The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  “I changed them already. I paid the difference.”

  He had done so before he had even spoken with her. “You seem quite serious about this Ikuko for the time you’ve been seeing each other.”

  “Well, I like her. And I’m curious about her scene at home.”

  He was not about to tell her he was sexually obsessed or crazy in love. No matter what he experienced, he would speak of the girl in that cool super-rational voice with her. She realized she was going to have to tell him her situation. “David, your father and I are separated.”

  “What do you mean? Like, he’s in New York and you’re in Cambridge?”

  “Like, he’s back in Cambridge with his pregnant girlfriend, and we’re both seeing divorce lawyers.”

  “Why, all of a sudden?” He sounded aggrieved.

  “You’ve said several times that I should leave him.”

  “But you didn’t. You’ve been living with his … running around forever. Why break up now?”

  “His girlfriend is going to have a baby, remember? That’s quite a difference from going to bed with some actress a couple of times in Minneapolis. I never liked it, but it wasn’t under my nose, and he always had seventy-five excuses about how tense he was, how insecure. I felt, since I couldn’t go on the road with him, I had to forgive him what he did when he was lonely in other cities and under the stress of a play opening. This is different.”

  “I think you should go to a marriage counselor and work this out.”

  “David, it’s past that. Neither of us wants to work anything out.”

  “Mother, you’re going to be alone. I’m out of there. You can’t live there by yourself. I’m sure he doesn’t really want to leave you.”

  “I can’t take it any longer. I don’t get enough from him to put up with what he’s doing. There’s not sufficient feeling left. Not enough strength in the relationship. It’s worn out.”

  “How could it wear out all of a sudden? You just have to try.”

  “I’m tired of trying, David. I thought you would understand.”

  “How are you going to manage?”

  “Manage in what way?”

  “Mother, how will you pay the bills?”

  She was silent for a moment. “Is it possible you don’t know I’ve basically supported the household for the past ten years?”

  “I knew you worked, sure. But you never said you paid for things.”

  “Why would I say that?” She had assumed that David understood. What a family they were: David knew about Nick’s infidelities, but they had both kept their relative incomes a deep secret from him. “Nick’s half-time adjunct faculty, and the directing jobs never pay that much. This one is probably the best he’s had, but it’s over.” She felt guilty finally saying it to him. Nick and she had never openly spoken of the situation, not even to each other, let alone David. It was a lot to lay on him suddenly.

  David was silent. She held her tongue and waited. “It’s a shock,” he said finally. “After this many years, it seems sort of ridiculous to get divorced. Who is this bimbo? She’s just some actress like the others. It’ll be over any day now. If he’s back in Cambridge, isn’t she in New York?”

  “She came with him. And it won’t be over for twenty-one years. There’s a baby on the way. Babies are awfully real, David. They change everything. You did. So will this one. It already has.”

  “Maybe we could just, you know, adopt it—”

  “Why would Sheryl want to give us her baby? Be real. It’s her power. And do you want to quit school and raise a child? I can’t.”

  She heard a noise as if he were hitting or kicking something. “I just can’t believe everything’s gone to hell since Thanksgiving.”

  She had never been crazy about Christmas, a holiday that in her childhood had merely been a source of awkwardness and the knowledge of being an outsider, the same sort of feeling she had had repeatedly in her young adult life when friends began singing camp songs. She had never gone away to summer camp. She did not know where all these asinine songs came from, so that she had felt grumpy, bored and excluded. In her childhood, Christmas had been that feeling times ten. Christmas was a whole industry: wrappings, cards, presents, wreaths, trees, ornaments, carols and carolers, cookies, television and school buzzing with it. Even the weather reports debated whether there would be snow for the holidays.

  This year there would be no tree. Christmas had always felt like a conspiracy to use up her vacation time in between the work of finals and grading and the work of preparing for the new quarter. It was a plot to steal her reading and relaxing time.

  She had thought David would understand her decision about Nick. He had always been on her side. She should have realized that the idea of his family changing would disturb him. Children always wanted their parents in situ, in stasis. The faster they changed, the more their parents should remain the same.

  David was much on her mind at her next meeting with Sam. It felt odd to go to Cathy’s to see him, but Sam was home on bail. He was looking brighter. His color was better, but his energy level still seemed low. “They won’t let me see Gene. He’s been out for a month already. He’s my best friend and I miss him like crazy. And they don’t want me back at school.”

  “What are you doing about classes?”

  “I have a tutor. I got way behind. I have to study for hours and hours every day to catch up. Zak tries to help me, but he doesn’t remember a lot of this stuff. It’s totally dull to have to sit by myself learning all kinds of crap. At least they should let Gene and me study together.”

  He described Becky as seducing him to murder. Leila asked, “Everything was her idea?”

  “It was an obsession with her. Once she talked about it, she never let up. ‘Do it, or you’ll never see me again. Do it, or he’ll get both of us. He knows. He’s going to fix us good. He knows, and we have to act quickly.’” Sam sounded deeply depressed. His voice rose as if dramatically, but there was no energy behind the words. He seemed sunk into a cold lethargy behind the façade of a forced and obviously rehearsed statement.

