The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  She did not attempt to bring the conversation nearer to her interests, but let him chatter about the theater. She believed in letting her subjects talk when she had enough time, and she would return next week, as she told him when the visiting time was up.

  In the car on the way back to her own, she said to Zak, “I can’t imagine Sam killing anyone. I felt the same way about Becky. Either the whole law enforcement apparatus is wacky, a hypothesis I’m willing to entertain, and this is a miscarriage of justice, or else my imagination is failing me and my empathy is getting in the way. I’ve known murderers before, and some of them were sweet and good women. They’d been driven to violence by brutality, by abuse. They were protecting their own lives, their children’s. I can’t get past that great lump of the fact of the murder.”

  “I have the same problem,” he said. “Today I did the lawyer’s work for him. I kept arguing with Sam that if he did anything, he has to talk to his lawyer. The State is offering a deal.” He rubbed his eye hard. “I’m sitting there arguing with him that maybe he should take the plea bargain, and then I think, what am I doing? The poor kid shouldn’t be in jail. He should be home getting ready for college in the fall. He should be studying his trigonometry. He should be on the chess team getting ready for a match with Brookline. I feel schizophrenic.”

  “Have you ever wanted to kill anyone?”

  He snorted. “Me, I fix broken bones. Oh, now and again, usually after the fact. Have you?”

  She ran her hand through her short thick hair, tugging. “I have trouble with anger. I just sit on it like a big hot egg. This is going to be some drive home today with the snow.” At least Vronsky would be waiting. She thought she could almost say that to Zak, for he too lived only with his animals.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Mary

  Mary went to see Beverly Bozeman two days a week, while she was cleaning in Cambridge. She took to hanging around the old Sears store in between cleaning and visiting hours. They had made it into a mini-mall. It had toilets and she could sit down, move slowly from shop to shop. In the fast-food places, she was expert at passing by food someone had left on a table and snatching it up without pausing. Oftentimes women left French fries or cole slaw. When she was little, she thought it was cold slaw. Her family ate quantities of it, on the sweet side, also sauerkraut and potato salad. There were dishes none of her ladies ate that used to be common, like carrots in orange gelatin and vegetables in lemon, and the frothy gelatin desserts. Ham and shrimp in aspic. A standing rib roast had been one of her specialties. She hadn’t seen one in ten years.

  She amused herself by comparing clothing, hairstyles, what people said, what they did for fun. Card games. She remembered canasta. And Michigan rummy. Young matrons had to play bridge, as important as knowing about children’s inoculations. It had been grounds for divorce if a wife couldn’t hold up her end of a doubles bridge game. Maybe she liked the remember game because, without her memories, she was nobody. She had a sudden fierce need to call her daughter, to prove she had some connection, a real past, that once she had been part of a tight family. She called from a pay phone at the hospital. They had a couple of old phones where she could sit, which she appreciated.

  She identified herself to Cindy’s husband Ron. He never recognized her voice. He sounded startled, as if he had forgotten she existed. There was a long pause. Finally Cindy picked it up. “Hello, Mom? Is something wrong?”

  “Could you call me back at this number? My phone isn’t working, so I’m calling from a pay phone.”

  She waited and waited, pretending to look for coins in her purse. Finally the phone rang. “Mom? I had to finish loading the dishwasher. Are you well?”

  “I’m fine … All the Christmas decorations are up here. It made me think of you and the kids.”

  “We’re going over to Daddy’s for Christmas, you know that. What would you like for Christmas?”

  “I’d love a wool jacket, a blazer I mean.”

  “What color?”

  “Blue. Or navy. Just so it’s roomy and warm. Winters up here are hard.”

  “But you like it up there. You always say how much you like it.”

  “It’s just fine.” She knew Cindy was terrified she would move back to the Washington-Baltimore area. “Is there something … something not too big I can get Marissa and Doug?”

