by Marge Piercy
Whining music came from below, and a smell of frying oil made the air heavy. An older man with shaven head, dressed in a long unbleached robe and clasping his hands before him, took up lotus position on a mat facing both of them. “You wish to see our sister who was called Brenda Warburton?”
That was Brenda’s married name. “I’m an old friend of hers. From college,” Vida said, beginning to get an uneasy prickling sensation along her skin, “Peregrine Nash. Doesn’t she remember me?”
“We haven’t asked her yet.”
“Would you mind?” Joel flashed his brightest smile, “We’re only passing through Cleveland.”
”And what kind of relations did you have with our sister Brenda while she was in the world?” The bald man made a steeple of his hands. He spoke as if English were a foreign language; yet she did not think so. Kick him and he’d curse in fluent Cleveland American, she was sure.
“Me?” Joel hesitated, unsure whether he should claim to know Brenda or not. “I never met her. Peregrine’s her friend.”
“You are not from her ex-husband, Frederick Warburton?”
The biker. “No” Vida assured him. “I’m a friend of Brenda’s only. Er, are you Master Sajarahata? Brenda and I have been friends since 1967”
“Our Master is in New Delhi” the bald man said, “We are only the poorest of the ashrams that study His way. What kind of friends?”
She glanced at the exit nervously. “Not extremely close. But good friends for many years.” What was this?
“You were lovers?”
“No” she said, barely suppressing a smile, Brenda had been almost tediously heterosexual, loving a series of large and macho men—Bob Rossi, a lump named El Raton and the biker.
“Our way does not encourage such attachments, and often those who come seeking our sisters and brothers are those bound to them by old chains of sensuality and ignorance”
“This is my wife,” Joel said.
“I see” The bald man rose gracefully. “Sorry if I have offended you. I will find out if our sister wishes to see you”
When he left the room, a girl, also with shaven head, brought them a plate of flat wheaten breads and chickpea mash, which they ate greedily. “Should we get out of here?” she whispered.
“It don’t look good” he muttered back. “No money here”
“Come on, let’s get out.” She rose. “I’m afraid she may decide to save us”
“One second” He scooped up the rest of the chickpeas on the flatbread and rolled it into a napkin provided them. “Picnic by the side of the highway. The romantic swoosh of diesel trucks, the scent of burning rubber”
As they turned to flee, a woman waddled in, looking round as a beach ball in muslin pajamas. It took Vida a long moment to recognize the beach ball as Brenda, bald and grossly overweight. Her face was moonlike in shape and pallor. Where was her child? Vida was afraid to ask. Shaved and bound somewhere? With the biker? Probably with Brenda’s long-suffering mother in Jersey. “But Vida, wait!” Brenda howled, as Vida did recognize her voice and broke into a trot, leaping over the cushions. “I have to talk to you!” Fumbling with the door, Joel got it open and they rushed through. “Come back! I’ve found peace and tranquility. Inner peace! No more drugs! Vida! Vida Asch! Come back and listen to me!”
They ran into the snow where their old car, Mariah, was parked at the curb. For a moment the engine would not start. Brenda appeared in the doorway to wave eagerly to them, beckoning them back. The woman had served them leaned around her, giggling behind her hand. Since Brenda was barefoot she did not come outside, but waved wildly, shouting something. As the ignition finally caught and they barged off sluggishly in a wake of badly combusted oil, Brenda was still beckoning, hopefully.
“Where the hell do we go now? It’s 9 P.M. Who else do you know in Cleveland? Anybody who’s really crazy?”
“I’m scared about hanging around. Do you think they got a good look at the car?” She wrung her hands nervously. “I have a headache”
“She’s enough to give you one. Calling you by name out loud. Where’s she at? I don’t think anybody looked at the car. Where to now?”
“I know a guy, if he’s still around … Mason, he was called. He camped out in my living room for a month while he was in New York. Let’s see, I heard he went back to school … in social work—that’s it. He was going to social-work school in ‘75. Next phone we see, let me try”“
“I better keep the engine running. The battery’s dying. We’ve put a couple of thousand miles on the car already, so we can’t complain of the old darling. But she needs some help, and that means time and money and tools.” He let her out at a pay phone.
