The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  The two older kids, Abel and Robin, were at school. The toddler, Ben, glared at her from Debbie’s side. He was blond and skinny and fierce-looking. He tugged hard on his mother’s arm, his teeth bared, almost growling. Leila collapsed in a chair. “I left home at four-thirty your time. I’m wrung out.”

  Debbie appealed to the ceiling. “Really, Leila, anybody would think you don’t enjoy traveling! You travel more than anybody I’ve ever known—except for Bung, of course.” The musician. “I’m just a stick-at-home.”

  “Same with me,” said Babs. “Got a little java on the fire? That would hit the spot.”

  “You know I can’t drink coffee, Babs. It wouldn’t be good for my baby.” Debbie patted her stomach.

  Leila started a list in her head of things she had to go to town to buy. Without coffee, she would not survive the day. Debbie rose to brew herb tea, which Babs said she would accept as a last resort. As Debbie stood, the contrast between her rounding belly and her almost spindly arms and legs, her long slender neck, was even more marked, almost spidery.

  Leila was annoyed at herself for complaining. She must not start off wrong with Debbie. They had such a long and messy history, offering little satisfaction to either. Now that she had just lost a husband, she should try to make a meaningful connection with her only sister. Debbie had been the flake with the broken relationships, while solid Leila rotated within her marriage.

  When Babs had finished her tea and lumbered out, Debbie at once burst into tears. At the kitchen table she wept with her head on her hands. Ben glared at Leila harder, blaming her for his mother’s upset. Finally he began banging on Leila’s knee, the easiest part of her to reach. Debbie stopped crying. “Ben, behave yourself! You don’t just walk up to your aunt and hit her.”

  Ben took refuge against his mother. “Ben, at Thanksgiving, you came to my house. We ate turkey and you played with my cat, Vronsky. Remember?”

  Ben stuck his thumb in his mouth, looking confused.

  “Debbie, why did Roy, I mean, Red leave? Is there any chance he might come back?”

  “He was going to San Diego all the time, he was supposed to be involved in some development. But he had a girlfriend, it turns out. She manages a hotel in Del Mar. She makes a good living and she doesn’t have any kids.”

  “An older woman?”

  Debbie shook her head in exasperation. “Older than who? Leila, I’m forty-two. Why do you always imagine I’m still a kid?”

  “He picked a great time. What is it, fifth, sixth month?”

  “You don’t understand, I like having babies. Maybe this is the last one I’ll get. I feel like you look at me, and you think, Oh, Poor Debbie! Another man’s gone and left her. But what I see is, Well, that lasted a couple of years and I got this great kid out of it. I got him to give me a kid. And the kids are really all mine, except for Ben. His father Bruce, you remember Bruce? relates to all of them.”

  “He’s a saint. Is Red giving you any money?”

  “He’s been good about that. This new woman, she’s loaded, so he’s being generous. And like I said, Bruce sends child support every month.”

  “Does he still have partial custody?”

  “He comes and gets them for a weekend every month, all except Abel. Abel won’t go. He and Bruce never got along. Robin likes Bruce. So Robin and Ben go every fourth Friday. He spoils them.” Debbie shrugged.

  Leila made supper. “Why do I always take over the kitchen when we’re together?”

  “You like to run things,” Debbie said. “Why should I care? I have to get supper on the table the other three hundred sixty days in the year.”

  “I don’t do that much cooking when I’m home.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’ve always liked playing Julia Child.”

  “Debbie, I’m alone. Nick is living with another woman. David’s off at school. I’m in the process of selling the house in Cambridge.”

  “What are you planning to do?” Debbie looked dismayed. “You’re not planning to come out here, are you? You’re not thinking of that. I know Mom is capable of trying to talk you into it.”

  “Debbie! I’m tenured faculty at Lesley. I don’t even plan to leave Cambridge if I can find something affordable. That’s where my friends are.”

