The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  “He’s going to marry her, he told me so,” David continued, fixing her with a benignly worried look, as if she were being dense. “You ought to look over the opposition.”

  “I’m not opposed to his marrying her. There’s a baby on the way. David, I think you want me more involved in this mess than I care to be.”

  “Mother, you’re in denial—”

  “Denial of what?” She grimaced at the psych jargon. Was this Ikuko’s influence? “I’m well aware of the progress of my divorce.”

  “Denial of pain. You’re suppressing affect. Oh, today’s the day I get divorced from my husband of twenty-five years, what else is new?”

  “David, try to understand, I did my suffering while your father was having his affairs. Now he’s Sheryl’s problem, not mine. This is a resolution of a situation that had become increasingly intolerable. I was giving and I wasn’t getting, and I’d rather have a cat.”

  “And a boyfriend?”

  “I can’t say about Zak yet. But if you insist I go to supper tonight—”

  “I promised Dad you would.”

  “Why does he want this?”

  “He said he misses talking with you.”

  “That’s strange. I don’t miss talking with him. I thought I would.” She looked steadily at her son. She was disappointed in his reaction to the divorce; in fact, she had to fight a sense of betrayal. It was only fair to recognize that he had his own interests, quite different from hers. “You really want me to do this? Sit in a restaurant and eat with your father and his girlfriend?”

  “You have to reopen a dialogue, Mother. You don’t talk to each other. All you do is hire lawyers to negotiate. From what Dad says—you don’t talk about it.” He gave her a look of reproach. “You’ve worked out how to split things between you. You can’t just pretend he’s dead or something.”

  “I have no desire to see him for at least a year, frankly. But if it’s so important to you, I’ll get on the phone to Zak. I’d like him with me, just to balance things. If he’s willing.”

  Zak was willing and curious. She was stuck. Was she afraid? She peered into herself with a cold skeptical eye, but could find nothing but a low-grade boredom with Nick, a desire to avoid pain and embarrassment, an ardent wish that the divorce be accomplished and sink below the horizon permanently. Still, she owed her son this awkward evening. He had grown used to thinking that she would put up with anything from his father, and that the marriage would endure regardless. She understood now that David’s occasional comments that she should leave Nick had never been intended to be taken seriously. Probably it had been an indirect way of bidding her to stop complaining.

  David carried out the negotiations for the supper and made the reservations. Leila could hear him consulting his best friend on the current favorite of Cambridge Chinese restaurants. As Leila went through her closet, she reflected sourly that every faculty member along with a parking space received an evaluation of the restaurants. It was a perk of working in any institution here. You shall receive an annual salary of X and the opportunity to eat first-rate Chinese food. She could find nothing she wanted to wear.

  What she finally did was dash off to a boutique she passed on the way to school on Mass Avenue, buy a plum silk chemise and run back with it. Zak had arrived and he was chatting with David. She ran upstairs, showered, dressed and was back down on time, fastening her earrings as she descended. She could not justify what she had just done, but she was damned if she was going to show up in an outfit Nick had seen fifty times and might have actually selected. Buying a dress on impulse felt dangerously immoral, as if she might become Debbie. Debbie got married on impulse, got pregnant, left a man, bought a horse, quit a job, moved someplace. Debbie’s life had always put Leila in mind of a room in which a fight had just taken place. The way her own bedroom must look right now.

  Zak greeted her with a quick kiss, chaste but proprietary. David and Zak had settled on animal life as their topic, both with a peripheral interest in natural history. They were obviously nervous with each other but trying to act civilized in an unprogrammed situation.

  As Leila expected, her party arrived first at the restaurant and waited. And waited. Finally they asked to be seated anyhow and ordered dumplings. Half an hour later, Nick swept in, prodding the woman whom Leila remembered. Sheryl was a bit shorter than Leila and much thinner. She had straight ash blond hair cut off just below her ears, high cheekbones and smoky grey-brown eyes, a face in which the features seemed a little spread out. During the introductions, Leila remembered her voice. It was the most attractive part of Sheryl, low, throaty, thick as hot caramel. She was carefully made-up and dressed in a beige coatdress, not yet visibly pregnant.

  Nick seemed startled by Zak. It took him three tries to get Zak’s name straight. He was not pretending to forget, she thought. He really was not absorbing the name. He was too surprised. Whatever he had expected, her turning up with a new boyfriend was not on the list.

  Zak was dressed in his city clothes, no buffalo plaids, no outdoorsman’s denims and flannels. He wore a green washed-silk shirt, a black cashmere sports coat. He seemed slight beside Nick. He had seated himself so that he was on one side of Leila, and David on the other. Under the table his knee touched hers. He was a quieter presence beside her than Nick. He did not demand attention in the way she was used to.

  She tried to figure out why Zak seemed much younger than Nick; there was only five years’ difference in their ages. Zak was slighter, yes. Zak sat back and watched a great deal and commented lightly. Nick boomed. He always held forth. He played the patriarch at every table.