Mason was in the phone book, but when she dialed his number, intending to hang up if he was home and go over to scout, she got a recording saying that the number had been changed. Moved, probably. Nothing to do but call the new number and talk to him on the phone. “Hello, is Mason home?”
“This is he speaking. Who’s this?” A little flirtatious.
Difficult moment, “Why, Mason, once you slept on my living-room floor for a month … Do you remember … Peregrine?”
“Your floor?”
“In 1968. In the fall, in New York” Come on, slowpoke. Connect a little. “On the Upper West Side.”
“Holy shit! Oh, my god. Oh, no!” He hung up.
She stared at the buzzing phone. Gee, thanks, Mason. I hope your teeth fall out right now, one at a time and starting in front.
“That was a ringer,” she said. “He hung up on me.”
“Well, imagine you answer the phone some dumb night. You’re drinking Colt 45 malt liquor and feeling like a he-man watching the Browns on the TV and suddenly the phone rings. Hi, there, it’s me, Jesse James. Thought I’d come by with the boys and hang around your living room. Don’t worry, the posse’s at least a mile behind and we can take them easy. We’ll put the horses in the john.”
She laughed and felt better. “That exhausts my Cleveland contacts. I know somebody in Cincinnati . . “ She thought of Saul and Dee Dee embedded there with good I.D., real jobs. She envied them because they had come underground as a couple and they were still a couple. They never seemed to get lonely or strung out.
“Listen, we got to score soon. The car’s in trouble. The battery’s dying. We got less than fifteen bucks, and every time I look at the dash, the gauge sings out Fill me up again.” He took out the napkin gooey with chickpea mash. “Let’s eat!”
“In four days I contact the Network.” She pushed away the proffered food, feeling nauseated.
“Sure, they’re rolling in dough. We need a plan. Listen, nothing is easier to steal than cars. I mean, they got wheels, you just get in and off you go. Always a market for newish Caddies and Lincolns. You run them south.”
She chewed her nails, then stopped, feeling age ten. She had a moment of fearing Joel would suddenly turn into Kevin. Money. That was always the sticking point. “Going into New York makes me nervous as hell … but we can come up with money there.”
“Oh. From Leigh? A reverse wedding present?”
“My love, I know a lot more people there than Leigh! I lived in Manhattan most of my adult life. Somebody will tide us over, and I bet we can pick up a job. Contact the Network and report in … It just makes me nervous.”
“Not eating makes me nervous” Joel licked his fingers, searching for the last taste of their last food. “All we need is for our car to break down. From now on, no money for anything but gas till we hit New York.”
“Then we’re going there? If only the car didn’t drink gas”
“Baby, we’re lucky to have Mariah. Don’t knock her. Yeah, why not? I’ve never been there for longer than overnight. The Big Apple. Why do call it that? Like, L.A. is just about as big, right? Why be scared of New York?”
They had another flat in Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. They stayed off the turnpikes, but there was no free way from New Jersey into Manhattan. Every doll
ar hurt. They were both exhausted past safety. Vida was driving and whatever Joel said, whether it was Turn left at the end of the ramp or Hang a right, struck her as intolerable meddling. They were snapping at each other till she wanted to burst into tears, but a voice in the back of her head knew it was fatigue and they must plod through safely to a haven and sleep.
“They drive like maniacs” Joel said, giving the finger to a cab.
“No. That’s Boston” she said wearily. “It’s precision here. They drive like manics” Nevertheless, at 6 A.M. she must find her way across Manhattan to Brooklyn. When she had told Natalie she could not trust Hank Woodruff to put her up again if she had to visit New York, Natalie had given her the address of Pelican Bob and Jan, who were married and living in Park Slope in Brooklyn. Natalie had not seen Pelican and Jan in a while, but had felt sure they would take Vida in. Natalie had been supposed to check the idea out with them, and it occurred to Vida that she had no idea if Natalie had ever managed to do that. You didn’t exactly call an acquaintance and say on the phone, Hey, how would you feel about putting up a fugitive now and again for a couple of days? My sister wanted to know. Natalie and Jan had stayed in touch ever since they had been in that rap group together. Vida could still see the circle of women.
