I was married too,” Mary said. “I lost my husband to another woman, who lost him to another after that. He took my house, everything.”

  “She ran away from him. He used to beat her. He broke her jaw. There was a shelter and they took her in. But they can only let you stay thirty days. Then you have to find your own way. She didn’t have money for rent. She ran out the door with the clothes on her back and the money in her purse.” Beverly jerked her head at the Black woman in traction. “She’s homeless too. She’s been staying with a friend, but there’s no more room because the father of her friend’s kids came back. She was trying to beg, and somebody pushed her in front of a car. They called her a whore.”

  “Did they catch the man who hurt you?”

  “Of course not.” Beverly laughed dryly, convulsively, with the sound of an old car trying to start on a cold morning. “How hard are they going to look? They think he’s crazy, raping her. It’s not the first time, even.”

  “The same man?”

  “No, the other guy, he was homeless too. He caught her sleeping under a bridge. But he didn’t beat her up. That’s when she left Jamaica Plain and decided to live around here. She figured it was safer.”

  “Generally it is.”

  Beverly leaned gingerly on one elbow and motioned her closer. “Why did you really come to see her? Why do you care?”

  Mary suddenly found herself saying what she had concealed from the world. “I’m homeless too … Oh, I work like a dog cleaning people’s houses. But I sleep wherever I can.” She was shocked at herself. She stared from woman to woman to see if they had overheard, but no one was even looking.

  “Thought so,” Beverly said, nodding her head but unable to move naturally because of the bandages. “You’re still in the fold. Meaning that you can pass. She used to be that way. She thought all along you were one of us.”

  Mary froze on the visitor’s chair. How could Beverly tell? Something in the way she looked, the way she walked? How had she given herself away? She could not even bring herself to ask Beverly. It was too frightening.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Becky

  Becky floated through the first four months of her marriage. It was delightful to wake in the morning in their firm queen-sized bed in the pale blue bedroom painted just before they moved in. There on the other pillow was not her sister Laurie with her snuffling and her sly sour smirk. Now Terry’s corn silk hair was tousled against the pillow as he lay on his side in fetal position, innocent, vulnerable. The sheets had no stains, no history of sickness and pain. They were plaid or flowered. Even the pillows were fresh.

  Only two of them shared the bathroom. It astounded her how long he could manage to spend there on mornings when she had to get ready for work. But one man,
no matter how slow, was not nine other people, all in a hurry. Here when she did get the bathroom, it was clean—and she made sure it stayed that way. She had bought a toothbrush devoted to cleaning the grout. They had new fluffy towels and a rug on the floor, dark blue to match the tiles. The shower curtain had cute penguins on it. Everything was clean, everything was new, everything smelled fresh—just the way she had dreamed years before in the mall.

  The girls at the office had given her towels and sheets and a green striped plant. She put that in a corner of the living room. They had two Danish-style chairs that had been in the Burgess household. They had the TV and the stereo from Terry’s room at home. Gracie had given them a coffee table she had been storing in the basement. They didn’t have a couch yet, but Sylvie had suggested Becky put some pillows on the floor.

  The kitchen was small, but she was just learning how to cook, and by the time she got home from work, who could bother? They ate out three times a week. They got pizza or other takeout twice more, leaving her two meals a week to worry about. The appliances had come with the apartment, but the microwave and the toaster and the Mr. Coffee were wedding gifts. They had been given two blenders, an electric knife and an electric mixer, but they had turned those in on a VCR.

  The bedroom was the best room, for the Burgesses had given them money for a pale oak bedroom set, a queen bed, a vanity with a mirror and two side-by-side dressers. It was funny to open the closet door. His side was crammed with sports jackets and shirts and pants, full of sporting gear, skiing and running gear; on her side the rod was barely half covered.

  She heard him tell his buddy Lyle that she was unlike other women, just not interested in clothes. “When she moved in, she hardly filled a suitcase.” He thought that her lack of clothes showed that she was not vain and frivolous. He had never gone without a video game or a pair of fancy running shoes or a certain type of bike. He could not imagine a life almost devoid of possessions, not through self-denial, but because they were not affordable.