The Longings of Women

by Marge Piercy

  Leila studied Helen on the stand, trying to understand the strength of her support for Becky. She was sure that Helen was perjuring herself, but Helen was willing. The tie between the old widow who made costumes for community theater and Becky was strong enough so that Helen would lie for her. It fascinated Leila. What did Helen see in Becky that so moved her to loyalty?

  “She’s a good woman. A good wife,” Helen said bluntly, of a woman she must have suspected killed her husband. Helen seemed honestly to believe that Terry had deserved to die and that Becky had done her best. The D.A. did not suggest she was lying. He concentrated on suggesting she was a batty old woman, easily hoodwinked, easily confused. Leila thought her rather a tough-minded woman who had given her friendship to Becky and would not take it back. She was fiercely and adamantly loyal. Becky was her kitten and the D.A. was the enemy. She was a woman for whom personal loyalty had the weight of law.

  That day Leila would have liked to go with the Souza family, but Cathy was alone. Zak’s clinic was not covered and he could not get away. Leila could not desert Sam’s mother. They went off to the same help-yourself, family-style restaurant, Jack’s Outback, they had patronized with Zak. “If she gets off and Sam goes to prison, I’m going to kill her myself,” Cathy said darkly, poking at her spinach salad.

  “I don’t think that’s likely. Sam’s testimony was very strong.”

  About halfway through the mostly silent meal, Cathy said, “I never thought you and Zak would get together. I never in a million years would have guessed that.”

  “Me neither,” Leila said. “I’m a dull woman. I got married young and I never had an affair during my marriage.”

  “Me too,” Cathy said. “And here I am, probably going to get married again, once this all is over.”

  “Steve wants to?”

  “Yeah, because of his kids.”

  “I understand. It’s much less awkward.”

  “It doesn’t seem right to get married in the middle. Although I didn’t like the reference in the Herald to Sam’s mother and her live-in boyfriend. Steve wasn’t living with me when Sam got into trouble. But what about you and Zak?”

  “I like it the way it is. Low-key. Leaving me plenty of room.”

  “We’ll see how you feel in six months.” Cathy grinned. “I like you much better than that wife of his, who made me feel like a country mouse.”

  That afternoon, Tommy testified he had not lent his car to Sam. A mechanic from New Bedford testified that the car had not been running but had been in the shop while he put on a new muffler. He produced an invoice and a check dated that day, although the check had not been cashed for two weeks. The D.A. established under cross-examination that his shop had once been investigated for receiving stolen cars.

  Monday, Becky took the stand. She was quite effective as a witness in her own behalf. She was tremulous but contained, the picture of quiet grief. No more of the inappropriate smiles at the camera, the beseeching eyes that begged, See me, love me. The courtroom ambiance focused her. Becky was never as sharp as when she was the center of public attention, but she did not flirt with the live audience. The gaze of the press was too diffuse to produce as damaging a reaction. Instead she played them as well as she could. The question was whether her performance could erase Sam’s.

  Nobody in the course of the trial succeeded in creating an image of a believable Terry: not his brother, not his mother, not Heather, not Becky. He was at once meek and violent; lazy and limp; a perfect son and husband, a great all-around athlete and a man whom a fragile slight woman and a high school senior could beat to death. He was tenderhearted and even-tempered; he beat his wife and left bruises all over her. Terry seemed like the man that wasn’t. Good-looking and much-loved, a nebbish with no real friends. The one fact no one disagreed with: the dead man had been attached to his family, with their penchant for large insurance policies and their visible but, as far as Leila could see, unfounded conviction that they were much better than other families. He had played golf reasonably; he had skied badly but with pleasure. He had liked blondes. He had liked to watch sports on TV and videos with his buddies from college. He had not been very good at what he did, or very good at finding anything else to do. But that all seemed insufficient reason to bash his head in as Sam had described, with a nine iron and a hammer.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Becky

  Becky had a new lawyer, who was appealing her conviction. She had thought Robert Green did a fine job, but since the jury hadn’t agreed, her family wanted a lawyer skilled at the technical points of appeal. Tommy had kicked in some money. He was doing okay, and Becky had managed to keep him from being dragged into the trial except for the car, which they couldn’t prove. At least she had been able to protect him, and thus her family.

