Vida

by Marge Piercy

  “But you do see Joy and the kids. Don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but Mary Beth don’t like it.”

  Paul had four kids from his previous marriage. The eldest, Marsha, was … twenty-three? Only the two youngest girls were still living at home with Joy. With Mary Beth he already had a baby that she had never seen. Paul sure had multiplied. He had had his share and hers too of babies. Mostly they were stuck in her head in little home movies of toddlers and ten-year-olds long out of date.

  Vida and Paul were both half Jewish. Paul had fought with his Christian father all through adolescence, and yet he did not consider himself Jewish. She had gotten on much better with Tom, yet she had always thought of herself as a Jew: like mother, like grandma. When she had learned that rabbinical law was matrilineal, she had thought, Of course. Both Paul’s wives were lapsed Catholics.

  ”Listen” The lines cleared from Paul’s heavy brow. “I know where to go. Not a dump, either, like this place. It’s a bar, but they got good food, Italian. I been in there once or twice with the guys, but they don’t know me.”

  Paul ordered manicotti and meat balls and spaghetti and salad for her, while steadfastly insisting he wouldn’t have a bite to eat and eating all the bread on the table as he talked, tearing it in his big scarred hands. He had heavy, bony brows like their father’s but Ruby’s brown hair going gray. He was heavy now, his paunch heaved against his pants, yet she still thought of him as a kid. She loved him, she pitied him, she felt guilty sitting across the table. She felt as if she had stolen something vital and decamped; escaped and left him to their class fate. Ruby had married into the middle class too late to do Paul any good. Already he had quit school and gone to work in the mills. Jobs were easy to come by then. Steel production was booming. Now he wheezed as he laughed, he was short of breath, his hands and face were scarred, and he was stuck.

  “Don’t worry about me, blood’s thicker than water,” he was saying. “I think you’re crazy, but you’re my own sister. Fuck ‘em all. But don’t try to see Sharon. She’s got a bee up her ass. She’d turn you in quicker than you can say Cincinnati. She thinks you’re to blame because that asshole she’s married to never got promoted. But anybody else can see it’s because he’s such an asshole even those jerks can see through him … But you know you’re killing Mama.”

  “Don’t lay that on me. If Tom didn’t kill Mama, I sure couldn’t”

  “We all worry about you. What’s gonna happen to you … I think of you every time they put it on the TV about terrorists and shoot-outs and skyjackings.”

  “Paul, I am not a terrorist. I am not. We don’t go after individuals, we don’t terrorize. We go after corporate targets, governmental targets, landlords, IBM, the Department of Corrections. We do what we do carefully and we never hurt anyone physically.”

  “Yeah? What about these guys in Italy that are offing all those people?”

  “We’re not connected, you know, with every little group in the world … “ Should she attempt to defend them? He wasn’t understanding. Her head hurt. “So how is Mama?”

  “Not good, to tell the truth. I don’t know what’s going to happen … I think she’s been in trouble with her heart for a couple of years and she just kept it to herself.”

  She felt scared. She excused herself and went to the women’s room, where she had diarrhea. Then she washed her hands and face and collected herself. I’ll see her, I have to see her; then I’ll know how she is. That ox Paul has never been right about a thing in his life. Don’t talk about it at the table.

  She came back bright and determined to change the subject, “How’s Mary Beth?”

  “She’s pregnant again.”

  “Wow, Paul, do you want another one?”

  “Sure we do … It’s going to be hard. Jacky’s fun, but I’ve got five kids already … Mary Beth wanted it. She feels outdone by Joy.”

  “How come she’s so threatened by Joy? After all, you left Joy to marry her.”

  “I left Joy because she was fucking that dumb Polack Fred. Making a monkey out of me. Playing around behind my back”

  “Then why is Mary Beth jealous?”

  “I’ll deny it, I’ll deny it to my daying day. But what can you do when you lived with a woman for twenty years? I mean, I go over to see the kids, I’m glad to see her. You know, we have a little fun together. For old time’s sake.”

  “You go to bed with her?”