Joel had dozed off, his head fallen on his shoulder, his mouth open. He looked beautiful to her with two days’ stubble on his face and his eyelids swollen with fatigue. She was feverish—she felt it. When she looked sideways, the corners of her eyes hurt. She could feel fever burning in her mouth and forehead, her hands dry and throbbing on the wheel. She had to concentrate on every movement. Push the brake in. Let your foot up. Kick the gas. She felt as if she were reaching through some thickened sludge to the gears, the brake pedal, through air turned to warm mud.
Over the Manhattan Bridge and up Flatbush, on and on toward the park. As she finally passed Grand Army Plaza, she woke Joel.
“Listen, love,” she said. “I don’t know how this is going to be.”
“What? Where are we?” But he couldn’t listen to the answer.
Always she was astonished how slowly he woke. In an earlier life she had wakened groggily, lain long in bed and gradually stirred, but years as a fugitive had honed her nerves to the first faint sound. She could not understand how Joel had preserved his youthful somnolence. Perhaps he had never been hunted as she had in the first months after they had bolted, pursued from temporary shelter to shelter one jump ahead of the FBI, the police, the red squads. She had no transitional state of sleepiness but came directly from sleep into utter wariness like a cat like a fox.
By the time she turned onto 3rd Street he was barely awake, yawning sonorously. Around the comer from the address Natalie had given her, long since memorized, she left the car running and got out, motioning Joel to slide over. “I’ll see if they’re home. If they’re willing” She stood in the street with a pasted-on smirk meant to give reassurance. “If so I’ll be right back. If I come running, be prepared to get us out of here fast”
It was 7:35 on November 20, her Timex said, under a streaked gray sky, with the temperature just above freezing. The streets were clear of snow, although gray wedges of ice compacted with grit lay along the north sides of buildings. The street was lined with brownstones, the stoops lined up in a gray row coming down into the tiny front yards except where renovation had produced an apartment-style ground-level entrance.
The number from Natalie matched a fading number high above a thick windowless door. The steps were cracked, but in the middle of the wee lawn, someone had planted a rhododendron whose washed-out tag proclaimed it Blue Peter. Its base was bound in burlap, giving it the look of being partially and badly dressed, like a poodle in rags. She tried to peer up at the parlor-door windows, but the shutters were drawn tight. The names on the mailbox of the ground-floor apartment, reached by a brick path between stoop and rhododendron, were S. and B. Williams. She felt a pang of dismay. Maybe they’d moved.
She climbed the stoop. Only one mailbox outside. This town house was only three stories in all. The upper two floors must be a duplex. The names were Hamilton and Sforza. She moaned aloud with relief: Pelican and Jan. Leaning her ear to the massive old door, she pressed the bell. Couldn’t hear a thing. Again she thumbed the bell, wondering if it was working. Next door a man was starting his car. If everything was all right, she could run to fetch Joel and he could grab the parking space. Already she was slipping into New York mode. A parking space first, everything else later.
Nobody seemed to be home. In despair she leaned on the buzzer, banging it vengefully. Was it working at all? Maybe they’d left town early for Thanksgiving. Where now? She could not think of an alternative. Suddenly the shutter moved in the window and a man’s face glared at her. “Pelican!” she yelled, waving. He went on glaring at her. She mimed begging and pointed to the door. He slammed the shutter closed and she waited, leaning on the bell. Come on, you lazy bum, let me in!
At length he unlocked the door, glaring over the chain. “Who the hell are you? What do you want? I’m sleeping.”
“It’s not that early, Pelican. Let me in, I think you can recognize me if you try. Please.”
He went on glaring; then suddenly he did recognize her. “Oh!” He did not say her name. Quickly he fumbled at the bolt and chain, opened the door and drew her inside, shutting it again. “What do you want? I mean … Jesus, you almost … Am I still asleep?”