  She had been in the House of Correction already for nineteen weeks before her trial, but she had viewed it as temporary. She had not been able to believe that she was going to be stuck in a box. It was so stupid! What good did it do anybody to park her in jail? She hadn’t understood that Barnstable was a hotel compared to the state prison for women, MCI Framingham, where she had been dumped to waste her life.

  She was back where Terry had tried to push her, an existence sometimes very like living at home. It was noisy in the prison. The building seemed designed to magnify sounds, and there was no time that she could not hear a crowd of TVs all roaring, music blaring, women arguing, doors slamming, a scuffle and something banging, someone crying, someone moaning, someone throwing up. The place stank, just like the house of her childhood: too many people using inadequate toilet facilities. It was dirty, it was noisy, it was ugly. The so-called cottages were better, and eventually maybe she’d be in one with a group.

  Mainly it was boring. It was as boring as the worst, longest study hall of her high school days. Time halted, spread out stagnant, glazed over, froze to the bottom. Time dripped on her closed eyes. She was surrounded by women who mostly meant well but were losers. Usually their husbands or their boyfriends, or their own bad habits, had got them in trouble. Only a few were trapped by a great plan gone awry, like herself.

  It was Sam’s fault. He had done her in as thoroughly as Terry had planned to. If he had toughed it out, if he had kept his damned mouth shut, she would be a free woman. What did they have on her? Just gossip. If Sam and Gene hadn’t been greedy, if they had tossed the VCR and other gear in the Canal as they were supposed to, then she would be counting her money. She could not stop going over his stupid mistakes and trying to figure out how she could have ridden herd on him, how she should have overseen him more carefully and kept him in line.

  If only she had been physically strong enough to fix Terry herself, then she’d be out living it up. Now what was going to become of her? She could always kill herself. If she bided her time, some method would turn up. But people got out of prison. Her new lawyer was an expert at finding technicalities that invalidated a trial. He did not care if she were guilty or innocent; all he cared about was whether any of the participants had made an error he could use, the arresting officers, the D.A., the judge. She had faith in his computer mind. She hardly ever saw him, because, unless he forced another trial, she had nothing to contribute to his researches.

  People escaped from prison. Once she knew the place, she would see. She would watch and wait. If she ever got loose, she’d never let herself be caught. People went back where they were known. The police would expect her to go to her family, but she would head right on out. Men would pick her up hitchhiking. She would go South, where people arrived all the time. She would change her appearance. There was nothing for her in her old life anyhow. It was a dead end. She had not even got the insurance money. The condo was on the market. The Burgesses would take the money. Eventually everything they owned would go to Chris. She had ruined her life to benefit Chris, while she had nothing.

  Except her wits. What did she have left to lose? She could see herself in truck stops talking her way into rides sout
h. She could see herself arriving in Atlanta or Miami, cities where she had never been. Lots of young women came into those cities and managed without money or connections. She would be ruthless. She would be tough. She had been hurt too much to trust a man again.

  She spent a lot of time thinking about how to get different clothes right away. They would have her description. The thing to do was to go to a mall. Shoplifting was too dangerous, she could be busted. She would select a woman close to her own size and watch her buy something. Then she’d follow her. Women were always putting bags down. It would be very easy to quietly pick up someone’s shopping bag while they were making a purchase or trying something on. Sale tables were a perfect place to wait for an opportunity.

  Women got paroled. Even if they weren’t supposed to, sometimes they did, because of prison overcrowding. The main thing was to act in a way that would gain the trust of those in power, while never ceasing to watch for a chance to get away. Women gave up. They settled into routines. Being in prison was being forcibly pushed back into an imitation childhood, ordered around, punished, told you were a good girl or a bad girl, often in those words, forced to conduct your life according to a given rigid schedule and to perform meaningless and repetitive tasks. There was a room upstairs where women sewed flags. She’d always hated sewing, but she’d do it. Women became children here. She respected the ones who did not, even the ones in constant trouble. They were still alive, as she intended to be. There were support groups for women with AIDS, with kids, with drug and alcohol problems, but none for women who’d had no choice.

