by Marge Piercy
She listened carefully, hoping Lohania was there but that Kevin had gone back to Hoboken. She wanted Lohania to herself today. They had to sit down with Natalie and plan a strategy together for the meeting of the Steering Committee. Carefully she spooned sugar, a dash of cinnamon, a hit of cream into each mug, ground the French Roast from Zabar’s, brought water to the boil while keeping an eye on the milk healing. Then she cut off the stale edge from the dark Russian bread and set the slices on a blue dish on a wooden tray they had found in a Maryland junk shop on the way back from a civil rights demo—decorated with blue-and-yellow flowers that looked like eyes. After she had added a hunk of sweet butter, she ladled out bitter orange marmalade. Apricot nectar this morning. Lohania always bought flowers. In the room beyond, the sunny dining room, with light glittering on the parquet floors they had refinished, Lohania had put bronze chrysanthemums in a vase on the mahogany table Leigh had inherited from his Aunt Fanny. Vida slipped in quietly not to disturb the couple in the living room, separated by glass doors they had shut for privacy, and stole one chrysanthemum for her tray. There. Ready for Leigh.
As she set the tray down on the stool beside the bed and flung off the wrapper, she gloated over the Cretan embroidery that formed the headboard of her fine big bed and the embroidered hairy chest of her own sweet lover with his pointed curly beard of glossy bay brown pointing straight up as he yawned. She did not mind getting up and waiting on him, for she tended to think of men as frail. They could only do it sometimes. Once a day was pretty good to get out of one of them. She wanted Leigh as she sidled into bed beside him, plumping pillows, and handed him his mug.
He had switched on the bedside radio to a rock station. The Grateful Dead singing over their café au lait. “You know what I really want to do, babes? The hell with this commentator crap. I want to be a New Left disc jockey. Leaping Leigh, the first of the Red Hot Papas. That’s how to reach the kids. Play the beat, and in between you can chatter and comment and really lay out some hot licks on where the country’s at. That’s my true fantasy”‘
She smiled at him. “And adored by seventy-two thousand teenybop-pers, sure.”
“Nah, I just want all the freebies on the new releases. And to interview all those guys … But I always wanted to be a disc jockey. I was the jockey for the dances in high school, you know that? Except for the big ones where we had five jerks in to play”‘
Breakfast over, she removed the tray and leaned to kiss his mouth, tasting of coffee and marmalade. The sun fired all the hair tangled on his arms and chest. “My bear,” she lilted. “My brown bear, my cinnamon bear.” His prick was already standing, making a funny tent of the sheet. She slid under.
“Leave the gown on this time,” he said. “It’s exciting. Slithery.”
Leigh never liked to dally long in caressing. He claimed to be insensitive except for his prick. Sometimes she wondered if so much hair dulled the nerves. Mopsy, lying in the blue easy chair beating her tail in hope she would soon be taken out, was more sensitive to touch than Leigh was. He would go down on her to get her ready. Then she would have to decide whether he was up for a long one or a short one. If it was going to be quick, she fantasized to come; if he was going to take his time, she just enjoyed it and stayed with him. The only problem was trying to guess early enough to gauge herself. Once he was inside her, he liked making love. He was vigorous and responsive.
“Where did you get that nightie?” He dangled it off his hand as he sat watching her dress.
“Natalie got it for me.”
“Your sister. Ha. I thought it was some hot young lover.”
“You’re the one gets presents. Ever noticed, in our neck of the woods it’s the women who give the men presents?”
“‘Cause we’re all so wonderful.”
“Especially you. Right?”
“Right … Besides, you have more time to shop.”
“Wow! Are you living in an illusion. We have time? Natalie? Me? Sure, from two to four in the mornings on alternate Mondays. Well, for that you can just walk Mopsy this morning.”
He strolled back to his own room whistling a Beatles song, and Mopsy followed him, wagging her tail harder, as if she had understood. Vida sat at her vanity, brushing the snarls from her silky red hair. Time, huh? If anyone in New York had a busier schedule, she had yet to meet them: perhaps Mayor Lindsay, but she doubted it.