  She took a chance. “Do you feel guilty for having exposed her?”

  “What’s the point? We can never be together now.”

  There was something odd in that response. “Because you can’t be with her any longer, you see no point in trying to protect her?”

  “Protect her? Look what happened to me when I tried to protect her.” He laughed bitterly. “My whole life has turned to shit. If I’d never met her, I’d be on my way to U Mass Amherst. My biggest worry would be what roommate I’d get. I thought I was this macho man.”

  Sitting back, she tried to imagine David so much in love with Ikuko that he’d attack someone, say, her father or an uncle who had been abusing her. She could not imagine this boy who had hair very like his uncle’s and sharp, almost delicate features being passionate enough about Becky (who, she realized, had similarly sharp features along with a hint of fragility, the sense of being undersized) to kill for her. She could not imagine them that violently in love.

  “Zak’s upset because I confessed,” Sam said, polishing his glasses. “But he kept after me to tell the truth. Finally what choice did I have? Like, they totally have me. It’s a question of survival now.”

  “He needed to believe you’re innocent.”

  “Then he’s not a very good judge of character, is he? Or maybe he just never was crazy enough about a woman to know how much of a fool I could be for her. Becky.” He seemed to have trouble saying her name.

  “Are you angry, because he believed so strongly in your innocence?”

  “I guess. Like it screws me up because it makes me feel I have to lie to him. I’m in enough trouble without worrying about how my uncle feels.”

  “You think he’s being selfish?”

  “Not really. He tries.” Sam stared at her. “He likes you.”

  “I like him too. They say he’s a very good vet.” She sounded ridiculous even to hersel
f. Defensive. Inane.

  “Women come on to him all the time, but he hasn’t been that interested. We really needed him, anyhow. Mom was messing up before he took over. She used to foul up the checkbook so bad I’d have to balance it. I was fourteen years old and I was trying to figure out a budget. Maybe that’s why I’m a little crazy now.” He looked at her hopefully.

  She wanted to say she suspected he wasn’t crazy at all, but she just nodded thoughtfully. “Where is she, by the way?”

  “She’s at work.” He made a face of disgust. “The first week I was home, she was practically sitting on me. Like I’m going to run off to Colombia and join a drug cartel, right? Where am I supposed to go? I have like twenty bucks to call my own. So I’m going to run out of the house and go kill the guy at the gas station or something?”

  “I think she’s just worried about you. They both are.”

  “Zak acts like my mother’s stupid—I mean, she’s no genius, but a lot of the time the problem is that she doesn’t want what he does. It’s like telling somebody all the vitamins and minerals in some breakfast cereal, when they think it tastes like dog kibble, and they’d rather starve.”

  “Is he manipulative?”

  “No, that’s her talent.”

  “Cathy?”

  “No, her. Becky. She could play me by the hour. I was such an idiot over her!” His face screwed into a mask of pain. “I thought I was so smart in high school, but I was stupid. I was the stupidest kid of all.”

  When she got home, her answering machine was throbbing with messages. Jane: “Do you need any support around the divorce? Remember I’m available.” David: “Mom, I just had a weird conversation with Dad. I mean weird. I think he’s lost it. I know kids my own age who have a better idea about relationships than he does.” Zak: “I thought I’d come into the city tomorrow, Saturday. There’s a seminar at Tufts on feline infectious peritonitis. Maybe we can go out to supper. I could swing by six or so.” Student: “I know you said not to call you at home, but I got your number out of the book, and I have to know if I passed. I really have to know.” Phyllis: “Personally Joan and I think Nick is a horse’s ass, and his family gives me hives. I never thought he treated you like you deserve to be treated, and I wouldn’t put up with half the shit you did. But how are you going to manage?” Nick: “We must talk. It can’t be put off any longer. Changing the locks on the house was hostile and adolescent. I’ll be over tonight at eight.”

  Her first thought was to leave at once. She would call Jane and ask her if she could spend the night. Then she asked herself, what was she afraid of? It would not be pleasant to see the man who had been her husband all her adult life, but probably it was necessary. Running away would only put off the conversation. The number he left was not the Charles. Had they found an apartment already?

  His lawyer had talked with her lawyer. She wanted to be free, and presumably he wanted to cut loose from her. She found that she could not think clearly. Maybe it was better to see him and force herself to confront her choices and lack of them. Should she call him? No, let him wonder. Vronsky stood on her desk glaring. She had not been around much. She apologized to him and he rubbed against her hand. The holidays would certainly be peculiar. Maybe she would get a lot of work done.

  By seven forty-five she had a bad stomachache and she had changed her clothes four times. She gathered up the paper, read two articles without any sense of what they concerned, turned on the TV and watched a program that was vaguely green. She got up, she sat down. She went upstairs. She thought she heard him at the door and rushed back down. She watched the numbers on the control panel of the dishwasher change from 45 to 38 minutes. She brushed her hair yet again. She picked lint and cat hair off the couch. Maybe she would start collecting cats, as befitted a nutty lady alone. She would have brown cats, black cats, striped, spotted, orange, yellow, white, grey cats, cats with long fur and shorthaired cats. She would have cats the way some people had mice. The idea amused her, as nothing had since she had listened to her messages. It was five after. Where was he? It would be just like him to drive her crazy by announcing his arrival and then changing his mind.