  She would not give up. She would not kill herself after coming so close to getting what she needed and after working so hard and so long. She would not let them have the satisfaction, the Burgesses, all those who would not give her a chance. She had deserved that money, she had. She made herself a time table for survival. While the appeal process dragged on, she would concentrate on getting to know her situation. She would make friends with other prisoners. She would volunteer for everything. She would make herself useful and trusted.

  If the lawyer got her off or even if he only forced a new trial, she would be just fine. If he failed, then she would check out the information and contacts she had accumulated, and she would begin to plan an escape. She was smart: she could do it if anyone could.

  Then she would be famous again. Her face would be on the evening news. But she had to figure out how to look different enough to avoid detection, while good enough to get picked up for rides. The easiest way to disguise herself was to make herself look old, but that would never do. If she let her hair grow here, then she could cut it off and look different, and it would be easier to dye it some other color. She could use shoe polish or anything to darken it. They would be looking for a woman with shoulder-length blond hair and she would be a woman with very short dark hair. All she really needed was a different jacket or coat. Jeans were jeans. The only trouble with her plan was that the style here was very short hair, and she didn’t want to look like a wimp.

  That plan enabled her to survive waking from a poor night’s sleep, broken four times, as one of her roommates had a bad dream or got up to pee. Every morning, Gemma wept. She had to pee frequently because she was pregnant. What a place to give birth. Becky felt sorry for her. Kamala had two kids at home with her mother. Kamala and Gemma were both younger than Becky, but Denise was ten years older and standoffish. Denise had a scar up her side from a knife fight and two teeth missing. She had done time here before. Becky worked them all, wanting to be on their good side, wanting to have them at least neutralized. She had never been around Black women before, except for a few in college, but she was not one of those suburban women who simmered with spite. She looked at all the inmates as potentially useful, and both Kamala and Denise were smarter and a lot tougher than white Gemma. Kamala had stolen checks; Gemma had tried to sell drugs. Denise had cut up her old man when he hurt her son. Gemma wanted to bond around being white, but Becky was not interested. Most together women in here were Black, and they were the ones she admired. The women who really had it bad were the women with kids outside.

  Kamala was in love with another Black woman, Rena, who was HIV positive. Kamala and Rena did not get to spend much time together, but they wrote notes and made eyes at each other. Becky could see why women fell in love with women. Almost every woman here could blame a man for what had happened. She could see the attraction, but she didn’t yet notice anyone around her who could match up to herself. She was going to have higher standards from now on. Her mistake had been in taking Terry and Ted Topper and Sam too seriously. In the meantime, she made herself useful to everyone. Becky was curious about one woman they called A.Z. who had robbed three banks, but A.Z. had her own coterie. Becky would bide her time. Eventually she would get to know A.Z.

  That academic lady was still writing a book about her. It would have been kind of interesting to tell her what had really happened, but Becky was not that big a fool. No, let Sam the worm wallow in his guilt. She would tough it out, proclaiming her innocence, and they wouldn’t ever get rid of a nagging doubt about whether she had done Terry or not. When that book came out, it would help people think she was in prison wrongly. Down the pike a few years, nobody would remember why the State had been so vindictive. She was sure she had worked on Leila Landsman and got her on her side, although she hadn’t liked the sense she got at the trial of the woman being chummy with Sam’s uncle.

  After all, Becky wasn’t the one who had really killed Terry. She wasn’t strong enough. But every time she thought of the situation she’d been in, she could see no other course of action. Terry had been trying to smash her back where she came from. In death he had managed to do that to her, with Sam’s help. She had no taste in men at all. There wasn’t one of them except her brother Tommy who had ever come through for her. A man like Tommy was what she ought to look for, someone ambitious and tough as she was.