Dressed, she ran out the service door, down three flights and into the wing of the building on West End. She rapped on Natalie’s door, gave the back buzzer a Dah dah dah DAH, waited impatiently. Natalie answered the door in her old red bathrobe. It had been a good cashmere bathrobe when they had gone away to college together. She rumpled Natalie’s curly brown hair, kissed her rosy mouth and hugged her, plump cuddly zaftig Natalie. “Get rid of that damn old bathrobe, Nattikins. Off with it. It’s practically dragging on the ground, and it looks like somebody’s mother ought to be wearing it.”
Natalie wrinkled her snub nose at Vida. “Fuck you. I am somebody’s mother. And that ain’t all. Come in.”
“Daniel still in bed?”
“No, he went out to get the Times and he’s not back. But he took Sam in his stroller, so blessed be. Let’s sit in peace. Want some coffee?”
”Sure. Black.”
“Me too.”
“How come, Natty?”
Natalie patted her belly. “I’m on a diet”
“I like you the way you are. You don’t look fat to me.”
“Gee, thanks. But I’m going to be a lot bigger soon.”
“Oh, no.” Vida could not pretend to be delighted quickly enough. “Not again.”
“Yeah” Natalie shrugged, rubbing her belly. At different times Natalie looked to her like a Buddha, like an implacable peasant, like a beaming child. “Another one.”
“Don’t you use the diaphragm?”
“Yeah. I use it … But Daniel gets pissed sometimes, when I get up to put it in. He liked the pill. Only it made me swell up like a dyspeptic whale. Belching, farting, all the time fireworks … He says if I don’t put it in first, if I have to get up, he doesn’t feel in the mood by the time I get back.”
“You going to have it? You don’t have to.”
“What’s the use being married if you still get abortions? I ask you” Natalie blew on her coffee. “Everybody says that only kids are neurotic. The folks will be glad.”
“So when is it due?”
“Don’t call a baby it. Like you’re expecting a monster. Let’s see, middle of May. At least I won’t stagger through the summer like a one-woman slum the way I did last time, remember? … Had your breakfast?”
“With Leigh. Nice this morning. Lohania’s home, but I don’t know if that new dude of hers is squatting on her today”“
“Surly, isn’t he? We need to confer.” Natalie sat up straighter, spooning plain yogurt into her bowl. “I want the leaflets to offer some political content this time. Not just, Wow, let’s all go dance in the streets and stop traffic”
“Well, it’s got to be today. Tomorrow Lohania will be back in Newark and I’ll be at work … Which reminds me, you and I have to knock out the monthly budget. We ran over on food again.”
“Why don’t you ask Kyriaki for a raise?”
“Not a chance, Natty … I wish that couple camping on our floor would kick in something for food.”
“They figure we’re too bourgeois to care. Between our two households we probably hold more real jobs than the rest of the New York Movement put together.”
Natalie spoke cheerfully, although Vida knew her sister had disliked quitting her job at Brooklyn College, where she had been intensely interested in her students and had served as faculty sponsor for the SAW chapter. Natalie had been enthusiastic about having a baby, but would have liked to go on teaching too. Sam would soon be old enough for day-care, and she had been looking forward to teaching at least part time. “Maybe you could get a job at the free school,” Vida said, knowing her sister woul
d have followed her thoughts.
“I like to work in mainstream institutions—that’s my bias. Counter-institutions aren’t for me. I don’t like the prima donna men who hang out down there … I want to reach students who have to get the degrees, not the ones who can play around.”
She squeezed Natalie’s hand, feeling the unyielding wedding ring. It said, I belong to Daniel, who has just stuck another baby in me. Sam was nice and cute, almost as cute as Mopsy, although a lot more work, and now that he was talking, amazingly bright, but who needed another? She wanted more of Natalie’s time, not less. “Did you tell Ruby and Sandy yet?”
“I’ll call tonight. You want to make it a group call? Get on the extension?”