  “What harm is there in it? We were married for twenty years. It’s not like she’s married to anybody else. She’s always got boyfriends. That woman’s older than me. She’s forty-two and fat, and her teeth stick out. But she’s always got boyfriends. It’s the way she laughs. When you hear her laughing, you can’t help thinking about it, you know, sex.”

  “You miss her, don’t you, bro?”

  “She’s a slob, but she’s an easygoing woman. She likes to cook, she just don’t like the cleaning up. She’s a good mother to the kids. She’s always horsing around, ready to go bowling or out for pizza or see a dirty movie or watch a game on TV. She’s no alkie, but she likes her beer. She doesn’t make you feel like you’re some kind of jerk for drinking a beer at night”

  “Oh, Paul, you’re not so happy with Mary Beth. Are you?”

  “She’s okay” His face closed up. “Always wanting something. When are we getting a new couch, when are you going to get the stairs carpeted, when are we going to take a real vacation? … meaning no vacation for me, not relaxing or taking it easy, but pissing out money in some dude place … Joy always had a job on the side. She liked to get out of the house. Maybe she did it because she wanted to meet guys, it’d be just like her. But it took some of the weight off my back. Mary Beth is a good wife. She stays home with Jacky and she keeps her nose clean … But she’s driving me to the poorhouse. I was moonlighting weekends driving a delivery truck for a liquor store, but the doc told me I can’t do it. Like Mama, I got high blood pressure. Runs in the family, I guess. How’s your blood pressure, Vida?”

  “Steady as she goes.” Actually, Dr. Manolli had told her she had to keep an eye on it when he had dealt with her infected leg. Paul should never have left Joy. He’d been much happier with her; only his useless male pride had convinced him if she went to bed with somebody else, he had to get rid of her.

  “Do you ever think of going back to Joy?”

  “I think about it. But now Mary Beth’s knocked up again … Joy says it’s better like this, we appreciate each other … How could I live with that slut, anyhow? I’d always be scared what she was doing behind my back … So Leigh’s got his girlfriend knocked up, huh? They got married, the three of them. Won’t be the first time in our circles, right? I guess you must have been expecting it?”

  “Sure” she said automatically. “How do you know Susannah’s pregnant?”

  “I heard Natalie and Ruby talking. You didn’t know?”

  “Naturally he told me they were marrying,” she said, toughing it. “But he didn’t say Susannah was pregnant already.”

  “Three months. I guess they been fighting about it and she won. Joy was bigger than that when we tied it. She was starting to show.”

  “Three months. September. When they had gone to Montauk together, Susannah had been carrying his child. In New Hampshire he knew; he had to know. She could have broken his head in. She hated him. Say something. “Hey, you want another drink? Do you have time?”

  “Not really, toots. I told Mary Beth I had to get the battery checked, the car didn’t start when I came out of the mill. She’ll believe anything about the car, she won’t look under the hood. But if I come home tanked, I’ll have to listen to her screaming about Joy all night. It gives me heartburn.”

  She must pull herself together; from the floor, the table, the ceiling. She felt exploded. On to her plan to penetrate the hospital. “Listen, Paul, has Marsha been to see Mama?”

  “No way, Vida. She’s living in Houston, and that’s a lot of dough to lay out for a plane ticke
t. Her husband’s a pipe layer, but she’s pregnant now. Mary Beth, Leigh’s girlfriend, Marsha—it’s a regular epidemic!”

  “Listen, I want you to take me into the hospital as your daughter, Marsha. Make sure Mary Beth doesn’t get wind of it. I don’t want Mama hassled.”

  “But … Marsha’s blond and six months pregnant. She’s twenty-three.”

  “I’ll be wearing a blond wig and I’ll be pregnant, don’t worry. I’ll dress for the part. Just take me in real calm and don’t act nervous and don’t call me Vida.”

  “Okay. It’s your funeral. When do you want to do it?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “That’s kind of hard. What can I tell Mary Beth?”

  “Just say you want to see Mama alone.”

  “She doesn’t care for going to the hospital, anyhow. The smells, and seeing the people on stretchers.”