  Cindy launched into a list that went on for several minutes. Diligently Mary scribbled the list on a piece of paper, but she felt despair. She could not buy any of these things. She loved to send presents to her grandchildren, but all her gifts together could not cost more than eighty dollars. She never could put money away in her account for emergencies and her someday car during December and January, because of Christmas. She had to send something. She would be haunting Filene’s basement, but even then, it was tormenting and humiliating to have so little to spend. She sighed as she said good-bye.

  Beverly was a moody woman. Living with husbands and kids, women were always damping themselves down to make the household and family work. Then afterward, when they were alone, nobody put a check on them. A woman could let it all fly, with nobody she had to please or placate. When Mary walked into Beverly’s ward, she never knew if Beverly would be glad to see her or if she’d be in a sulk. Her foul mouth upset Mary, but she couldn’t blame Beverly, considering what she’d been through. “Beverly? It’s Mary.”

  “She can see you just fine. She has got enough wrong with her without you deciding she’s blind and dumb too.” Beverly grinned. They hadn’t replaced the tooth her attacker knocked out. She had a gap now, giving her a disreputable air even in the hospital gown.

  “How are you doing? Guess you aren’t seeing double any longer.”

  “Once is enough, with what she got to look at, right?”

  “That’s so. Are they feeding you okay?”

  “She’s getting fat. Three meals a day, and some of her visitors bring her snacks. She don’t expect you to, so don’t look like that. She got plenty of visitors. The nurses are impressed. The police even came once, but they won’t do anything. She bets they make jokes about it.”

  “Anything that involves old ladies is good for a laugh.”

  “She’s old before her time. But she’s filling out in here. She gained five pounds already, you know that?”

  “Do they say when they’re letting you out?’

  “She won’t ask. She’ll stay as long as they’ll let her.”

  “I was never in the hospital except for the birth of my kids. After the first one, Cindy my oldest, I was dying to go home. With Jaime, I wanted to stay and stay and be taken care of a little longer. By then I knew what it’s like to go home with a baby to a house that needs cleaning and a kid screaming where’s supper. Two kids, and I hardly ever see them.”

  Mary sat back embarrassed, flushed. She had talked more about herself in the last couple of minutes than she had in years. Because she had told Beverly her secret, she seemed to want to tell her whole life. Beverly listened, although Mary felt their lives had been so different when they were both “inside the fold” to use Beverly’s phrase, that she was never sure what Beverly pictured. “Sometimes,” she said to Beverly, “when I’m talking about Cindy or Jaime or my ex-husband, suddenly I feel as if I’m telling you about some woman I work for, or as if I made it all up. It’s so far away. Do you ever feel that way?”

  “She hates to think about her life before. If she does, she gets mad. Then all she can do is mutter and kick the curb, and then she looks even crazier.” Beverly gave that gaunt gap-toothed grin. “She gets scared when she thinks about when they discharge her. Can’t go back to Porter Square. The police know her now. She got to find a new hang-around. But she sure wishes she could stay in here through the winter.”

  “Winter is so hard.” She wanted to tell Beverly about stealing the sleeping bag, but she was too ashamed. “I always thought the streets were safe then, because of the cold.”

  “Nothing’s safe.” Beverly
laughed suddenly: a harsh dry laugh that caught in her throat, as if she were unused to laughing. “She was just thinking, Mary. She lost her home running from a man who was trying to kill her, and look what happened to her.”

  “Maybe you could get into a shelter. At least for a while.”

  “There’s ten women waiting for every one of those beds. Women with babies, women they dumped out of crazy bins, old ladies who can’t make it on the streets anymore. You ever been in one of those shelters?”

  Mary nodded. “Early on. I couldn’t hack it.”

  Wednesday, Mary dawdled, waiting to see if maybe Mrs. Landsman would come home early. Mrs. L. had a new pattern. She rushed in Wednesdays and changed, going out again for supper. Was she seeing somebody? She didn’t dress feminine. She tended to put on a suit or a tailored dress. As Mary had expected, Mrs. L. arrived just before five, out of breath from rushing. Mrs. L. did not seem to be checking up on her, just in a hurry. She nodded at Mary and was about to run upstairs, when Mary stationed herself in the way.