  At eight twenty-two, she heard a car pull just into the drive. She did not let herself run in panic upstairs to brush her hair and check her appearance for the fourteenth time. She made herself go out to the kitchen and put dishes away. While she was fussing, the doorbell rang.

  She found herself stumbling toward the door with a silly grimace on her face. Just before she opened it, she rubbed her hands hard over her eyes and cheeks to banish the smirk of anxiety. She composed her face into a politely inquiring mask, then jerked the door open. “Hello, Nick,” she said evenly. At least her voice was under control. “Come in.” She stood politely aside and beckoned him toward the living room, wishing briefly that she had redecorated or at least repainted.

  He glanced around, nodded slightly and sat in his usual leather easy chair. “You’re well?”

  “Just fine.” She took his coat and hung it on the coat rack, for the formality of the gesture and to give herself time to compose her façade. “And you?”

  “It’s all disturbing, of course.” He saw the pile of his third-class mail. He had the first-class forwarded. “I don’t want a war with you.”

  “You and Sheryl have found an apartment?”

  “In Allston. It’s only temporary. I want to put this house on the market. We can split the price.”

  Her first impulse was to deny him. Then she thought about the sheer size of the house, the taxes, the wasted rooms. “We can try to sell. It isn’t exactly a mad mad market like the eighties, Nick. Melanie’s house has been looking for a buyer since she died, and I don’t think half a dozen people have gone through it.” She was ready to look at him. In her mind he had been Nick of ten years ago. Now she saw a middle-aged man she knew very, very well, who was showing signs of too many late nights. His beard looked darker. She wondered if he was using some product to reduce the grey. Let Sheryl worry. That body need no longer be kept up by her.

  “Don’t hang me up waiting for the price that won’t come again. I’d rather have one hundred fifty in hand than a potential two hundred apiece five years down the pike,” he said. “Let’s price it to sell.”

  She did not answer. She was in no hurry to move, and she did not much care if the house were to be for sale for a long time.

  “We’ll each keep our cars, I presume. Neither of them is new or fancy. Nothing to fight about there.”

  “Nick, these financial details are best worked out by the lawyers. I thought you had something personal to discuss.”

  “This is all depressing. I thought you understood my needs. Now I admit, things with Sheryl got out of hand, and she’s fragile. Perhaps I shouldn’t have chosen someone quite so … young and vulnerable. But she is having this baby, and I do feel responsible.” He put his hands on his knees. “I’d imagine that you’d approve of a man feeling responsible.”

  “I find that line of argument cheesy. You’re saying, I feel responsible for what I did, and therefore you will pay for it. Or it’s like a murderer saying, But I tidied up, I cleaned the bloodstains. Surely you appreciate that I cleaned up after myself.”

  “Oh, did you ever meet Becky Burgess?” He asked in sudden distraction.

  “I see her regularly,” Leila said dryly. “Is there anything else you wanted to discuss this evening?”

  “You needn’t act hard as nails. You’re a big woman, and with that confrontational attitude, you come off like a police sergeant.”

  “We’re not on the best of terms now, Nick, and we don’t much like each other. Do you want to see David when he’s home?”

  “Of course! I suppose you’ve been pouring out your anguish to him at great length, but he’s still my son, and I certainly intend for him to meet Sheryl and I want him to understand my situation.”

  “You’ll work out the details with him, not with me, please. What interests me is when you first tho
ught of ending our marriage.”

  He looked at her with surprise. “Everybody thinks about getting out. Every time you’re going into a new relationship, you think about leaving. It’s natural. Things get dull. After all, what was I supposed to do in all those other cities? You were never around.”

  “You never wanted me around. Not only was I working, but even when I wasn’t, you never wanted me there. I could have arranged my schedule to have long weekends. There’s a woman in the psych department whose husband teaches at Yale. They spend half the week together and half the week apart. They’ve been living that way for seven years, and I believe they’re faithful.”

  “You’re not tempted by men, because you simply don’t much like men.”

  “I’m asking you when you decided it was the end.”

  He rubbed his beard, frowning. “Last spring, I thought about it. When I went out to L.A. in May and started comparing my life with Tim’s. He has a house in Malibu, goes to all the great parties and the headwaiters greet him by name. He has a fucking personal trainer to keep him in shape. We’re the same age, we went to N.Y.U. together, we were both in Measure for Measure in Central Park.… I felt I was standing in mud up to my chin.”

  “Last spring!” She was stunned. All those months when she thought over the summer that he was settling into a more tranquil middle age with her. Nothing she could give him had anything to do with that vision in his head. She did not belong in it. She could not even relate to those desires, for they were as alien to her as if he wanted to become a goldfish or a kangaroo. “Nick, what are you doing here tonight? What do you want?”

  “For shit’s sake, Leila, we were married for twenty-odd years.…”

  She was struck that he probably did not know the exact number. “Twenty-four years, six months, nine days.” She shook her head. “We’ll never be able to communicate about our marriage. It just looked too different—from the bottom and from the top.”