“No, it’s great to see you.” Lightly she kissed him. He had put on some weight and looked all the better for it. His hair was medium short, just below his ears, rumpled with sleep. His glasses, shoved on crooked, were caught in his fine brown hair. “I need a place to sleep, and a mutual friend suggested you and Jan.”
“Who? Of course. Come on in”
“Is it really all right? I’m with a friend. He’s in the car, around the corner”
“Yeah—I’m just a little blown away. Do you live in New York?”
She shook her head no. “Is Jan home?”
“It’ll be fine with her. She’s sleeping. She can sleep through anything … If you hadn’t leaned on the bell so long, I’d never have got up. I didn’t climb in bed till an hour ago.”
“How come such a night bird? Look, I’ll go back and get my friend. We’ve been driving all night ourselves.”
“I work at Kings County, in a geriatric ward. I’m a nurse.”
She fetched Joel in time to seize the parking space next door. All she wanted to do as they stumbled inside was sleep, but Pelican was already scrambling eggs and making toast. Joel was starving. She was burning, too dry with fever to eat, but she said nothing because she wanted to settle in before she admitted she was sick. She did not know if the nurse really wanted to come home to a sickroom. Besides, if she only got some sleep, she’d be fine … fine … fine.
“What is it, Vida?” Pelican was staring at her.
“Don’t call me that. Vinnie. Please.” Then she blacked out.
When she woke or came to, she was on a couch upstairs in what was normally Jan’s study. Jan was in medical school, and the room was full of books and papers, with a big chart from Gray’s Anatomy on the wall showing the nervous system of the human body. The sheets, the quilt were soaked with sweat; her hair was plastered to her. Her flesh steamed. She felt too weak to get up. Joel was watching a small TV, lying on his stomach and eating potato chips, She knew she had been out all day because Walter Cronkite was talking about the Middle East.
“Yeah, they seem like nice folks” Joel said. “Settled, but nice. You know they own this house?”
”Really? Own it?” Her tongue was stuffed with feathers.
“Yeah. When they got married, Jan’s dad gave them the down payment. They’re buying it. Planning to remodel. It wouldn’t be half bad. Not as big as it looks—two rooms down, two up, a bath on each floor. The fixtures are from back when but you could fix it up nice if you worked on it”
Now he wants a brownstone. “Do you fe
el safe here?”
“They seem cool about us. Pleased, even. I think they’re too busy to entertain much. We’re excitement. Jan had to be kept from waking you to talk … I been carrying the ball.”
“Thank you.” She sank back. “I’m thirsty.” She had a ridiculous desire to weep. Indeed, as Joel padded off barefoot to get some orange juice, fat tears ran along her nose. She did not question them. She waited in timeless limbo for the juice, drank it and fell back asleep.
The pipe bomb in the handbag began to tick as she was crossing the slippery floor, newly waxed and shining, ticking louder and louder. She knew the officers at the desks could hear it, the tocking ringing in her ears, but they did not look up. Each was sitting with an earpiece on, typing directly into a computer; they glanced sideways at her as she slid along the aisle, heading for the master computer behind glass doors. But she kept slipping. Her feet would not move. Not fast enough. It was going to go off early. Something was wrong with the mechanism. It was going to go off at any minute in her purse, killing her and the others. Ahead somewhere she knew Ruby was waiting for her. Behind the computer room she could hear the sounds of domestic battle, muffled in the night. She must get to Ruby, get to her and pull her out, but the computer was making time run faster and faster, so the bomb was screeching now like a bomb falling in a movie …
Thanksgiving she sat up. Joel and Pelican had shopped, and now Pelican and Jan were off to New Jersey to spend two days with her parents and the rest of her Italian clan. Vida could scarcely call to mind what Jan looked like now, she had so little recollection of the past days. Her first adventure consisted of sitting in the living room watching the beginning of a detective movie on the color TV while Joel cooked his chicken dish. She was sick and Ruby was sick; it seemed right that they should be sick together. They were attuned root to root. Sleepily, feverishly, she thought that as she got better, Ruby would improve. She was getting sick to help Ruby and she would magically make Ruby better with her. She stayed up long enough to eat.
