The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  “You’re right,” she said to Helen. “This hobby is just what I need.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Leila

  Zak was patting a setter who had been partially shaved, stitches showing. “I’ve been trying to come to terms with Sam’s confession, but mostly I’ve realized stuff about myself.”

  The blind tabby, Homer, was sitting in her lap purring. She was being stared at by an unblinking marmalade cat wearing an Elizabethan collar—to keep him from licking his wounds, Zak had explained. In front of the fire, a Great Dane was whimpering in his sleep. “Someday I’ve going to come in here, and you’ll have a horse in the living room. What did you realize?”

  “When I lost my wife and daughter, I replaced them with my brother Mike’s family as soon as he died. We weren’t close. We’d been rivals for my mother’s attention. Cathy came with the territory, but the territory was Sam. I proceeded to make Sam up. I saw him as me. I had lost my daughter, but now I had a son, a younger me.”

  “How do you think you made him up?”

  “He’s lonely, insecure, bright. I saw him as wanting what I’d wanted, to be loved, to be respected in spite of not being the way young males were supposed to be. I cherished him as if I were making up my miserable adolescence to myself. You can’t do that with somebody else.”

  “Do you think Sam minded?”

  “I think he went along, enjoying the attention. But my need to see him as me kept me from understanding him.”

  “Because you couldn’t have killed Terry Burgess?”

  “I’ve acted like a complete asshole to get laid. Like a puppy in heat. But when Connie Roberts asked me to steal her the social studies exam—I was our social studies teacher’s pet and dogsbody—I had sense enough to figure out it wasn’t my body she was interested in. I had a lot of fail-safes built in by the time I was sixteen.”

  “You never thought he did it, not really, until he confessed.”

  “But do we really know he did it? He confessed, right, but he’s miserable and confused. Maybe he’s into pleasing them now. Saying what they want him to say. Maybe he’s still protecting her. Say, he knows or strongly suspects she did it, and he’s sharing her guilt.” He shifted in his chair.

  “No, come on. He involved her in the confession.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know any longer what he did. Maybe he’s confused and despairing. He said he was losing a sense of himself.”

  “Zak, if he confessed, you don’t really think he invented it.”

  Zak was silent. He went to poke at the fire. He squatted with his back to her, fussing. Finally he turned with an audible sigh. “I don’t know what I think. Except I can’t believe Sam was that violent. Ever.”

  “The murder still evades me. I can’t see it.”

  “Have you read the reports? It was butchery. That man was battered to death. He was hit and hit and hit again. Can you see Sam doing that?”

  “Or Becky.” She sighed in frustration. “I should never have taken on this assignment.”

  “I just realized, I’m pissed at him. It’s petty, it’s egotistical. My feelings are hurt that he lied to me. I can’t have seemed like a sympathetic listener if he had wanted to confess. I was dead set to prove him innocent.”

  “Loyalty isn’t the worst virtue in the world, Zak.”

  “Sometimes it’s the blindest.”

  She crossed her arms in the rocker, tapping her foot. “If you hadn’t given Sam your love and your trust, right now you’d be blaming yourself for what he did.”

  “If he did it. If he even knows anymore if he did or not. He’s just a kid in trouble. Look, sometimes I think a lot of what we call a person is a fictional construct. We say things about ourselves. I like this, I don’t like that, and that makes us feel a sense of continuity. We remember certain things, although we forget ninety-five percent of what happens to us. But am I the same man who married Corinne? If I met her clone tomorrow, I’d never consider marrying her. In fact, I’d run the other way.”

  “So what are you saying? That Sam doesn’t exist? That I don’t?”

  “Only that we’re more fluid than we realize. Actually I don’t feel fluid.” He shrugged. “I seem to have an exoskeleton of rigid expectations.”

  “If you thought Sam was you, I thought he was my son. I learned something unpleasant about myself too. Maybe I can understand Becky now, because I did something awful yesterday.” She told him the story. “I too can be violent.”

  He shook his head, grinning. “Did you hit him with the vase?”

  “I hit his shoulder.”

  “Would it have killed him if you’d hit him head-on?”

  “Probably not,” she said reluctantly. “Of course not. But it might have cut his face. Or broken his nose.”

  “It’s a long way from bloodying someone’s nose to bludgeoning him to death with a blunt instrument. Haven’t you ever thrown a vase or a dish at your husband before?”

  She shook her head no. “Have you?”

  “I’m too inhibited against hurting anyone physically. I prefer to be nasty and sarcastic. But Corinne used to throw objects like pillows and books. Or she’d throw my clothes at me. A vase could do damage, but it’s not exactly an attempt on his life.”

  She glared. Then he began to laugh, looking at her, and she began to laugh too. “I fancied myself a possible murderess.”

  “Why should you want to believe yourself violent? Perhaps it takes only a certain lack of imagination, of empathy, to kill a person.”

  “You think I’m romanticizing murder.”

  “Men kill women. Women rarely kill men. But women think because they imagine violence, they’re capable of it. You feel guilty for wanting to hurt your husband. I hate to keep calling him that, by the way.”

  “Nick. His name is Nick.”