“Sure. It’s easier that way. Excuses us for not writing, and the confusion speeds it along.” She loved her parents, but they were upset by their daughters’ political activities. A photograph of Vida in Life after the last SAW national convention had frightened them. She was making a speech outdoors, holding up her fist in front of an NLF flag, looking fierce. Actually, she had been making a report from the first women’s caucus in SAW about the lack of day-care facilities. She had been angry, all right, because the men had been chatting and ignoring her report. Not that Vida cared much about day-care facilities except as the lack of them impacted on Natalie, but she had been chosen to make the report as the loudest of the women, the best speaker, the one with the most charisma on the platform. Yet the moment the men heard “women’s caucus” and “kids” they tuned out and started milling around.
“Natty, you got time to do the laundry this week?”
Natalie sighed. “I guess so … I still haven’t found anybody from the sitting pool to cover for me Tuesday night.”
“You’ve got to, Natalie. You can’t miss another Steering Committee!”
“Maybe I can get Daniel to stay with Sam,” Natalie said without much hope. “If he doesn’t have a meeting for once”
“Maybe we can actually hire a baby-sitter. Put up a notice in the elevator”
“Some teenybopper I don’t know? Don’t be ridiculous!” Natalie drew her little self up, sternly maternal.
”Okay, I’ll find somebody” One of the kids in SAW who had a crush on her. “Don’t worry.”
“Not some jerk whose idea of fun is feeding babies acid, okay?”
Oscar and Pelican Bob, who were setting up the SAW exhibit in the park, stopped by at noon to pick up the work for the War Pavilion. At two the family set off for the Smash-the-State Fair, Natalie pushing the stroller. Her corduroy jumper came about two inches above her knees. Natalie did not wear her skirts as short as Lohania and Vida did, who were always con-spiratorially shortening together, another inch, another, egging each other on. Daniel and Leigh walked in advance, with Mopsy trotting between them proudly, tail high. Leigh paced with hands shoved in the pockets of his flight jacket, Nagra recorder slung over his shoulder. Daniel swung his arms, leather patches flashing on the elbows of his sport jacket. Daniel was a big man, barrel-chested. When they stopped to wait for a light and Leigh turned back to face Daniel, she could no longer see Leigh at all through Daniel’s solid wall of back.
Just in the middle of the group Lohania and Kevin walked, holding hands and talking intently in low voices. Lohania had to take two steps to his every one. Kevin was the tallest and most athletic-looking of the men. Without flab and tightly muscled, he had an alert springy walk, looking from side to side in automatic wariness, his chin leading. Lohania was the darkest of them all, her hair black while Natalie’s was dark brown. Her Cuban exile family had made her suffer for her dark skin. Lohania was always in rapid motion, bright, nervous as a butterfly. Lohania and Vida wore the same dress, scoop-necked velour shifts that ended halfway up the thigh. They had bought them at Alexander’s on the way back from the last Steering Committee meeting. Vida’s was moss green; Lohania’s, plum.
They had loved buying the same dress. Lohania was pear-shaped, her waist curving in sensuously and then her ass slinging out a baroque balcony over her short, slightly bowed legs. They were both wearing flats and fishnet stockings, while Lohania had pinned chrysanthemums to her dress and into her wild curly hair. Lohania and Vida both loved the air of scandal that attended them, that they shared Leigh, that they were such tight friends. They were given to dropping hints about being lovers, which wasn’t true but almost true, for they did love each other and besides it was fun to tease people. Wearing the same dress amplified that air of scandal. Vida decided they had to get Natalie the very same dress. Alexander’s had had the dress in a beautiful dark gold velour that would look gorgeous on Natalie. Vida giggled aloud, but she would not yet tell Natalie why. Epating the bourgeois was fun, but shocking their own movement more to the point in daily life. It was so fine to walk attended by that buzz of naughtiness, such a powerful aphrodisiac that sometimes Vida thought she had only to smile in the right way and she could try on just about any man she wanted in New York.
“All these people!” she gloated as they approached the Sheep Meadow.
“Looks like a frigging Be-In,” Daniel said shortly. “I thought this was supposed to be a political-education project.”
