Vida

by Marge Piercy

  They stumbled on, holding each other. Tears dripped down Natalie’s round cheeks. When Vida hugged Natalie, Natalie’s curly hair got in her eyes. They walked on through the firs till they emerged on one side of the conservatory. The sun striking the icy crust of a hedge hurt her eyes—broken glass it seemed. “How could she forgive me? I wasn’t with her.”

  “It happened in the night. She had her third attack in the middle of the night.” Natalie tugged at her arm. “It’s cold. Let’s go inside.”

  She let herself be towed. “Paul will say I killed her”

  “He won’t say anything of the sort” Natalie nudged her along toward the winter entrance of the conservatory, fumbling for her purse to pay for both of them. “She rallied after she saw you. They were talking about letting her go home in a week or two.”

  “Did Sharon catch on to what was happening that night?”

  “You bet your boots. And the funeral was swarming with FBI and red squad. All those guys in suits standing at the back making notes, while the rabbi did one of those She was a real Yiddishe Mama routines.”

  “Ruby? That would have made her spitting mad.”

  “I felt like she was poking me in the ribs. I used to get mad when she did that. Sticking her sharp elbow in our ribs … Did you ever feel embarrassed by her when we were kids?”

  “By Ruby?” She was startled, following Natalie into the Orangery, where the scent of orange blossoms perfumed the air, lush after the outdoors. She did not want to breathe the perfumed air. “No. She was so vivid. I’d just get pissed with her for being hardheaded.”

  “I mean, we’d bring her to school for some event and she’d listen to the Principal and poke us in the ribs and hiss, Baloney! Other mothers didn’t do that. In the hospital all the nurses and orderlies were telling her their love lives. She knew who was sleeping with who on every floor”

  “Did she ever find out you were in the jug?”

  Natalie blew her nose. “Come on, the john’s just ahead. I can wash my face. Paul! After swearing everybody to secrecy, he let it out himself”

  “But you never got to see her again?”

  Natalie shook her head no. “I was going to fly this weekend with the kids. Sandy had sent me money for plane fare. I used it up for the funeral. I’m just glad I got out in time.”

  They were framed in the mirror side by side: Natalie’s face red and moist; hers, dry and stiff.

  “It’s dirty, how they get us! She dies and we can’t be there. That’s how they hurt us. I let her down. I saw her when I could, but I should have tried harder. It was risky. She couldn’t learn to take care. She always thought I was just playing some kind of silly game”

  “But sweetie, she had a good life.”

  “Not the first two thirds … She was happy with Sandy, wasn’t she?”

  They drifted arm in arm through a room of monstrous topiary shapes. Puerto Rican men were playing cards, men in their fifties and sixties, while a row of women chatted under a tree that grew up to the high white metal-and-glass dome. “I think so.” Natalie scratched her head. “They fought a lot. It used to startle me. He never fought with my mother that way, screaming in the kitchen. She got to him—that was it. She fascinated him the way my own mother never did. He was excited by her, she got under his skin, and he learned how to shout and rave … I used to do that with Suki. We’d shout at each other.”

  “You and I have always been able to lose our tempers.”

  “When we’re close. Not when we were fighting about politics all the time, remember? But I never could do it with Daniel.”

  “Oh, come on, you fought all the time. I remember.”

  “Not like you scream and hurt and kiss and make up. It’s like a battle under the surface, where you’re always fighting about the telephone bills and when will we get the furnace cleaned, but you’re really fighting about how come you don’t make love with me anymore and how can you make such a fuss about that little creep?”

  Her legs buckled. She did not know how it happened, but she was sinking. Natalie pressed her back onto a park bench under an African tree with a punched metal label hung on it. They were in a long room shaped like a big quonset hut, all white metal and glass, with large aggressive plants around them like philodendron run amok. She felt drunk. Her eyes ran. She felt out of control, out of equilibrium, dizzy, attacked in all her senses, her head about to break open and spill. Silently she wept, while Natalie plied her with tissue after tissue.

  “Hold on,” Natalie was saying. “Poor baby.”