  “Mrs. Landsman, you seem to know a lot about women’s facilities in this city and how to find things out.”

  Mrs. Landsman looked surprised. Visibly she shifted gears, sitting down on one of the steps and motioning Mary to do the same. “What’s up?… Has this something to do with your friend who was beaten and left for dead?”

  Mary did not think it was appropriate she should sit, although Mrs. Landsman kept motioning at her. As if she were the cat, Mary thought in annoyance. “She’s still in Cambridge City Hospital, but they’ll discharge her soon. She’ll be back on the streets, and she’ll have to find a new neighborhood. She’d like to get into a shelter, but she says the lists are long.”

  “Given her condition, maybe something can be done. I do know some people. I have to go right out, I have a dinner meeting. But tomorrow I’ll make a few calls. Don’t get your hopes up or say anything to your friend yet.”

  It wasn’t as if Mrs. Landsman needed the sleeping bag. Maybe it had been used once. Mrs. L. would never even know it was gone, probably for years. Sleeping in a church basement, as she was planning to do tonight, she would be able to fall asleep instead of shivering all night in the damp. Curled up in the sleeping bag, she felt almost cared for, almost held.

  But that night when she entered the basement, she heard a shuffling sound. She stood still in the dark and listened. An unfamiliar smell, a human smell, unwashed flesh. She heard someone stirring. Someone was waiting. Her heart thudded into itself like an ax striking soft wood. She backed away and then she trotted out as fast as she could. A janitor who had caught on to her? Another homeless person, a man?

  She returned to the Anzios’ car. They had the habit of leaving their garage and car unlocked. They had a long driveway for Cambridge, a long lot. Perhaps they felt their garage was far enough off the street to avoid notice. They had an old Volvo with a comfortable backseat. She could put up the armrest in the center and lie across, or tilt back one of the front seats. She decided to sleep in the back tonight.

  It had been a long day, and for several nights, she had slept poorly. She curled up in her fine light warm sleeping bag, her lifesaver, and fell into an exhausted sleep. It was dark in the garage. Normally the light of dawn woke her, but it was the shortest day of the year soon, and no light had penetrated the garage when suddenly she heard the door going up. She woke in a panic, remembering quickly where she was, as she had trained herself to do. There was no time to slip out of the car, no time to do anything but roll forward onto the floor.

  The door opened, the light went on overhead. She lay still on the floor of the backseat, still in her sleeping bag. This was the end. She was caught. She was trapped. She heard Mr. Anzio cough, start the car, stop to light a cigarette and then begin backing out of the drive. He turned the radio to a station with nothing on it but sports and headed up the street. She lay helpless in the backseat, trying to make herself as small as possible.

  He seemed to drive forever. She did not dare look out of the sleeping bag. Finally he pulled into a building. He put out his fourth cigarette and turned off the ignition, not bothering to shut off the radio first. He grabbed his briefcase off the seat beside him, locked the four doors from the driver’s door and took off. She was safe, shaking, but where?

  At once, she got up, rolled up her bag and put it in her carry-all. She took the catch off the rear door, fixed it so it would lock when she shut it, checked that she had left nothing, and staggered out of the car, stiff and weak in the legs. She was in a cavernous parking garage. She was still wobbly and she had to pee really bad. No chance of that. She saw an elevator, probably where Mr. Anzio had gone, but she was afraid to appear in some office building.

  A man was sitting in the booth beside the drive-in entrance, but he paid no attention to her as she trudged past and gave him a perfunctory wave. She emerged onto the icy street. She was downtown. She marched to the corner. Milk Street. She could get to the subway, although it would be a hike. Already seven forty-five. There were toilets in the Commons, if they were unlocked this early.

  She was terrified how late she had slept. She had been exhausted beyond endurance. She must buy a little alarm. One of those travel alarms, but they started around ten dollars. She could not take such a chance again of oversleeping, but if she bought the travel alarm, she would have to cut back on food. More scavenging. She must never, never sleep into the active time again.