  “Paul, you’re an angel. I’ll meet you at seven where I met you tonight. Okay? I, appreciate it more than I can say. I just have to see Ruby … But don’t say a word to her yet. Just walk in ahead of me and whisper it to her. Natalie told her I’m going to try … You just march in ahead and whisper in her ear. Okay?”

  “She’s been asking where you are. I’m supposed to bring her some pictures of Jacky, anyhow. She asked for them yesterday.”

  “Okay. Bring them. I’ll meet you at seven.”

  As Paul took out his wallet to pay for her food and his beer, he folded a bill and slipped it to her discreetly. His caution amused her, if it was that rather than a code of manners; she could never get him to call her anything but Vida. “Just for you to take care of yourself

  On the bus she unfolded it. It was a twenty, and it would help, though not much. After her visit to Ruby, Joel and she had to solve the cash problem. Maybe Natalie would have a lead. They had a phone call scheduled tomorrow morning at eleven to “her” pay phone in the Art Institute. She was sitting at the back of the bus, where she could turn her head to the darkness outside the dirty windows and let herself loose, like unchaining a pack of tugging howling wolfhounds. How she longed to bay at the low, dirty sky, ruddy with the glare of neon: Susannah was having Leigh’s baby, and Leigh was choosing that too. Oh, Vida had gotten pregnant about a year after they were married, and then it had been, Kids get in the way. Leigh had said, Who wants a kid tying us down an crimping our lives? Then Lohania’s abortion later. Why was Susannah’s growth more precious than hers or Lohania’s?

  Leigh was married, about to be a father, founding his line in another woman. He was no more hers, not at all. She felt herself cast off. The phantom ex-wife. Leigh Pfeiffer and his wife Susannah Pfeiffer and baby, a complete unit. No room for Vida. Her place had been usurped entirely. He never thought of Vida any longer except when she forced him to, and then he felt a twinge of annoyance, a twinge of guilt. Oh, that one still there, a tooth he should have fixed.

  The pain was in her pride. The pain was in her sense of sexual worth. She was not the great love of Leigh’s life. She was an earlier stage, a folly, a displaced person, an old flame guttered out and the wick trimmed. Why had he bothered going to bed with her? Nostalgia? Pity? Casual lust? And why hadn’t he told her the truth? He had to have known he was going to marry Susannah. She felt a pang of hope that he had not wanted to marry his girlfriend but finally (after three months) had done so out of obligation. But she didn’t quite believe. Women had longed to marry Leigh, and at least one of them had claimed to be pregnant. He had told them he was already married. His excuse had been that if Vida was caught, as a husband he could not be forced to testify against her. He had hugged that excuse to save him from what he did not want. Obviously he wanted Susannah. That was the cup, and she must drink it down. A cup of lye; the bitter truth.

  She almost missed the El stop. Up the slippery stairs she climbed to the windy platform, hugging her jacket around her. She must tell Madame Florian what she needed for her masquerade. On the half-empty train she found a seat easily. Rush hour was over, most people had sat down to their supper. Behind her a drunken old man told a litany of curses sometimes in English and sometimes in a language she did not know, although she knew it was Slavic. She wanted to stop and buy a bottle of wine when she got off the subway, but she could not afford it. One more taste left over from her life with Leigh; incongruous now. She must come to Joel without bringing her wild grief.

  She ran into the dark, frightening alley full tilt and raced for the back door, to pound on it with the rhythm they had worked out. As he opened it, slung her arms around his neck.

  “I saw my brother. He gave us twenty dollars—”

  “Is that all?”

  “He’s got too many kids. I wouldn’t take that off him if we had any choice. I’m going to see Ruby tomorrow night.”

  He peeled off her Jacket, took her by the shoulders and sat her on the cot. “I have bad news for you.”

  “Ruby’s worse?”

  “No, I haven’t heard anything from the hospital … Sam called. Natalie got served with a subpoena when she got off the plane. They called her before the grand jury today. She refused to answer. She’s out now, but she’s afraid they’ll get transactional immunity and call her back. Anyhow, she gave Sam some money and told him to take Peezie back here.”

  “Sam and Peezie are coming to Chicago?”

  ”Sam called from O’Hare half an hour ago. He was waiting with his sister for your stepfather, Sandy, to pick them up.”

