by Marge Piercy
Becky did not say anything. She felt frozen. Did Helen know? Was it that easy to guess? Or was she just reading too much in? She wondered how Sam was feeling. What was she supposed to do with herself now? How should she act? She wished she dared ask Helen’s advice.
FIFTY-FOUR
Leila
Leila and Zak were sitting at breakfast. They were both people who dressed and tidied up before eating. Perhaps she thought we are signaling a closure to our vulnerability in bed. They were also busy people and people who liked being busy. Sitting around over the breakfast table was uncomfortable. She surmised each felt their new intimacy required extra politeness, but she suspected they would soon dispense with the long breakfasts and charge off into their separate days. He was saying, “You don’t understand how amusing I find it. I’d say nobody but you could ever end up with her cleaning lady living in her bedroom—”
“If you find it amusing, perhaps you’d like to take her home with you?”
He held up a hand for peace. “What I was trying to say was that I’d say it wouldn’t happen to anybody else, except that I once had a woman I had gone out with exactly four times move into my house with her daughter when she was evicted. It took two months to pry her out. I used to be a marshmallow.”
“The universal donor. O Negative. That’s what I am. Can receive from hardly anybody, but can give to almost everybody.”
They exchanged wry grins. “Still,” he said, “you’re going to have to do something about Mary Burke. Clearly she doesn’t like being here any better than you like having her. I don’t think she trusts you.”
“I can’t do anything until Mrs. Burke, Mary, whatever I’m supposed to call her, until she’s recovered. I can’t turn her out onto the streets. Her daughter finally agreed to split the cost of the nurse, but it was a struggle. The daughter strikes me as capable of great rathlessness without a flicker of remorse, because all that counts are her children.” Waif stuck her head out of Leila’s blouse and yawned.
Zak grinned. “You look ridiculous with that kitten in your bosom. I know, she has to be kept warm. Still, it’s hard to guess who to talk to, since you have two heads and one of them is furry.… What about the son in Hawaii?”
“A benign loser. He means well, but he’s too laid-back to get worked up over what’s happening. He’s six thousand miles away, and neither of them has the price of a plane ticket. He lives with his wife and his kids in an apartment. While Grandma could sleep on the couch for a week, it’s no long-term solution.”
“Suppose you just shipped her off to one of them, the son or the daughter? The son sounds kinder. Wouldn’t they have to deal with her?”
“Zak, she isn’t a package of old clothes I’m bundling up for Rosie’s Place. She has strong opinions. She was furious that I called her kids. She had them convinced she lived in some rooming house without a private phone. She’d endure anything rather than be a burden to her children.”
“Fierce pride. Lethal pride.”
“Or simply defending her sense of self-worth against the discovery that if she did throw herself on their mercy, they might throw her right back.”
“I wish you could come out to the Cape with me for a couple of days. We’re both very aware we’re not alone here.”
“I can’t till she’s out of danger. Besides, I thought we’d agreed that we’re going to take things slowly.”
“We both have a tendency to act as if we’re not only married, but we’ve been married for years.” He laughed, shoving back his chair. “I never thought I’d meet anybody with some of the same virtues and faults I have in relationships. Still I wish you’d come.”
“If I can get away, I will … think about it. I promise.” She looked into his eyes that seemed greener than usual this morning. His eye color seemed to respond to ambient light and the colors he was wearing far more than hers ever did. Her eyes were dark brown all of the time; his eyes were changeable as weather. “We need to go slow. We live a hundred miles apart. That helps. I don’t want to live with you and I sure don’t want to live with Mrs. Burke.”
“Maybe if you lent her the money for a deposit on a cheap place, she could carry it She’d have trouble getting together the deposit money for rent and utilities, all that cash she’d have to lay out up front.”
“She was on a list for public housing for three years till she lost track of it They’ve torn down or rehabbed all that cheap housing that used to be in the South End. There are more abandoned buildings than there are the kind of rooming houses and SRO’s people without money used to live in.”
Zak began to get himself together to drive home. She was sure he empathized with her situation, but equally sure he was delighted that he could walk out and leave her to grapple with the problem to which she could find no ready solution. It was keeping her away from Becky and Sam.
When the nurse arrived, she and Leila moved Mrs. Burke to David’s room. After Leila stripped her own bed completely, she went off to campus. Boston was enjoying a January thaw. The temperature had risen into the middle forties. The trees dripped, the houses wept from their roofs, the snowbanks sank into concave rotten mounds and the grass began to poke through the spongy crust of former snow. Her house did not feel her own, so she was glad to flee to her office. She made most phone calls from there now. She did not like having Mrs. Burke, but she recognized desperate need and she had, by default, to take responsibility. Maybe she would try to get her colleagues to sponsor Mary in a little apartment. She would start sounding people out about it today.
When she got home, Mary seemed better. She was sitting up in bed drinking English Breakfast tea and eating toast and jam. She had lost weight and did not look well yet. Ms. Odell had washed her hair. It was a lighter-looking grey and fluffy from the blow-dryer. She was wearing a flannel nightgown Leila had bought her.
“I called the service and they said, If I can’t do the work, that’s too bad. They took on another woman already. They’re giving her my people. What’s going to become of me?”