  “He isn’t really your husband any longer. What did the lawyer say?”

  “If Nick doesn’t contest the divorce, it will be easy. I can’t imagine why he would. The stickiness will be the financial agreement.”

  “I assume you are the principal breadwinner.”

  “How charming that you assume that. Nobody ever does. Yes. I’ve made about two-thirds of our joint income for the last ten years or so. But we own everything together.”

  “Isn’t it amazing that a man and a woman start out with kisses, and twenty years later, the main tie is ownership.”

  “I have this drive to be free, now. Since I finally accept that it’s over, I want it legally undone. I hate the idea that we’re a couple under the law, that we’re bound like convicts chained together.”

  “Drama in the afternoon! It’s a legal fiction. Tomorrow, get the locks changed. Pack his stuff up and have it delivered to the Charles. Do you need help?”

  “Part of me wants it all over and done with and part of me doesn’t believe it. We’ve been together all my adult life.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “No. That’s part of what I’ve been realizing. I’ve been afraid to see it, but this last shock was too much for a structure already seriously undermined.… This is boring. You’ve never even met Nick.”

  “Make a list of what you want out of the divorce and give it to the lawyer. What you must have and what you’d like.”

  “Are you always rational? Aren’t you prone to guilt, at all? I bet you are.”

  “I was the younger son, but I have the classic oldest pattern. I don’t feel guilty, I feel responsible. If you get a cold, I should have prevented it I’m always trying to save people. To rush in, particularly with women, but it was the same way with Sam when I think about it, and fill a need. Plug a leak. Make it right. Good mind-set for a vet, right?”

  “Was it that way with your wife?”

  He frowned, petting the orange cat absentmindedly. “I’m trying to remember how it seemed when I met her. She was pretty but vulnerable. No sense of how to take care of herself—that was how it looked to me, good old sensible middle-class, did-you-r
emember-to-turn-off-the-stove me. The guy who checks the door twice to make sure it’s locked. Who looks at his wallet before he goes out the door and again in the car before he drives off.”

  “After twenty years of being the responsible one, that seems sweet. I’d love somebody else to worry about whether the stove was left on.” She yawned. “What time is it? I’ve got to leave. It’s a two-hour drive, and I won’t reach home till midnight.” She stood, reaching for her purse.

  He got up and stood in front of her. “Stay.”

  “Stay? Why would it be easier to drive back in the morning? It’s true I wouldn’t be so tired, but there’d be more traffic.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders. “I’ve always been terrible at this. Usually women make passes at me. Vets are always having women flirt with them. Something about the hands-on stuff. It’s hard for me to ask for what I want. But stay with me.”

  Her mouth fell open. After a moment she remembered to close it. “I can’t.…”

  “You can if you want to.”

  “Why do you want me to? Oh, we’ve begun really talking to each other, and I like that a lot. But … why do you suddenly want to go to bed with me?”

  “It’s not sudden. We’ve been spending lots of time together. I find you attractive, and now you’re available.”

  “You’re saving me. I became audibly unhappy, and you’re saving me.”

  “No, you can save me this time. You’re a rock, Leila. Any sensible man would grab at you.” He put his hands on either side of her face and kissed her.

  It felt utterly strange, his face very smooth where the beard had been, his lips moving against hers and then his tongue entering her mouth. She almost panicked. She stepped back away from him, and he let her go.

  “Zak, I can’t do this. I’m not a spontaneous person. I haven’t seriously considered another man in over twenty years—”

  He smiled, still standing very close to her, one hand warm and heavy on her shoulder. “You have to imagine how endearing I find that. So seriously consider me. This isn’t a now-or-never proposition.”

  “Please don’t feel rejected. You don’t understand how unsexual my life has been. It’s been years since Nick and I made love often. It’s hard for me to imagine another man even attracted to me.”

  “Because you’re not young. You’re not fashionably flesh-less. You’re a handsome woman who looks and acts solid. I find you interesting. You can stay on the couch if you like. I won’t bother you.”

  “No, I feel too confused. I have to drive back and feed my cat and get my stuff together for class. I also have to call the lawyer and tell her I’m going ahead. Besides, Zak, you’re Sam’s uncle. I’m trying to write about him objectively.”

  “You aren’t trying him. And do you believe, if we went to bed right now, that it would affect your opinion of his guilt?”

  “Wouldn’t you expect it to?”

  “I can promise you, no. I have enough scientific training to respect empirical data and inference.”

  “Even when it leads where you don’t want it to go? I’m not convinced. I’m not convinced I wouldn’t be swayed.”

  He walked her to the door and gave her a brief farewell kiss, which she responded to, shyly, almost furtively. “Just promise you’ll consider me.”

  “I promise.”

