The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  She had reached the end of her road. It would be back to a shelter for as long as they would let her stay, and then on the streets, sleeping on the heating grates, looking for an abandoned building to squat in, hiding in basements and garages. Living like that little kitten she had picked up, like the starving strays that had been flung out into the grim savage streets to die fast or slowly, as luck would have it. She would be joining them shortly. She might as well lie in this soft warm bed now and sleep while she could, for people like her were forbidden sleep.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Becky

  Becky came quietly into the doorway with Sam immediately behind her. She could feel the leather of his jacket rubbing her elbow. He was finally carrying the hammer. His breath whistled past her ear.

  Terry was not asleep. “General Hospital” was blaring from the set He was sitting cross-legged on the bed with the pillows propped up behind him talking on the phone. “Well, you tell Chris to call me back as soon as he comes in. This is his brother and this is the third time I called today.” He slammed down the phone. The soup she had doped was sitting only partly eaten on the bedside table. A box from Domino’s pizza lay on the rumpled spread, the pizza about two-thirds eaten. The ungrateful bastard hadn’t even eaten the lunch she had come home to make him. She was terrified that he would say something that would reveal to Sam she had been lying to him. Terry might suddenly say, I want a divorce, I want a divorce now. Then all her careful work on Sam would be lost. She was frozen. She felt as if she could never move.

  He was dialing again. Sam made a noise in his throat and lurched forward past her. Terry turned and saw them. “What the hell? Who are you?”

  Sam came at him with the hammer swinging. Terry bellowed and rolled away. The hammer hit his shoulder and Terry screamed. The pizza remains went flying onto the carpet. It would stink of cheese and oil and tomato for weeks. Terry started screaming. Sam was swinging the hammer wildly. He caught Terry in the side of the head and Terry rolled off the bed, still screaming. They had to shut him up. He was making enough noise to bring the police, to bring everybody for a mile around. Becky rushed around the bed and swung the golf club. She got him in the head but he only screamed louder. He was rolling to and fro, kicking out. His foot caught her in the ankle and she fell against the bed. Then she stood up and hit him with all her strength. He was bleeding all over the carpet from a wound on his ear. She brought the club down again. This time she caught him in the face and she could feel his teeth give. Blood came pouring out of his mouth along with an awful scream. “Shut him up!” she screamed. That sound had to stop.

  Sam stood over Terry and swung the hammer down. This time he caught the skull sharply on top and the bone seemed to give way. He kept swinging the hammer, making a weird sound like a crying baby. She could not get the club in again until Sam paused. Then she smashed the club down again where Sam had been pounding. The scalp was bleeding all over everything. Finally Terry lay still on the carpet. Blood was all over the good blue spread and the beige carpeting. He had wet himself through his terry robe. Then Sam dropped the hammer and staggered into the bathroom to throw up.

  She did not want to touch the body but she made herself feel for a pulse. She could not find one. Finally. She stood up and looked at him. He was a real mess, blood all over and a bad smell. Sam came back drying his face on a towel. “Take the towel with you,” she said. “We’ll get rid of it. Put it on the floor now and put the hammer in it.”

  Sam did not want to touch the hammer where it had dropped. There was blood and hair and something greyish on it like slime. She picked it up and put it on the towel.

  Sam was rousing himself. “I have to go out the deck doors and make it look like a break-in.”

  “Break the glass. Use anything. Use one of the other golf clubs. We’ll take that along too.”

  While Sam quickly broke the glass and then unlocked the door from the outside, she picked up the bowl of drugged soup, poured it down the sink and put the dish in the dishwasher. Lazy Terry hadn’t even turned on the dishwasher loaded with the morning and noon’s dishes. She started it.

  Then they moved the TV set and the VCR, Terry’s watch, what they could grab, downstairs to Helen’s storage area. Helen kept her boxes there from moving and her off-season clothes, but little else. Becky had Helen’s key. They would store the stuff there until it was safe to move it out in a day or two. They could take it at night. She was careful to empty Terry’s wallet and remove his credit cards and all the money in the dresser. Quickly she pulled out drawers and dumped the contents, like someone searching for valuables.