“We’ll figure out something,” Leila said with what she felt was empty bombast. “We’ll find a place for you.”
“Don’t you be calling my kids again. I won’t have that. I won’t!”
She suspected Mary was talking strong, but feeling quite weak. “I won’t call them again. They’re both supposed to be sending checks, to cover part of the cost of the nurse. I won’t ask them for anything else.” Leila sounded sour even to herself. She resented these kids. She was inheriting their mother, just because they couldn’t be bothered.
She retreated to her study. This situation could not continue past the next few days. She had to find another place for Mary. She felt spoiled and petty, but she was not comfortable in her home.
The next day, Friday, when Leila came home from school, Mary announced, “I told that nurse I don’t need her. I can get to the bathroom on my own now, and I can dress myself.”
“You’re too weak to leave,” Leila said, putting her hands on her hips and assuming her best matron manner. “You can’t go back on the streets. If you don’t want the nurse, I’ll be happy to tell her that’s all. I know you don’t want to stay with me, and I’m not delighted either, but I’m damned if you’re going out of here without us finding some answers.”
“I’ve been taking care of myself for fifteen years. I’ve survived situations you wouldn’t believe. I can make it. I know how.”
“You almost died, Mary. You’re in no shape to sleep in unheated places. You can’t go into a shelter where you have to walk the streets for twelve hours a day before you can go back in. We’ll find another solution.”
Over the weekend, she left Mary in charge of the house. Mary was getting up part of the day, which meant she could feed the cats. Waif had taken to following Vronsky around, his little trotting shadow. If he leapt up on his favorite windowsill to watch the street, Waif would try the leap, miss it, and then skitter up the draperies with her tiny sharp claws to join him.
Leila returned Sunday afternoon, with a great deal to do for her classes. She had not gone to see Sam or Becky since the crisis call from her mother sent her to San Diego. She had still come up with no better idea than her plan of soliciting pledges from her colleagues to get Mary back on her feet financially and to her own apartment.
Mary was out of bed when she arrived, dressed and cleaning the kitchen. “This is silly, Mary. Don’t feel you have to be scrubbing everything. Just sit down and watch TV or read the paper. Take it easy.”
“I like to be useful.”
“That’s the problem with both of us, I think.”
Sunday evening she had a call from David. “Mom, I went to see Debbie the way you asked me. Ikuko drove us down there yesterday.”
“I didn’t ask you to go, David. I just said you might want to.”
“Well, everything is a mess! Aunt Debbie fell off her horse—”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s still pregnant, if that’s what you mean. She broke her ankle. So we spent the whole weekend feeding the kids and slopping the animals and it was grim! She has a bossy horsy neighbor who tried to tell us we should stay there instead of going back to school. It’s like Little Appalachia with the kids crying and the animals bellowing and her lying there not supposed to get up. I don’t see why Abel can’t do more.”
“I don’t suppose you remember what you were like at fifteen?”
“I was into birds and computers. What’s wrong with that?”
“Anyhow, you’ve just depressed me more than I can say. Do you remember Mrs. Burke? She cleaned our house every Wednesday?” She told him briefly.
“So she stole my sleeping bag?”
“David, I sent you another one. You have one, she has one, everybody’s happy except me. I’m going to hang up now and drown myself in the bathtub.”
It was too much. She was not flying back to California. She was not going to run a hotel endlessly. She had to sell the damned house and find someplace much smaller to live. She had to get on with her book. Sam’s trial had been separated from Becky’s. It was set for next week. She sat in a hot bath trying to turn off her mind and failing. She was so tired she wanted to weep.
A phrase Zak had used about leaving California came to her. ‘I decided to consolidate my debts.’ She marched in to see Mary, who was in David’s room. “I just got into bed,” Mary said defensively.
“How attached are you to Boston?”
“I can’t go stay with either of my kids. That’s out.”
“I wasn’t thinking about your kids. I’m thinking about my sister, who’s seven months pregnant in bed with a broken ankle, with three kids, no husband, two horses, a goat, chickens and a dog. Once she gets on her feet after she delivers, she can make a living. But right now, there’s not going to be much money. It’s a good-sized house. It’s up in the mountains—it’s pretty, but it isn’t in a city or even a town. She needs help desperately.… That’s where I was last week, but I can’t go back. I have my classes to teach.”
“I’ve never been afraid of hard work. I know how to take care of babies and big kids too. I raised two kids. I can cook, I can shop, I can do anything that nurse did. I don’t know about chickens, but I like horses.”
“It would be a terrific favor to me if you’d consider letting me send you out there for a while.”
Mary was sitting up, frowning, animated. “I never took care of a horse, but I’ve ridden them. I’m not scared of animals.” She rubbed her hands together in nervous excitement. “If she’d have me, I’d go in the minute. I like it where it isn’t so cold. I just need enough money to eat on. I just need a place to stay and something to do.”
Leila called Debbie. She got Abel. She tried to chat him up, but he was feeling too sorry for himself to make conversation with a remote aunt. Then Debbie came on. “Debbie, I’ve got a serious problem you may be able to help out with.”