  Surreptitiously she glanced at her watch. An hour and a half, maximum two hours, and she would be out of here. Tomorrow David would fly off to his girlfriend. She was doing this for him, but she hated every moment. Ordering was a long wrangle that made her want to run into the street screaming. Any garbage you want, she felt like saying. Tell them to sweep the kitchen and serve it. What a dismal time killer to sit at this table looking at her ex-husband and his new girlfriend and comparing herself, comparing everyone with everyone in all combinations and permutations of depression.

  Zak was explaining who he was. “Oh,” Nick interrupted suddenly. “Leila brought her fat cat to you. She dotes on it. And you cured it of hairballs.”

  Zak sat straighter in his chair. “Actually I practice on the Cape. Leila and I met through a mutual interest in a murder case.”

  David said, “Zak’s the uncle of that guy, Sam, who’s just a little younger than me and who killed for love. He was a good student too. And Jewish. Imagine how obsessed with her he must have been.”

  Zak spoke softly but his voice was like a snake giving a warning with its rattles. “Sam may or may not have killed or hurt anyone. He’ll have his day in court. That’s where these matters are supposed to be decided.” He turned back to Nick. “So how did your play do in New York? I think you had a play opening there recently?”

  Zak knew perfectly well that the play had closed, because she had told him. Leila thought of going to the women’s room and sitting there for a little while, say an hour or two. At the moment she would have liked to spank her son. Had she really been married to that disagreeable man? Love was a disease. Love was a long and tedious delusion. It was a one-person brainwashed cult.

  “I ran into Meryl just the day before we left Manhattan,” Nick said to her. “You remember Meryl from my days in summer stock. Meryl Streep,” he added to Zak.

  “I wonder how her corgis are doing these days,” Zak mused. “They all had respiratory problems.”

  Was this bout being conducted on points or did someone expect a KO? They retreated to safe ground, the weather, winter storms, global warming. After that they earnestly discussed the difficulties of apartment hunting. Sheryl described with brittle animation the seventeen totally unsuitable apartments they had toured. David answered questions about Cal Tech. Comparison of the two coasts was batted around. East was east and West w
as west and the Midwest was someplace else, they all agreed.

  “You’re unusually silent,” Nick said suddenly. “Are we boring you? Perhaps you were hoping for an evening alone with your new friend.”

  She was so startled that she dropped some Szechuan beef into her lap, staining the new silk dress. “I’m a little tired,” she said more softly than she had intended. “Finals, my book, the one in production, all that.”

  Zak took over the conversation with a rap about how he never had fun when he tried to eat out on the Cape, because people would buttonhole him about their pets’ symptoms and foibles. She tried to figure out what had upset her. The implied accusation? How dare you be having an affair. No, it was that hard poking voice. In the days when she had sometimes planned to go with Nick for a week or a weekend, when David was a baby and could be packed up and taken, she had realized finally that, before he left, he always managed to quarrel with her and storm out, so that she did not end up accompanying him.

  Zak’s hand closed on her knee under the table. It was not a sexual gesture, but intended to steady her. “So,” she addressed Sheryl, who had managed to avoid looking at her all evening, “how do you feel about being back in Boston after four years?”

  “It’s a better place to bring up our children. I miss my life there, I miss my friends, but after all, Nick will be bringing plays to Manhattan again.”

  David was finishing everything. “Do we want another dish? Or have we had enough?”

  “I think we’ve had enough,” Zak said dryly. “It’s been delightful. I was quite curious to meet you, of course.” Looking at Nick.

  “I didn’t know you existed.”

  “Ah, you know Leila—deep and discreet,” Zak said, grinning.

  She realized that Zak was having fun. Sheryl had perhaps expected to enjoy the evening more than she had. No doubt Nick had presented Leila as loud and opinionated, the faculty feminist at bat. She decided she was not going to ask Zak to drive back to the Cape. Since David had set this up, he would have to endure Zak staying over with her, for neither was she about to exile him to the drafty guest room. She felt that through his nudging, David had pushed their relationship forward another step that neither of them had decided upon. Zak liked being her champion, she could tell that. But once David left for school, they would have to sort themselves out.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Becky

  Becky put Sam to work late Sunday morning changing the bed linens and helping her clean before she took him home at noon and then exchanged cars with Sylvie. When she returned to the condo, she immediately ran to do the laundry. In a wild frenzy, she had the place looking unused and smart by three. She was sore from having so much sex. She took a bath and then she stood in the middle of the living room. They always went to Terry’s parents’ house on Sunday. She hardly missed that but felt derailed. Her life had been riding along in its ruts. Now she had plunged into open space, dangers, pleasures, the exciting and terrifying sense that she could do anything whatsoever.

  She had stuffed Tommy’s package in her underwear drawer. She could not imagine Terry going through her drawers, as she was about to do to his.

  First she searched his dresser. Condoms. He wasn’t using those with her. She was on the Pill. Something far more interesting among his socks. Insurance papers. The car insurance, insurance on the condo, medical insurance his parents had been paying since he lost his job. His life insurance Chris had sold him, that had her as beneficiary since they married. There it was. Two hundred thousand. But under the policy was a manila envelope full of papers from Chris.