  Debbie looked skeptical, a way she’d always had of tilting her head slightly, looking from under lowered lids. “With Nick gone and David out here at school, what’s to keep you?”

  “My life, Debbie, my life. I don’t want another one. I just want to improve the one I have.”

  “I do need help, but you and me under one roof, it would never work out.”

  Leila felt like bellowing that Debbie was the last person she’d live with in the entire country. “Absolutely not,” she contented herself with saying. “Debbie, let’s try to talk with each other this time instead of at each other.”

  “That would be some kind of change.”

  “What do you want me to do while I’m here?”

  “Just listen to me and don’t be so damn judgmental. Help me figure out the finances. Get me a lawyer. Those kind of things.” Debbie jumped up and wiped her face briskly. “My four o’clock will be here any moment.”

  “Can you still do it pregnant?”

  “I don’t lift them. I can handle it I know how to move.”

  Debbie called herself a massage therapist She gave regular massages for sore muscles and stress, relief from pain after accidents and overexertion, but she also gave advice. She was good at the massage and the advice must be acceptable, because whenever she stayed in a place long enough, she built up a clientele. She could set her own hours, work at home. Sometimes she made two hundred dollars a day, once she had settled in; sometimes she made nothing.

  “Why can’t she save money?” Phyllis complained. “She makes more than I do, with all my years of experience. So why can’t she put some away?”

  “With three kids? Don’t fool yourself, she can’t get ahead.”

  That was a conversation they’d had over the past few years again and again. Phyllis could do little for Debbie aside from buying the kids an occasional toy and sending them a small check and a videotape from Grandma now and then. Phyllis had bought herself a video camera and taped everything from bowling with her cronies to family greetings.

  Robin came home from school, dropped at the end of the road by the school bus. She climbed into Leila’s lap. Robin was eight and very dark, her black hair in braids with red bows. She clung to Leila. “Where’s David?” She had a crush on her cousin.

  “David’s in college.”

  “He isn’t coming?”

  “Not this time. He has to stay in school.”

  Abel was the last home. He did not arrive until Debbie had finished her five o’clock and Leila was holding the spaghetti sauce on low. She forbade herself to say, How you’ve grown. She remembered David’s spurts of growth. It embarrassed him to be exclaimed over. Abel had dark brown curly hair like Sam, but he was much taller and exceptionally thin. He had his basketball gear in a canvas bag. She stopped and did her figuring. Abel would be fifteen in three weeks. Had his father been tall? She could no longer remember. She watched him at supper, remembering David at fifteen.

  Abel was at the sullen age, angry because he needed a car where they lived and he was still too young and there was probably no money for one anyhow. He was angry because there was one sex too many in the world and he hadn’t figured out yet how to relate to that He was angry because he was growing so fast his body hurt and his voice was uncertain and sometimes betrayed him. He was angry because he was six feet one and still didn’t need to shave. He was angry because he was secretly convinced he was some kind of pervert monster and he did not know what to do with himself, and it must be somebody’s fault—probably his mother’s. Leila recognized the age and the stage.

  She was ridiculously surprised that Abel was as large and as old as he was, as if Debbie’s children should grow more slowly than David had.
Debbie was right, she thought of her sister as younger than she was. She was still waiting for Debbie to grow up, whereas Debbie had made consistent choices for years that always diverged from what Leila would have wanted.

  She sat down with Debbie, her checkbook, her mortgage book, her tax returns, her estimated income. Debbie got cranky fast. To her budgeting reeked of calculation. “I like to take each day as it comes,” Debbie said. “I don’t believe in pretending we can know the future. The earth could blow up tomorrow. We could all die in a nuclear accident. Why pretend I know my income next year? I could be in an auto accident on the freeway. I could win the lottery.”