  The clubs and the hammer in the bloody towel Becky tied up with string. “Drop it in the Canal. It’ll sink. Be home before your mother. Don’t call me. I’ll call you as soon as things quiet down. It won’t be long.”

  She got into her car and drove back to work, quickly but watching for cops. She did not want to have an accident. She did not want to be stopped for speeding. In ten minutes, she was pulling into the lot and ran to her desk. She began processing the mailing at once. Nobody seemed to have paid attention. She worked feverishly.

  Her boss came by at four-thirty. “Is that the mailing? Ready for once?”

  “I got it around two. Then I ran the labels.”

  “Great,” he said without inflection and strode off.

  She decided to make an appearance in the room where the two pool girls worked. “What a Monday. I’m exhausted.”

  “Every day’s a Monday around here,” Gina said. “You’ve got something on your skirt.”

  Becky almost fainted. Had she got Terry’s blood on her? She glanced down. For a moment she thought it was his brains from the hammer. Then she realized it was pizza. “Sloppy lunch.”

  “Don’t you go home to lunch these days?”

  “I like to make Terry a warm lunch. Otherwise he just eats junk food. And being in this play, we haven’t had enough time together. I’m going to quit. I promised him this weekend. Enough is enough.”

  “What harm does it do, if you enjoy it?” Gina asked reasonably. “Guess what I did Saturday? I went to the Ice Capades with my niece.”

  “You liked it? Maybe I’ll ask Terry if he wants to.”

  In the john, she flushed the piece of pizza down the toilet, sponged her skirt and examined herself. She decided to change her shoes in case she had stepped in anything. She always kept a pair of cheap shoes in the office for use if it started to rain. They were just imitation leather and cracking, but she would take no chance. She washed the soles of the shoes she had been wearing carefully, scrubbing them. It did not do to be careless.

  She worked on the mailing until everyone had gone home but Mrs. O’Neill. Mrs. O’Neill had a ritual of going around the office and checking everything before she left. While Mrs. O’Neill was busy, Becky cut up Terry’s credit cards with the scissors in her desk. Then she put them all in an envelope and into her purse. She felt calm and organized. She loved to feel organized. No one had ever really appreciated how smart she was.

  She had to act normal. She stopped at the mall and ordered a pizza, the same as she did three times a week. The guy behind the counter always winked at her. He called her Blonde Ambition, because she often worked late. “You ever get tired of your husband, you know where to find me,” he said, taking her order.

  She did not feel hungry and it was a waste to buy a pizza she would never eat, but she had to do everything the way she always did. She dropped the credit cards in little pieces into a Dumpster, being careful to handle them with her gloves on and to take them out of the envelope from her office. That she folded and put in her purse. Then she picked up their dry cleaning. Again it felt like a waste to pay for Terry’s jacket and his pants, but she was establishing her innocence. She stopped and got her mail. As she passed Helen’s door, she knocked. Helen opened it a crack to look over the chain. Then she swung it wide. “Becky, what’s up?”

  “I’ll ride with you tonight.”

/>   “Oh? Things quieting down?”

  “I ended it last week. I’m ashamed of myself. Terry’s trying harder. I think we can make it.”

  “It sounded as if he was having a party this afternoon. First he had that damned TV on loud. Then he had a noisy party.”

  “A party?” Becky made herself look skeptical. “Terry’s not a party boy. I can’t imagine that. Maybe he was straightening up.”

  “He had friends in. They were yelling and jumping up and down.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it.”

  “At one point, a picture fell off my wall. I just don’t like that kind of rowdiness.”

  Becky picked up the pizza. “I’ll speak to him, I promise.” She climbed the steps slowly. When she unlocked the door, it felt eerily quiet in the condo, where the TV was always blaring. She did not feel like going to the bedroom at all. She had the bizarre feeling that, just as earlier he had not been asleep, now he would not be dead but sitting on the bed and furious.