  “Natty, she never got to meet Joel! She wanted to so bad. She would have flirted with him. He likes being flirted with. It puts him at ease”

  “Sometimes I used to wish I was Ruby’s daughter” Natalie was daubing at Vida’s face. “It seemed to me if I’d been born Ruby’s daughter, I’d be beautiful like you and slender like you and know how to wrap men around my finger”“

  “Oh, Natty, I always get wrapped. I know how to attract, but I never keep my head. Once I’m involved, it’s all the way—plunge, splash, drown. You only thought that because I wasn’t real attracted to the boys we went to high school with. I think it was a class thing. They were too bland. I wanted a bit of electricity. A taint of danger”

  Natalie smiled wryly. “Well, you got what you wanted, in aces.”

  As two young men entered the room, automatically she signaled Natalie that they should move. They strolled onward. The air was cooler, moister in the next room. Ferns. “Inside, I got a funny message from Lohania. Then they told me I had a visitor one day and it was her. They let her see me. I was pretty suspicious,” Natalie said.

  “What did she want, Natty? Is she connected to Randy? How did she look?”

  “She’s maintained on methadone by him. It’s all quite legal and it binds her like a leash … She looked not so good. She was nervous, tense.”

  “But she’s working for Randy. You didn’t say anything to her?”

  “Now you think I’m stupid all of a sudden?” Natalie squeezed her arm. The next room was unpleasantly moist, so they kept moving. “Oh, look” Natty pointed ahead. “There’s a bench in the desert.”

  “I like the desert,” Vida said, since Eva wasn’t around to draw hope from that statement. The sun was almost down in a blaze of red that seeped through the glass to fire the cactus, gnarled, knobby, menacing. “What did Lohania want?”

  “She asked about you. I maintained I hadn’t seen you in years. She didn’t believe me. She said Kevin still feels ripped off by the Network and that they haven’t done shit since he was booted out. Then she said to me, In the middle of all this mess, he’s still real, you know that? He’s got his politics still. She said I’d see I was wrong about him. Now, what does that mean?”

  Vida shrugged angrily. “I don’t suppose it means a thing except that Kevin’s buying light time by shooting off his mouth. Randy and Kevin always did get along” Briefly her eyes began to run again. She took another paper handkerchief from Natalie. “I hope you have a lot of these?”

  “All mothers do.” Natalie stroked her hair. “I forgot to say I like your hair that way.”

  “I thought you hadn’t noticed. I’d forgotten it myself.”

  “I noticed, but I was focused on how to tell you about Ruby.”

  “It’s a funny place, this conservatory.” She looked around. “A little seedy … Randy was ambivalent about us. He wanted so bad to succeed he’d have killed for it. Maybe he did kill for it. But he loved the action, it let his fury out. He went to a second-rate Jesuit college ‘cause he couldn’t get into Fordham Law School. How he hated us!”

  Natalie grimaced. “In the courthouse he came up to me. ‘We’re going to burn your buns this time,’ he said in that self-consciously vulgar way of his as if words turned to shit in his mouth. ‘We’ll send you up until the rest of your hair turns gray and your teeth fall out. The whole time you can know that that busy professor husband of yours is balling all the freshman girls. You’r
e never going to see your kids again,’ says Randy to me.”

  “I hate him. Finally I do.”

  “I said, ‘It’s nice to see a familiar face, Randy. Blown up anything lately? How you must miss the old days! Cheer up. It won’t stay this quiet long and you can start some action again. Some plastic surgery and a new identity and you can trap some more kids and ruin their lives, right?’” Natalie made a sour face.

  A man came through shaking a finger at them. “Time, ladies. Closing time. Got to move on out.”

  They rose and followed him reluctantly. Vida said, “I hate to think of Lohania as lost to us. That Randy got her after all”

  “She was lost to us a long time ago” Natalie tightened her arm affectionately. “Oh, another lost country.” She screwed up her forehead. “Tomorrow. The Rex Arms on West 55th near Eighth. Room 314 at 12:30 P.M. There! That’s your message.”

  “Oh. Did Leigh go to the funeral?”

  “No.” Natalie looked surprised. “I told him, but I never expected him to go. You know Leigh—he doesn’t like to put himself through that sort of thing. Besides, he feels guilty about divorcing you. Doesn’t want to face us in a clump.”