  Here was Debbie who had no idea how much she earned in a year and where the money went, sitting over the kitchen table with Leila, who always knew exactly how much money she had in the bank and what expenses she expected to cover that month. Here was Debbie, who made perhaps half what Leila earned, saying that frankly she never worried about money, to Leila who had spent the last month trying to work out her post-divorce budget. Through the door from the living room came the clamor of the TV and the squabbling of the two older kids. Why did Debbie make her self-conscious? She felt defensive about traits that ordinarily she took for granted or felt proud of.

  As the next day bumped along, she failed to help Debbie much, for old annoyances caused them both to bob and weave and duck imaginary punches as well as real ones. It was also clear that Debbie was not going to make it without help. It might be that she would quickly find another man. But not that quickly. She was too pregnant. With four kids, Debbie would have a harder time finding a new man than she had with three; yet Leila wasn’t sure that was the problem. Lack of a man might be part of the solution.

  She had thought of Red the suburban cowboy as having saddled Debbie with his dreams, lugging her off to the backwoods and leaving her with a dozen bellowing farm animals. But Debbie insisted on riding still, although the doctor advised against it. She said her mare was gentle. She tried to get Leila up on a horse, in vain. Instead Debbie took her daily ride with Babs, who cantered over from the next house, a quarter of a mile away. They stood around in the yard and talked horses and goats and weather.

  Debbie had always been far better at mothering than Leila. Leila had never been the sort who made cookies fresh and created beautiful Halloween costumes and masks. Leila was usually trying to get David to eat apples and oranges instead of cookies, and Halloween costumes were either bought at a novelty shop or up to her son’s ingenuity.

  Now she saw Debbie the mini-rancher. The colt was to be Robin’s. Robin and Debbie curried their animals side by side in the later afternoon, gossiping about horses. Leila could not even tell what they were talking about, a local competition in some obscure horse art. Abel’s job was taking care of the chickens. He also sold eggs. Red might be gone, but Debbie had put down roots here as she never had in Pomona or Cincinnati or St. Louis or Atlanta, any of the cities she had sojourned in. The mare, far from being a burden, appeared to have introduced Debbie to many women: some ten years younger; several, like Babs, much older. Debbie had always connected to other mothers through day care, through school, but now she had other ties. Women with horses appeared to befriend each other.

  She wasn’t going to scoop up Debbie and bring her to Cambridge, as she had imagined. Whatever she could do for Debbie, it would have to be done here. If Debbie had help, she could work more, and the financial situation would ease. At least they could count on goat’s milk, cheese and eggs.

  “Have you considered taking in another woman to live with you?”

  “I put an ad in the paper, but the women who came, they wanted someone to take care of them. You think I’m romantic, but even I could see that.”

  “Isn’t Red trying to make you sell this place?”

  Debbie shook her head no. “He feels so guilty about leaving me pregnant, he’s giving me the house. Besides, his girlfriend’s got a house he likes better, just three blocks from the ocean. He just wants me to keep quiet through the divorce and not bug him about the baby.”

  “I guess that’s convenient, in its way.”

  “See, he changed his mind about living up here last winter. He found the winter boring. He started talking about moving to San Diego then. I knew it was trouble. If I’d been willing to pick up and go to the city with him, he’d never have taken up with that woman.” Debbie ran her hands nervously through her hair. “When it came to choosing between him and this place, I want this place. I know you think I’m crazy, but that’s how it is. I’d rather be poor living here than in a little house or apartment in the Valley.” Debbie glared, expecting to be read a lecture, but Leila only nodded.

  “I understand.”

  FIFTY

  Becky

  Becky called in sick to rehearsal Monday evening and spent it virtually sitting on Terry. She had bought two books on saving a marriage and insisted on reading aloud the choicest bits to him. His eyes glazed over. She almost felt pity for him. If he could be bored to death, he would be dead.

  “Becky,” he said, a beaten look on his face. “Why do you want to stay with me? You can’t like the way things have been going any better than I do. Why not hang it up?”