  She made herself act out normality. She hung her coat in the closet. She put the pizza on the table in the kitchen. Then, reluctantly, calling, “Terry, it’s Becky,” she crossed the living room to the open door of the bedroom. It smelled. Blood was all over the carpet and the bed. She did not look at him except out of the corner of her eye. She backed away and screamed once, for practice. Then still backing away, she began screaming as loud as she could. “Help! Help!”

  She ran next door. Holly Reicher answered, her hair wrapped in a towel. “Hi, Becky, what’s up?” She sounded bored and a little annoyed, as if she expected Becky to try to borrow something.

  “Something’s wrong! My husband’s lying on the floor bleeding.”

  “Did he fall? Call a doctor.”

  “I’m scared. Everything’s thrown all over the place. Something’s wrong.” She covered her face with her hands and let herself slide down against the wall of the corridor.

  “Brad!” Holly bellowed. “Brad!”

  He came out in the hall. “What’s the matter?”

  “Something’s wrong,” Becky howled, trying for hysteria. “He’s lying in his blood!”

  “Who’s your doctor?” Brad reluctantly walked into their apartment. “What happened in here? Did you have a fight? Where’s your TV?”

  “I just got home from work! I just stopped and got us supper and walked in,” Becky wailed. “The TV was here this morning.”

  Brad walked across the room and looked into the bedroom. “Oh my god,” he said and blocked the door. “You don’t want to look at this. I think you’ve been robbed. We’d better call an ambulance. And the police.”

  Becky sobbed hysterically, rubbing spit surreptitiously on her face. She could not make herself cry tears, but she could fake it pretty good. She scrubbed at her eyes until she was sure they would look red and swollen. “What’s wrong with Terry? He’s hurt bad, isn’t he?”

  “He’s hurt real bad,” Brad said, guiding her along to his apartment, his hand on her elbow. “Come on and sit down. Holly! Call the police. Right now. There’s been a break-in next door.”

  She threw herself down on their couch and faked sobbing. In the kitchen she heard Brad say to Holly, “He looks dead to me. There’s blood all over the place and he’s not moving.… Hello, yes, I want to report a break-in and … and the person may be dead but I didn’t want to touch anything, so I didn’t check him out.… Next door.”

  Becky gave herself a rest while Brad and Holly talked in low voices in the kitchen. She messed up her hair. She rubbed her eyes harder and managed to make them water. She decided it was time to be a little more dramatic. She staggered into the kitchen. “I’m going next door. He needs me.”

  “Becky, he’s past needing anybody. Sit down,” Brad said not unkindly, pushing her shoulders downward. “The police are on their way.”

  “Did you call an ambulance?”

  “I think it’s past that.”

  “What do you mean? He’s unconscious. He lost a lot of blood.”

  “Becky, Terry’s dead. Sit down and try to get yourself together. The police are arriving any moment. They’ll have a lot of questions.”

  They retreated to the bedroom. She heard Holly say, “I just knew I shouldn’t have answered the door.”

  Brad said, “She’s hysterical, I had to help. But let’s get dead bolts put on the door.”

  “You think somebody broke in?”

  “Maybe he let them in. I didn’t look around. I don’t want to get mixed up in this. Maybe it’s drugs. But they took the TV. I saw that right away.”

  “We’re lucky they didn’t break in here. Or did they? We better look around.” Brad and Holly went dashing around checking their condo.

  I hate them, Becky thought Yuppie worms. It occurred to her it would have been a nice touch to have broken into another condo. She could have kicked herself for not thinking of it. Maybe Sam and she ought to do another job in a couple of weeks, just to reinforce the idea of burglars active in the area.

  Suddenly Holly noticed her. “Oh, do you want a cup of coffee, or anything? The police should be here by now. Suppose we were being burglarized, what good would they be?”

  Becky stayed on the couch, her eyes closed. Suppose she aped going into shock? Too complicated. She could do hysteria fine.

  At last a police car arrived outside, siren whooping. Two patrolmen came upstairs, followed by Helen. Florrie was barking downstairs. “Yes,” Helen was saying, “my dog did bark. But I thought he was having a noisy party. I heard thumps and bangs. The TV was on loud.”