  “So what does he want? What’s this Rex Arms business?”

  ”To see you. He’ll be waiting in that room tomorrow, says he.”

  “Let him wait.” She smiled as they buttoned up, leaving the building. “It’s getting dark … Let him sit in room 314 in the Rex Arms till 12:30 A.M. In fact, I would enjoy immensely that he wait and wait and wait. It’d give me great pleasure.”

  “You don’t want me to tell him you won’t come? Or might you?”

  “Don’t tell him a thing. You shouldn’t be having phone conversations about me.”

  “Oh, Vinnie, don’t harrumph at me. We use a code.”

  “Well, use the code for maybe. Let him sweat it. Frankly, I’m not tempted … How come he wants to see me?”

  “The station just got bought by a conglomerate. He’s afraid for his job. Making it as a free-lance journalist is a lot of sweat and he doesn’t relish the idea.”

  “Does he still relish being a daddy?”

  “In principle. That you can’t cancel the baby if he gets fired is beginning to annoy him. You’re his political insurance policy, you know. If he feels he’s not doing anything with his life, if he gets worried about compromising his politics, if he misplaces his sense of direction, if he feels guilty, you’re his ace in the hole: No matter what people think he’s doing with his life, he has his connection with you. A link to the underground. He is helping fugitives. He’s having clandestine meetings with a member of the notorious Network. Even though he looks like Clark Kent, he can duck into a phone booth and become Super-Leftie”

  “Could I have another handkerchief? All I do is run off at the eyes, Natty. I thought it was love.”

  “Oh, shvesterlein, he does love you—or anyhow, he did for a time. I just don’t know what he meant by that.”

  “Something more than someone you say hello to on the street. Somewhat less than I mean” She shook her head. “It’s late!” The gardens were dark, and nervously they hurried to Natalie’s van. Natalie unlocked the door and stood by, reluctant to get in. Vida said passionately, clutching her by the shoulders, “I don’t want to leave you today, I don’t!”

  “You’re scared something will happen? I’m all right. I’m doing fine. Just take care of yourself.”

  “How are the kids?”

  “Sam and Peezie are back with me. I’m in trouble for yanking them out and sending them off to Chicago. Their schoolwork is all confused. But it was good for Sandy and not so bad in the end for them. Fanon’s with his father, and we’re getting ready to take to the courts about him. I’m told I haven’t a chance, but that’s his lawyer tells me that. My lawyer says Phooey, we’ll skin him alive. It’s blood-and-guts infighting” she said cheerfully. “Let me give you a ride. It’s dark and cold and windy.”

  “Just to the train.” She climbed in.

  “Joel’s waiting for you. He’ll help. Won’t he?”

  She nodded.

  Natalie turned the key, pumped the gas, got the engine to turn over, wheezing. “This is so trivial on top of it all. But. I’m having a romance.”

  “A romance! From prison?”

  “Sort of. She was on our defense committee.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Actually, she’s kind of like me. She’s Jewish, she’s thirty-seven, she’s got two kids she’s raising. She’s been around the left for years and just started becoming a feminist in the past four or five”

  “That isn’t like you. That’s more like me. What’s her name?”

  “Zelda. Everybody calls her Zee. When she was younger, everybody used to tease her that it was Z for Zaftig … Sweetie, we only slept together once, in a great hurry. We have to be careful because of my lawsuit. My lawyer told me if I start having an obvious affair, especially with a woman, I’ll blow it. So we hold hands and play with the kids together and take them to the circus and watch Peezie run and meet in strange restaurants. So sue me,” she said glumly. “A romance at my age.”

  “But you’re lovable, Natty, why shouldn’t you be loved? Is she really like you?”

  “Zee’s wittier, a harder surface. She’s been alone longer. She knows how to change a washer in the faucet and a tire on the car. More of a New Yorker than I am. She dresses better.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a legal secretary. You sound like Ruby! Next you’re going to ask me, ‘Is your new friend, you know, affectionate?’’ Oh, Vida, don’t cry”

  “I’m not, I’m not. Drop me right there. Oh, good luck, Natty! Please have some good luck and some good loving for a change. She’d better be good to you or I’ll blow her up.”