  “Why did she do that?” She was frightened for Natalie; yet irrationally and terribly, she was relieved because it took her mind off her pain. She was galvanized into fear for Natalie and released from the obsession with Leigh’s marriage and fatherhood. She did not have to force herself to pretend to think of something else.

  “She’s afraid she might have to go to jail. She doesn’t want the kids terrorized anymore. She figures there’ll be less heat on them at Sandy’s. And she’s afraid if she’s busted, Daniel will take the kids and she’ll never get them back.”

  “I didn’t think he wanted the older kids.”

  “He wants to improve his bargaining position.” Joel smoothed her hair. “As Sam explains it—that kid is cool—if Daniel has the kids, he might not have to pay Natalie any money at all.”

  “Family wars. The vengeance of fathers” She leaned against his arm. Then she took his face between her hands and kissed him again and again. He was there, he existed, he loved her. “Hey, you haven’t shaved.”

  “Aw, Vida, I haven’t got any new blades. It’s like shaving with a brick.”

  “Now it’s like making love to a bed of nails. At my age I’m entitled to a little comfort.” Suddenly it occurred to her that at her very age Ruby had left Tom, making her big leap from one life to another. Here she was changing men and profound allegiances also. But her life a not been structured by Leigh. Joel was not her work, as Tom and the children and the children had been Ruby’s no matter what jobs she had held. Perhaps the only time Ruby had felt differently had been during World War II when she had been intensely proud of her work in the shipyard. “It’s a man’s job,” she told Grandma and Paul and Vida in the evening when she came home in her overalls and changed into a dress. “My foreman, Gene Cornutti, says I’m faster than the man I replaced.”

  “What happened to him?” Paul asked.

  “He’s with your father, fighting the Japs. And I’m making ships. Even our baby Vida can do her part by stepping on the tin cans, can’t you, baby?”

  She could see herself crushing the cans by jumping on them with both feet, before they were collected for scrap metal. Her early-childhood memories of wartime were warm and happy; it was almost obscene, she thought. No European Jews could have such memories. Grandma, Mama, Paul, baby me. We were never as happy again until she married Sandy, and then Paul was already quitting school to work.

  All the time she was making love with Joel and afterward as they talked each other to sleep, odd flashes of childhood lit the insides of her lids
. Tomorrow she would see her mother. No matter how and at what cost, she would succeed.

  The blond wig was the one she carried for disguise, used with Tara; the pillow was from the cot in the back room at Madame’s; the maternity pant-suit, a hideous turquoise with dozens of shiny buttons, was provided by Madame from who knew where. She painted on a heavy mask of makeup. Paul arrived late, while she almost froze in the pantsuit. Her nose dripped freely, and all the makeup wiped off it into her handkerchief. She had stuffed cotton batting into her cheeks to distort her face to a round fat-cheeked look.

  As Paul’s impulse was to lope, she had to drag on him as they left the parking garage and went into the hospital lobby. “Slowly, slowly, Dad. Do you want me to lose my baby? Remember, you have to act solicitous. You don’t make pregnant women run.”

  “Aw, come on, Vida. We can playact upstairs.”

  She dug her fingers into his arm. “What is my name?”

  “Marsha. Marsha. Damn it, you have a grip there.”

  “Damn it back, Paul. Don’t forget my name again. Not when you think we’re alone, not anytime. Okay, lead the way, Dad.”

  When they reached the floor and entered the nurse’s scrutiny, the nurse behind the desk said, “Only two in at a time.”

  “Oh? Who’s with her?” Vida asked smiling.

  The nurse looked at the list. “Her son. Her other son, Michael”

  “Listen, I’m going to take this time to run downstairs and call my husband. I’ll be right back” To Paul she said, “Get him out of there fast. Then make sure Sharon’s not around, too.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Boot Mike out?”

  “Tell him you have something private to discuss with Mama.”

  “Yeah, he couldn’t be more bored with my life. He thinks I’m a slob”

  “I think he’s spoiled. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Get Mike out by then. I don’t trust him.”

  “You just better hope Sharon don’t show up tonight.”