So much dope was in the air she felt high just breathing. A person covered with body paint was playing the flute, sitting cross-legged surrounded by a circle of stoned music lovers nodding and swaying. Nearby, a Russian wolfhound was mating vigorously with a malamute. Mopsy slunk close behind Vida, tail low, cowering. People with shaven heads wearing orange caftans surrounded them chanting Hare Krishna, to which Leigh replied as always, “And a Harry Kirschner to you too! Have a fine three-piece suit” Harry Kirschner being an uncle on his mother’s side who had been a skilled tailor as well as a good communist.
“We aren’t near our people yet” Vida said shortly. “You ought to be pleased the hippies are around. Don’t we want to reach them?”
“Reach?” Daniel snorted. “They sit in my classes glassy-eyed and all they say if you poke them hard is Wow”
This year the earnest idealists and organizers of SAW had cross-fertilized with the gypsy hoards, and no one knew yet what the hybrid armies in the parks would turn out to mean. The organizers were smoking dope and growing their hair, and the flower children, weary of being beaten by the police, were beginning to talk about the war, but mistrust between the tribes remained. The Fair had been a proposal of Vida and Oscar’s, to attract the crowds that milled around the continual Be-In that was the Sheep Meadow. Daniel was too staid to see that a great thick fog had lifted from the American landscape and people in the new sunlight were mixing colors and sounds and cultures and life styles, always perhaps with an eye cocked to the mirror, but the mirror was singing like Crow Dog its own authentic magic chants.
“There’s our people,” Vida said. One of their street-theater groups was performing Search and Destroy in a crowd. Several actors mimed cooking in their huts, sewing, rocking babies; the army came through, dragged them out to be shot and set their huts on fire. Oscar, his dark hair bunched under a red sweat rag, was drumming for them. Oscar was not a good drummer, but he was a happy one. Oscar, the ideologue who had not gone to the beach all summer (“We’re making a revolution, Vida, let’s be serious!”), was sitting cross-legged in the October sun smiling beatifically as he pounded away in the midst of the crude agonies of the playlet. If Oscar had realized, he would have been ashamed to be seen.
Vida walked arm in arm with Lohania, Kevin having gone off to argue with some guy in a turban. Lohania smelled of sandalwood, the only scent she ever used. Even the silk scarves she wore around her wild hair to keep it back were stored in a sandalwood box that Vida had given her. Leigh was off into the crowd bird-dogging with his Nagra recorder out, Mopsy close to his heels, sniffing, shy at the crowd, the firecrackers, the circle dancing. Natalie pushed the stroller over to the benches where the mothers who weren’t stoned were collected, watching the action near the booths SAW had set up and overseeing the kiddies and talking t
ogether. Vida felt a pang of dismay for Natalie’s being stuck there on the hinges as she plunged in with Lohania.
The ball-throwing booth with the faces of McNamara, Johnson, Westmoreland, Rusk was popular, and so was the game called Draft that the Steering Committee had enjoyed working out. But the rock band was out-drawing the political exhibits, and even their own people were mostly off dancing. Daniel strolled with a colleague, puffing on a water pipe they handed back and forth much as he usually puffed on his meerschaum. Obviously they got their pleasure from commenting on the lurid but curiously placid scene. A rainbow had spilled over the people, luminous, garish, whimsical, silly, starkly religious. She passed kids looking as if they were dressed in everything they had found in the attic of a Victorian transvestite. Balloons floated and popped. The day was almost hot. Musicians, beggars, vendors, dope dealers plied their trade. The Chamber of Horrors wasn’t working. Nobody would look at photographs from Vietnam. The booth with political pamphlets reported only modest sales. “We should sell pamphlets and popsicles at the same booth,” the kid behind the counter said. How could they educate the dancing children? She watched, she flirted, she talked to acquaintances and strangers, she wandered about. Every so often she looked for her family.
As Lohania and Kevin were dancing, no one watching them would doubt they were lovers. But Kevin speedily got bored and backed away. She could feel his boredom like an actual presence, like a big German shepherd that must be fed and restrained. It could not be locked up indefinitely or ignored. His physical presence was tiring to her, almost noisy. How did he manage to center scenes around himself just by standing there glaring?
“Hey there, it’s Ida Red!”
She turned. “Oh … “ In Washington, at the Pentagon, one of the marshals had called her that. A folksinger, in the SAW chapter in Louisville. “What on earth are you doing here?”