  One patrolman stood at the door with his gun drawn, while the other went in. He came back. “Radio the captain,” he said, and what sounded to Becky like a string of numbers.

  “They haven’t let me go in,” Becky said to the one patrolman. “Can I see my husband?”

  “I’m afraid I have to seal the premises.” He guided her out in the hall. “In a murder investigation, we have to keep everyone out. Why don’t you go back and sit down next door?”

  “Officer,” Holly whined, “we hardly know each other. I have work to do. I was just being nice. She can’t stay in my condo.”

  “She can come downstairs,” Helen said. “I’d be glad to have her. Some of us care about our neighbors.”

  “Go downstairs, lady … Mrs. Burgess? We’ll talk to you soon.”

  Another police car arrived. Becky watched side by side with Helen at her windows facing the parking lot. Then another. An older man in a sports jacket got out of one. Two men in regular clothing got out of the other. Another police cruiser pulled up and two more patrolmen came. She imagined her condo jammed with police. One of them had a videotape camera. Helen and Becky could hear them upstairs. Becky did not bother being hysterical after the first five minutes. Helen said to her, “I know you’re upset, and it’s a real horror. I’m scared myself. We need better security around here. But sometimes good things can come out of bad.”

  “I know I’ll miss him, no matter how he acted. He did love me.”

  “I’m sure he did.” Helen patted her shoulder. “You never had any supper. Don’t you want a bite to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Becky said, but her stomach growled. She had been too nervous to eat lunch.

  “You may not be hungry, but I am. And you have to keep your strength up. I’m going to make a little spaghetti, and you can eat it with me or not.”

  Becky could hear them upstairs. What were they doing? Up and down they went, up and down. She could hear them laughing and talking. There were two men outside going over the grounds. Finally somebody came to the door, the older man in the sports jacket. It was a nice jacket, she noticed, a grey tweed. She dabbed at her eyes and snuffled. He had papers for her to sign so they could search her car and Terry’s car.

  “I need a list of everyone who’s been in and out of your apartment in the past month,” the man said. He was perhaps forty-five, with close-cut, pepper-and-salt hair. He was of medium height. Captain E
delson. There was a finger missing on his left hand. She tried not to stare at the stump of the little finger. But he noticed.

  “Shot off,” he said. “Years ago. Nowadays, they’d probably sew it back. Now let’s start that list. We have to screen out the fingerprints of friends and family so that we know whose prints don’t belong there.”

  She decided to include Sam, saying that they had read together from the play the weekend before auditions. She included Helen, although she didn’t think Helen had been upstairs. She included everyone in Terry’s family, his friends and about half of hers. She wanted them to sound like a well-adjusted busy couple close to both families. He also asked her about valuables. He walked her upstairs to say what was missing, but he wouldn’t let her touch anything or even take any of her things, like a nightie or a clean pair of panties. Then he hustled her down to Helen’s again.

  He had more questions. “Was your husband having an affair? Did he take drugs? Had he ever taken drugs? Were you having an affair? I don’t mean to be insulting, you understand, we have to know these things. They’ll turn up anyhow in the course of our investigation. Did he have alcohol problems? Had he ever had problems with alcohol? How about you? Where did he work? Was he fired? Was there an argument? How long had he been unemployed? What kind of relationship would you say he had with his brother? Would you say you’d been having money problems?”

  She confessed to money problems, and competition and a quarrelsome relationship between the brothers Chris and Terry. She worked to present the picture of a loving young couple with little money but great hopes for the future. Planning a family but holding off until they were more secure financially. The police captain, Edelson, had the habit of asking the same question five different ways. He did not let her alone until one of the detectives came in to tell him the medical examiner had arrived.

  When the captain left, Becky caught Helen looking at her hard and a bit strangely. Her stomach clenched. She gave Helen a big smile, before she realized that must be inappropriate. Helen said softly, “You did fine. Maybe you laid it on a little thick with the hearts and flowers, but you were fine.”