  When she thought of Christmas coming, passing the decorations, there was always a tinge of melancholy, remembering childhood Christmases, remembering her family, the house full of Scotch pine and baking smells, everybody home. Actually it had been an edgy time, too many parties, too much eating and drinking, the kids never satisfied by their presents. They were always eying each other’s gifts. She was always disappointed in her gift from Jim; she had not understood she was lucky to be given anything. She had wanted a romantic present that proclaimed he still found her attractive. Dream on. He had not.

  Now she looked forward to Christmas because she would have a secure warm place to stay, when she could recover from this nagging cold, her throbbing back, her exhaustion. Her people were beginning to announce their plans. The Baers were definitely going to Florida the day after Christmas, until the day after New Year’s. She was set for that week. Now somebody had to go away for Christmas itself: they always did. This week, she thought as she tried to hurry on the icy pavements toward the subway still seven blocks away, they would say, Don’t come in Christmas week. Please feed Zurich or Griselda. Whatever, it translated into, Mi casa es su casa. Make yourself at home.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Becky

  Becky’s car broke down one January morning when she was trying to get to work. Terry had to drive her, making them both late. The estimate on the repairs was more than the car was worth. At this point, Mr. Burgess stepped in. Mr. Burgess and Terry, with Becky tagging along, went to a Toyota dealer and bought him a new Corolla. Terry wanted a Celica, but Mr. Burgess said it was not practical. They did not shop around, the way her family did for anything. Her mother would cover five stores to get a good price on a coat or a toaster.

  With the Burgesses, there was always some connection. Sometimes it was someone for whom the father had installed air-conditioning; someone they knew from St. Thomas the Apostle or from the Lions’. Or who had been in Terry’s fraternity, or with whom Chris had roomed in college. It did not seem to Becky that they got such good deals, but it was as if they required a proper introduction to a new riding mower before they could purchase it, or as if a there stranger could never be trusted. The person from whom they bought had to belong to some large invisible club—a club of which she was not a member.

  What it meant was that she drove Terry’s old car, and Terry got a new blue Corolla. The best thing about getting his car was that even at five years old, it was eight years newer than hers had been and it had a tape deck. Driving to work or home, even just sitting in traffic or doing her
errands, she would turn the music loud. The beat would fill the air. She would give her hair a toss and put on her sunglasses and rev up the engine. She would see herself, blond, slender, with her blue print scarf around her throat riding on the music as if it were surf, a perfect wave that those handsome boys rode in summer at the beach.

  She had never spent much time at the beach before they had moved to their new condo, but she had fallen in love with it. It was a world where she was queen. She looked the way women were supposed to in bathing suits. She treated her suit like her face, carefully washing it in cool water as soon as she got home, letting it dry hanging over the tub. It was deep blue, cut high in the thighs and low in the back. In winter, she missed the beach. January seemed an infinity, and now February stretched before her, grey ice to the horizon.

  Nowhere did men stare at her the way they did on the beach. On the beach no one paid much attention to cost and label of bathing suit, but only to the look, and she had it. The face was not as important as the body, and the body had to be thin and the hair ought to be blond.

  On mild days driving this car with the windows open and rock music enveloping her, she felt the same sense of being really seen, of finding herself admired, wanted, held aloft on the gaze of others. When she stopped for a light, she could feel the man in the next car looking. Sometimes she enjoyed pretending she had not noticed, particularly if the jerk made noises. Sometimes she would raise her glasses and give him a melting look. She hated the days it was too cold, when she had to keep rubbing to be able to see out the side windows. Then she was just a dowdy wife in a wool coat, blowing her nose and waiting for a light.

  She could never hope for that kind of attention at work. If she dared dress sexy or revealing, she’d be out on her ear in a week. Neat, that was the code, businesslike, no bright colors, no dangling earrings, no décolleté, skirts never too short.