  “Divorce is immoral,” she said, something she was sure neither of them believed for two minutes. “If you want an annulment, I’d agree, because then we each could marry again. But why not try? We loved each other. I still love you.” She could hardly explain the truth to him, that she wanted the condo far more than she wanted him; she wanted to stay in the desperate middle class, as opposed to the desperately poor.

  “Becky, this is crazy. We don’t even really like each other. You don’t ski or golf, you don’t watch sports, let alone take part in any. You don’t like my family or my friends. You want to go dancing and to parties. I don’t see any point in that if I have a girl already. To me, the only use is for picking somebody up. We don’t have a life, don’t you see that? We’re like roommates. We eat pizza five nights a week.”

  “I tried to cook meals. I’m tired when I get home from work.”

  “You tried to cook a meal exactly once, for my parents, and you hated every second of it. It was a bad joke. Becky, I feel as if everything I do here just messes up the condo for you. If I put the sports section down, you pick it up and throw it in the trash. I take off a jacket and you carry it away. You’re always cleaning up behind me like I’m an old dog, don’t you see? You look at my things as if they’re covered with dog shit.”

  She was surprised that he had caught on to her physical distaste, because she was sure she had covered it up. Ever since she’d been with Sam the first time, Terry seemed disgusting. “I’m just trying to keep our home neat—like your mother.”

  Tuesday night he urged her to return to rehearsals, he almost begged. As if reluctantly, she agreed. She gave herself a choice bruise across the hip. She had to pull down her jeans to show Sam, backstage while Dracula was engaged with Minna.

  “No, no, I can’t see you,” she said wistfully. “It wouldn’t be fair to you. It’s too dangerous. Every night I lie in my bed and think about you. Sometimes I even do things to myself, Sam, thinking of you. But those afternoons and those nights are gone from us. Terry stands between us now.”

  Sometimes she feared she was overdoing it a shade, but Sam did not respond badly. He was overwrought. He pleaded. He begged.

  Finally Thursday, the last rehearsal before Monday night, she told him she would try to slip away Saturday. If she did not come, he would know that Terry had stopped her—forcibly. Her voice trembled. Maybe she really could be an actress. No, she would rather be on a show like “Entertainment Tonight” or Barbara Walters. I just want to be myself, she thought, the best of what I am. If I can just get Terry out of the way. This was the first week Sam had gone without sex, and he was simmering. He kept trying to drag her into the basement, but she found excuses. She was not about to ball him in the basement.

  Saturday she did slip off to see him
, presumably while Terry was with Heather. He had promised her he would not see Heather while they were trying to work things out. She did not believe him, but she had to nail Sam. She couldn’t let him get unhooked. That afternoon she was wild. She had put on her best Lady Grace bustier and tap panties in blue satin, with black fishnet pantyhose. They were uncomfortable, digging into her crotch, but she knew they would boil his blood.

  The bruise across her hip stood out against her fair skin. He kissed it, his face creasing as if he would cry. “How could he do this? How?”

  Lying under him she began to weep. She hardly had to fake it, only a little, because she was too nervous, too tightly wound to get excited, and he was actually hurting her. “I’ll never see you again. Never! I can’t bear it This is the very, very last time.”

  “I’ll do it.” As he drove into her, he groaned, “I’ll do it. I’ll kill him. I’ll do it. I’ll show you I’m a man. I’ll do it.”

  There was just time after she washed to explain her plan. He stared at her, amazed, as if he thought his saying he would do it would satisfy her and that would be the end of it—as if it were some nonsense he could say while fucking and then forget when he got off her. “If you’re really my man, you’ll prove it Monday. You’ll show me you can do it. You’ll show me you really have the guts to do it.”

  Tommy would find a car for Sam to borrow. She met her brother at the bridge, and they walked the canal embankment together. It was a warm June day, sultry, with clouds that looked made of cement The mosquitoes swirled around them. She opened up and told Tommy what she was going to do.

  “Be sure to take the right kind of things. Any cash. Any gold. The TV, the VCR, good watches, cameras.”