  “Sure” Natalie shook her head. “Big talker. You never even blew up Daniel.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Sometimes!” Natalie laughed. “I’m not the grudge-holding type. I just want some money for the kids.”

  Vida walked off rapidly, and then Natalie passed her in the van and turned left out of sight. A romance! And she thought of Natalie as the practical one; except that Natalie would be practical. Natalie would manage her romance without endangering her court case or frightening the children. She would sacrifice her heart’s desire to the children if she had to, but she would try to have a taste or two, a big bite.

  The tears started as she strode along the platform. She bit her lip, bit her cheek hard until the tears seemed to withdraw back into her sinuses and her face cooled. No Ruby, no mama, no more. Was she an orphan? Or was Tom alive? She imagined him huddled drinking from a bag on Skid Row in Cheyenne, Wyoming. As she pushed into the crowded train, she rejected the image. Surely he had moved in with another woman; a string of women. Her daddy would not rest alone. They were all that way—Tom, Paul too, Ruby and she herself; they did not often sleep alone. They were a family of sexual grabbers who hooked into people. They connected. Paul couldn’t let go of Joy even after divorcing her. She wished she could see her big brother, just for one hour. Brief meetings were best; they could express their caring but not run out of things to say.

  We made each other be sisters, Natalie and I, she thought, riding through the darkness. Yet the myth became flesh. We are sisters; one blood, one life, one work. No matter what’s going on in my life, Natalie will be with me till death, and then there will be a hole in her or in me that nothing will soften—a black hole of pain, of absolute loss and entropy. It’s by that possible loss I measure all others.

  She could not think about Ruby—not yet. She could only watch the stations flash by and wait till she could be with Joel, who had gone into Manhattan and danger, who had been with the lawyer, who had been making the pickup of the advance money and learning the details of the Michigan job. She did not look forward to that, not at all. It would be risky. Oh, well, no one paid well for what wasn’t. When there were no questions
asked, it was because people who could afford to ask questions back wouldn’t touch the job. She huddled, a motherless homeless child of—what? Was she thirty-six? Thirty-seven? She couldn’t remember. So many false identities confused her. She had not celebrated a birthday in years. Would she, for once, with Joel? She felt paralyzed and cold.

  25

  When she got back to the motel, Joel was not there. True, he had farther to go, into Manhattan and back; but she had been with Natalie until four thirty. And the black Mariah was gone. Had he returned from the meeting with the lawyer and driven off someplace? But why? And where was the money? It was well after five, and full night outside.

  Her impulse was to bolt the motel room. She felt impaled, fluttering there. She wanted to clear out and watch from someplace else—but where? It was cold outside, dark and windy. What was keeping him? She paced from bed to window. He must have driven to the train and left the car there. Flat tire? Battery low? Engine wouldn’t start? He must be fixing it even now. Accident?

  Turning out the room lamp, she stood at the crack in the draperies. Endless headlights and taillights slurred by on the road beyond the V-shaped court. In Yonkers it was rush hour. Cars, cars, cars, none of them Joel. Her stomach was hard and heavy as lead. She clutched herself with one hand lightly kneading as she grasped the draperies with the other. Although the room was stifling, she had her boots and coat on. If they had him, they would not know where to find her: he would never tell them. They could not call every motel in the surrounding area with the license number; or could they? But why would they think she was staying in a motel? Still, they would get to that. How long should she wait?

  If they had him. No, she couldn’t think. She willed him to appear. Please. Right now, Or the twenty-first car after that station wagon will be him. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen. Where in hell? What had happened? What kind of disaster, what flavor, what magnitude? She hallucinated his face. She kept seeing the black Mariah lumber in among the granite banks of hardened sludge. Please, please, please. Eleven, ten, nine, eight. Let me die instead. Him and Natalie, they’re all I really have. Five, four. I’d be willing to catch the flu again. Let me get kicked off the Board. Kiley can win the next move. Three, two. Please, make it be him. I’ll love him so well—better than I ever have. I’ll give up the antinuke project. One, zero. No black Mariah.