  She pulled out an application for changing the beneficiary. A memo in Chris’s handwriting told Terry to complete steps one to six for changing the beneficiary from Becky to his mother. Terry had started to fill out the forms, putting on his name and birth date, but had not finished. He really was planning to dump her. She took Chris’s instructions from the packet, tore the memo into twenty little pieces and flushed it down the toilet. That should slow Terry down. She did not dare dispose of the papers until she had figured out what to do.

  Terry was certainly worth a lot more money dead than alive. Alive he was costing her, and he was about to cost her more. If only he’d have a nice tidy accident. But he wouldn’t. He was lucky that way. He hardly ever cut himself shaving. Sam was always getting excited and knocking things over or running into a table in his haste, but Terry never even spilled coffee. He wasn’t about to have some convenient accident.

  In his pockets of his sports jackets and his casual jackets, she found receipts from restaurants and ticket stubs from movies. She had better take a careful look at the MasterCard bill. She also found a paper parasol from a rum drink. While she was off to the theater group, he had been going out, obviously. She was in deep trouble.

  She toyed with the idea of making him jealous with Sam, but looking at the accumulated evidence, she doubted he would get usefully jealous. He’d be relieved to be able to dismiss her. She must be careful. But she had to keep Sam on line too. She needed Sam. She had to figure out how to keep a close eye on Terry while finding time for sex with Sam. This week there would be tryouts for the next play, which Ce-Ce would be announcing Tuesday. They would be back to rehearsing weekday evenings, and she would have her weekends free. She had to turn all that to advantage.

  Two hundred thousand dollars. That was an enormous sum. She could invest it. That was what smart people did. She would pay off the Burgesses, buy a new car. When Sam went to school, she could drive up and see him weekends. It was only three hours. She’d pay off the rest of the condo too, so that she wasn’t making payments on the mortgage every month. She’d still have half the money left. She’d go to conferences and seminars about media and make contacts for a real job.

  No use daydreaming about that money. No use. It would change her whole life. It would fix everything. She would be as independent as Aunt Marie. She could afford Sam as a lover. She would not have two suits she alternated, but a closetful. She could help her family with open hands. It wasn’t as if Terry was any use to anybody. If he dropped dead tomorrow, his parents would care—but who else? Even they hadn’t wanted him around all the time.

  But what could she do? She was almost out of time. Could she get around Terry and buy herself some time to think, to figure things out? She dressed carefully. She did her nails and put on perfume. She was all nerves, as if this were a big date instead of her despised husband who was with another woman and planning to dump her cold. Her stomach was so tight she was afraid she was going to be sick. She had a tension headache banding her forehead with steel.

  Finally at seven-thirty she heard his key. She jumped up, forcing a big smile. “Terry! How did it go?”

  His eyes narrowed. For a moment he looked mean and suspicious. Then he walked in, tossed his gear on a chair and stretched. “Lot of traffic. I was just two over par on the course.”

  “What about the guy who might give you a job?”

  “He didn’t commit to anything, but it looks promising. I’ll talk to him again.”

  I bet you will, she thought, in bed. Never mind. “Would you like some supper?”

  “I ate.” He sat down on the couch and fumbled for the TV wand.

  “I missed you this weekend,” she tried, sitting down beside him. “I was thinking I’d love to learn to play golf, so I could go with you.”

  “You wouldn’t like it. It was just guys.”

  “I just want us to spend more time together. I really started thinking about our marriage this weekend, and how we can make it better. You mean so much to me.” She was looking at him. He had the strangest chin. Not that he was chinless in the usual sense, but his chin sloped into his neck. She was talking sweetly to him, in that baby voice she used in their romantic moments, but she was looking at him as if he were a stranger she had sat next to on a bus. She could not remember why she had initially found him so attractive. He seemed washed out, anemic, plain-looking. She had an image of taking t
he wand out of his hand and pushing it into his mouth. That made her smile.

  He looked into her smile and his eyes shifted away. “Yeah? I don’t know. As Mother says, we got married in an awful hurry. Don’t you think it’s kind of a mistake?”

  “Never! I love you, Terry,” she said with her best attempt at sounding passionate and solemn at once. “I’ve never met a man who was so special to me. It isn’t a mistake to me. It was the best most wonderful day of my life when we got married.”

  He shifted uncomfortably, his eyes going to the blank TV screen. “Don’t you think maybe we’re … incompatible? Like we come from such different backgrounds.”

  You just noticed that this weekend, jerk? “I think we complement each other, the way you said when we were getting married. I thought that was very insightful, Terry, and I think it’s still true. If you’re a certain kind of person, why marry the same thing? What do you learn? You know what the other person knows. But you, you still surprise me. And I think maybe I can still surprise you.” She put her hand on the back of his neck and started kneading.

  “Aw, come on, Becky. I’m tired. I was on the course all day.”

  Screwing all day is more like it. She certainly had no urge to have sex with anyone at the moment, least of all him, but it seemed like a good idea. However, he was completely unresponsive under her hand. If she did that to Sam, he’d be undressed already. She let go and moved away. She had made her point. “I understand,” she said, tremolo. “It’s just that I find you so attractive, and I’ve been missing you all weekend.”