“I can’t do anything. I’m flat on my back with a broken ankle and I’m not allowed to lift anything heavier than a book.”
“Then maybe this will be good for you too.” She proceeded to lay out her plan.
“I don’t know,” Debbie said. “What is she like?”
Leila was calling from her study, so she wouldn’t be overheard, but nonetheless, she lowered her voice: “I don’t understand her. But she’s hardworking. She’s feisty and independent. She’s honest.” Leila remembered the sleeping bag. “In a way, she reminds me of Babs.”
“Doesn’t sound like your type.”
“She isn’t. If you don’t like the idea, forget it.”
“No, it might help. But she’d have to share Robin’s room. Let me talk to her. I can tell if it’ll work. You have no idea who I could live with and who I couldn’t stand.”
“No idea, right. I’ll get her to the phone.” Leila retired to her study with her heartbeat accelerated, her blood pressure on high. She felt like a matchmaker sweating while her clients engaged in awkward fraught conversation. Please like each other, please get married, live happily ever after. She felt guilty at trying to clear out her own life by pushing them at each other, but she had to work. It was manipulative, opportunistic and the only way out she could find.
The conversation was taking a long time. Perhaps that was good. Perhaps. She clung to Vronsky, who kneaded her skirt with his big feet, purring wildly. Waif sat on the desk with her head cocked, watching them. She was an observant little thing, affectionate so far only with Vronsky, but she was beginning to get the idea that Leila was the food source. Sometimes when Leila looked at her, she would purr, as if happy to be noticed. A little will to live with fur. No wonder Mary had saved her from who knew what filthy alley.
She was all black, except for a white fingerprint on her forehead just over her eyes and little white feet, like spats. Her eyes were becoming a clear light green. She would probably be a small cat, with a heart-shaped face and very pointed ears. Her whiskers were as white as her feet.
“My own life has been totally neglected,” she explained to the cats. “I feel buffeted by other people’s needs. I just want to live with you guys and my work and be quiet and peaceful and productive. For over twenty years I’ve been running my life around Nick. I want to stretch out and fill my own space. I want a part-time lover instead of a full-time relationship job. Neither Mary or Debbie likes me. I want them to keep house together and not even think about me.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Mary
Mary could remember when she had first come to Boston with Doug, flying in and out of Logan at Christmas to see Cindy and her grandchildren Marissa and Cole. She had never been anything other than middle-class; she had never been anything other than comfortable. Of course she flew to see her children. Of course. Then for years, Logan had been only a place she spent a night, the gateway to nothing but the streets.
Today she had a plane ticket and Mrs. Landsman at her elbow to make sure she boarded. Mrs. Landsman had bought the ticket. Mary did not feel as if she were accepting charity, because Mrs. Landsman had been blunt about what was involved. “My mother has insisted for years that I be responsible for my younger sister. Now she needs help, and I can’t give it, and she can’t accept it from me. So I’m offering you to each other. You’ll help each other if it works out, and if it doesn’t, then I can’t solve the problem.”
“Is she like you?”
“Hardly at all. We don’t even look alike. She takes after our father.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to take Kitten?”
“Waif and Vronsky are not to be separated. They’ve made their wishes known.” Mrs. L. grinned and looked at the departures monitor again.
“You don’t have to wait.”
“I like keeping you company.”
The woman wanted to make sure Mary got on the plane, that she didn’t just take the ticket and turn it in for cash. Mary had thought about that. Here she was being shipped to the opposite end of the country, wher
e she didn’t know a soul. How would she get back, if things didn’t work out? She wouldn’t know the ropes. She would be helpless and dependent on Mrs. Landsman’s sister, Mrs. Rodgers. Still, she remembered Houdini, God rest his soul, telling her that life outside was easier in California. You could camp in a park without freezing. You could sleep in the shrubbery, because it was always green and leafy.
Truthfully, if Mrs. Landsman did leave, Mary did not know if she would get on the plane. Once upon a time she had flown several times a year with her husband. They had gone to visit his parents, her parents, gone off on vacations to Florida. One year when the kids were in high school, they had all flown to London and Paris and Amsterdam in August. Now she had not been on a plane since she had lost her job with Doug.
The ticket had cost so much money, it troubled her. With her savings account, now in the form of a cashier’s check pinned to her slip so that if someone stole her purse, her nest egg would be safe, plus the money from the ticket, she would have just enough to buy an old car. It bothered her to waste all that money on a six-hour flight.
The plane seemed huge, looming out there where she could see it through the window. It was the middle of the winter: suppose it went down? Who would care? She would die and no one would mourn her. She did not imagine Cindy would grieve long. Jaime would be sad, but she was not a potent force to either of her children. Maybe she could make herself necessary to this Mrs. Rodgers?
Mrs. Landsman was telling her about the place she was going, in the mountains. She could scarcely listen. The voice barked at her like a friendly dog asking for attention. She could not give attention. She was too frightened. What was she doing? Where was she going? She was leaving everything she had learned slowly and with great pain over the years, where to get free food, where to pass time safely, where she could doze for an hour, where she could get out of the weather in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening. She would be no one in a new and terrifying place.