  Sam was in prison too, and he’d seen what good it did him to tell them everything they wanted to hear. He had been given a shorter sentence than hers, for all his loving help in nailing her, but he still faced twenty years on the books. She couldn’t see him figuring how to escape. He’d read a lot and get fat. He’d be some thug’s pretty boy. That would serve him right. Here no one bothered her that way. Women paired off to have someone to care for, to have a family, a tie, a focus, but no one forced herself on Becky. She was someone people knew about and they respected her. She would live up to that respect. She was friendly to everyone but encouraged no one, yet. Sometimes women would flirt or make suggestive comments, but it didn’t bother her. She took it as flattery. The only woman she was really interested in was A.Z. She bet A.Z. was working on a plan too. She was in no hurry, but she had A.Z. picked out and she was watching and listening.

  She looked forward to visits. Tommy, Belle and her mother came oftenest, and Helen came every other week. Sylvie managed to visit her once, without Mario’s knowledge, as he had made a nasty scene about Becky. Husbands didn’t like her any longer. Being feared was kind of fun. Something new.

  Becky was actually doing better with the women in here than she had done with the women at Sound Cable. They didn’t expect her to gush here, to be nicey-nice and in their faces. As a famous case, as a woman who had bashed in her husband’s head, something a great many of the inmates had dreamed about at least now and again, she was potentially near the top of the heap. It depended on how she acted. She didn’t let anyone push her around but she didn’t insult anyone either. Growing up in a large and noisy family gave her certain skills in this situation. All the women here were just passing the time as best they could. They were all just using up the long dirty time.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Mary

  Mary drove Robin to gymnastics class and to tap dancing, just as she had once taken her own daughter, then her granddaughter, when Marissa was Robin’s age. When Robin’s gymnastics teacher heard her speaking to Mary, he rebuked Robin. “You shouldn
’t call your grandmother by her first name. It’s not polite.”

  “That’s all right.” Mary did not correct him. Neither did Robin. Robin just gave her a shy grin, visiting her face and gone like a twitch.

  “Other kids have two grandmothers, but I only had one real one, Phyllis,” Robin said. “When I called my last daddy’s mommy ‘Grandmother,’ she said she wasn’t my grandma.”

  “You can call me grandma anytime,” Mary said. “I’d be happy.”

  Nobody asked hard questions, not Debbie, not the kids, not even Babs. Mary had dropped into their lives nine months ago, and a sketchy background of home making, suburban living, divorce and menial jobs sufficed to satisfy their weak curiosity. She was the woman they saw. If sometimes she had a moment of total alienation, a sense suddenly of an invisible skin between herself and everyone around her, such moments passed quickly as she dealt with the dozen problems of the day. Beverly had understood her life then, as nobody else could. But Beverly was dead, and so was Invisible Scarlett O’Neill, the woman who could press her wrist and become transparent. Mary’s life had a hole eight years long, but nobody noticed. It was her job to make sure they didn’t.

  Ben was in day care now, but Allison needed constant watching. She was going to be big. She had reddish curls, a jovial nature and a voice loud enough to melt ice cream. Debbie had clients end to end, so Mary brought Allie with her to town. While Robin was in gymnastics, Mary with Allie in her special seat in the shopping cart did the supermarket trot, as Babs called it. On the way home, she would take care of her rounds of animal-tending and exercise Amy Watkins’s mare with Allison before her on the saddle. Debbie and she had to go dress shopping tomorrow. Babs’s daughter was getting married in Escondido in two weeks. Mary owned nothing appropriate and Debbie had gained a few pounds.

  Tomorrow was going to be a full day. In the morning, Debbie and she had to load Min into the van and take her to be mated at Braun’s. It was time. Then they needed to go into San Diego in the afternoon to shop. Babs was keeping the kids, so Mary and Debbie were planning a night out. They would eat Mexican, which Debbie adored and Mary endured, and then they were going to see Robin’s father, who was playing with El Gato Negro. His band had a reasonably successful album and were doing a gig at the university.