  It was only as she lay in bed that night with Vronsky curled into her side that she reexperienced the kiss with Zak, this time with pleasure. Remembering the feel of his warm mouth against hers, his lean body of almost exactly her height and weight, she felt a stir of response she had not in the moment She had to make him understand she simply could not start another relationship. It would be a year, two years, maybe longer, before she was emotionally free enough to be able to respond to another man. She hoped that she could explain without alienating him, because she really did like his company. She could not possibly become involved with him while writing about his nephew. By the time she finished the book, in two years or so, he would probably be remarried. Too bad about the timing. A real pity.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Becky

  Becky had never realized how much she prized the forty-five minutes to an hour she used to have between the time she got home from work and the time Terry arrived. It was one reason she tried to shop on weekends or her lunch hour. Sometimes she turned on “Hard Copy” or “A Current Affair” but she did not pay attention. It was just a benign presence, a buzz of conversation while Becky bustled about. After the stress of the day, she floated around the condo, picked up a stray sock of Terry’s for the hamper, gave a little spray of polish to the coffee table. It was the time for her to make love with the condo she adored, to absorb its neatness, its cleanliness, its prettiness. Sometimes she just sat and looked around, imagining how she could place a chair she had seen in the Sunday Globe magazine, how she could hang something colorful over the couch.

  Now every day when she arrived, Terry was waiting. Waiting for supper. Waiting to be amused. Waiting for someone to take out his frustrations on. Now the condo was never neat. His golf sweater flopped over the back of the chair. His clubs fell over when she opened the hall closet. Wrappings from a fast-food lunch lay on the counter and something sticky had spilled on the floor. An empty potato chip bag hid under the couch. Sports Illustrated had slipped halfway behind a cushion.

  He watched all the reality shows that acted out crimes and captures. She hated those programs. They were full of fat middle-aged cops and other boring people. At least when he watched the scandal shows, they talked about interesting things, like what Cher and Madonna were doing. That she could get into. She could see herself being a reporter on a show like that. She would get to meet everybody, and they would all be nice to her because they wanted good publicity. He also watched the boring, boring “People’s Court” where the same judge droned on every day while losers tried to sue each other about plumbing that didn’t work. She could learn a lot from television, but not from some program about a cop making a bust in a housing project that looked like where friends of hers had grown up, or two losers suing each other about somebody’s dog being clipped wrong. Most of the time it was sports. They ought to drop cable to save money, but neither of them was willing to give it up. She got a discount anyhow. It would look cheesy in the office if she dropped it.

  There was a new Burgess family song. His mother had launched it two weeks before at the Sunday dinner that had become the low point of her week. They seemed to sit there for at least twelve hours, before she was cooped up with Mrs. Burgess in the kitchen. “If only you children hadn’t been so precipitous about getting married, there’d be no problem now. Terry could just move back in his room, and he’d have plenty of time to look for a new job, even to go back to school and get a master’s.”

  “I thought you found it a burden to have Terry living at home so many years after college. I remember that it was a problem.”

  “Nonsense.” Mr. Burgess snorted. “We’re a close-knit family. That’s just the way we are. Old-fashioned.”

  If she had not had the theater group to escape to, she did not know how she would have got through May with Terry still out of work. She was not convinced he was truly looking any longer, but seemed to be waiting for his father to conjure up a job for him with one of his golf buddies. Occasionally when the Sunday want ads had something likely, he cranked up a sputter of activity, but then it fizzled out. “If we didn’t have this condo riding on our backs and all this furniture and gadgets and all this stupid crap, I could just relax. Treat this as a vacation. But we really put ourselves in hock, and for what?”

  Well, if he wanted to feel that way, let him. For what? For her. So they could be together and married. Now that had become embarrassing, a mistake, an obligation. Sometimes he talked about unloading the condo, as he put it, but he didn’t proceed because the housing market was static.

  “I don’t want to move out of here. I like this. I really like it.”

  He looked a
t her as if she was crazy. “What’s to like? It’s just a condo like a thousand others. It’s not anything real, like a house.” He seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “It looks real enough to me.” She knocked her fist on the door frame. “I like this place, Terry. So why don’t your parents send you back to school, if that’s what you want?”

  “Maybe in the fall. If we can sell this. You could come to Amherst with me. Or maybe you could move back in with your parents and save some money.”

  It was a trap. He was trying to shove her back onto her parents. She was scared. He was lazy enough so that perhaps he would fail to act on getting into college, and his parents did not seem to be eager to spend the money. He was not going to sell the condo out from under her. She could carry it. She was carrying it now. “My parents don’t have room for me. I see no reason why I shouldn’t just stay here and remain at my job, if you go back to school. It’s near work. It shouldn’t take you long to get a master’s in computer science.”

  “It’s hard enough,” he grumbled. “My parents are going to want to take the money from the condo and use it for school.”

  “I’m not moving out,” she said. “If you want to go back to school, fine, but I’m not moving out.”

  “We’ll see about that,” he said.

  Sometimes they had good times, sometimes they ate pizza and laughed and went to a movie. Tommy could still make Terry behave himself and lighten up. But much of the time they were engaged in a quiet war. Who was going to give in? Who was going to budge first? Not her, she swore silently. He was not going to take away from her the place she loved. They had wanted him out of the house; they were embarrassed by the apartment over the dry cleaner’s. They had never really accepted the marriage and they were using his unemployment against her, when she was the one supporting him. She was carrying him on her back and she was tired of it, but she was not going to leave. If anybody was leaving, it was him.