by Marge Piercy
“Thank you, Ross. And how’s Gail?”
“This is hard on her. It’s a very uncomfortable time for her.”
“If I dropped dead, I’m sure everybody on your end would be a lot more comfortable.” She hung up.
She paced the downstairs. What was she to do with herself, with her life? What was she to do with every evening for the next thirty years? Passing the stack of brochures Gretta had pressed on her, she dropped into her rocker to riffle through them. She did not want to take a course; it felt an enormous step backward. She gave courses, she did not attend them. That was arrant snobbishness, but she did not want to run about with no more purpose than to “meet people.” Gretta had filled her void with romance. Daria did not want a romance. She wanted connection. She wanted purpose.
Tossing the brochures into the grate, she thought over the women she had interviewed the day before and tried to persuade herself that one of them might work out. She could not persuade herself. Peggy had not brought up the idea of moving in. She could not press her secretary further.
How could Gussie believe she had burned their family home? How could anyone think that of her? Why would she burn a building that belonged to her? The idea was absurd, yet Gussie obviously believed it, and Patsy had held it against her. She longed to disprove them.
She had to understand what Ross had involved her in, what he was doing. Things I Must Find Out, she wrote on a pad used for grocery lists. (1) What are our finances exactly, what do we own and how? (2) What changed Ross and who is he now? (3) What went wrong in our marriage? At that point her gaze fell on Torte who looked at her reproachfully as she wrote on, (4) Gail Wisby: who is she and why does Ross prefer her and her army of German short-haired pointers?
The pad told her she had a purpose if she would give in to it. She had a whole research project mapped out. But how she could ally herself with Ross’s enemies and investigate her own husband? Well, how could he leave her? How could he lie to her? How could he blame her for everything wrong in his life? How could he try to force her out of her home?
She did not have to ally herself with those tenants to talk with them occasionally. At least she could learn what they knew about Ross. Her goals were different from theirs, but who else could possibly help her at all? Tom had indicated they could teach her how to find what Ross owned, and that would be a start. She had no idea how to go about it on her own. Before she could waver with Ross’s voice echoing in her ears urging her to trust him, that trust Gussie had derided as willful blindness, she dialed Fay’s number.
She got one of Fay’s sons. “She’s at Tom’s. They’re having a meeting. You got the number there?” The way he talked, numbah, he could have been one of her own brothers back in high school.
It made her smile. But at Tom’s it was Mac who answered. She recognized his clipped tones. “And who is this? Oh, Mrs. Walker. One moment. I’ll see if Mrs. Souza can come to the phone.”
Fay was warmer. “I’ll tell the others and call you right back. Glad you decided.”
Half an hour, an hour passed and the phone did not ring. Several times she checked that it was firmly on its stand. She straightened the downstairs, regretting that she had put herself forward. With only her at home, it hardly got dirty. Surfaces collected dust and her bathroom needed cleaning now and again as did the kitchen, but the house required little. She could not even find busy work tonight. Outside snow was lightly falling. Sheba kept following her, throwing herself belly up in front of Daria so that she almost stepped on the lithe black kitten. Sheba was insistent on affection, as if sensing Daria’s disturbance. Daria felt lost. Which way led forward?
Finally the phone rang. It was Tom. “The meeting’s just broken up. Can Sandra María and I come over?”
“Now?” She glanced at her watch. It was nine-thirty. “Oh, all right.”
16
Sandra María came as a skeptical interrogator. Sandra María was thin, quick, nervous. Her skin was a pale olive. She spoke a clear unaccented precise and very fast English. She had been born in Puerto Rico and emigrated with her parents to Boston when she was five. Her buzz of nervous energy, foot tapping, fingers drumming, a loop of dark brown curl twisting between her fingers as she talked, reminded Daria of Ross and made her feel by contrast slow as a hippopotamus on land.
“But if I teach you to do the research, you have to go on with it. Try to understand, it’s boring. It takes hours to find out anything in the Registry of Deeds. I’m in graduate school, I have a child, I work. I can’t put in the time to train you for a whim.”
Gradually Daria understood there had been an argument in SON about her working with them. She felt insulted. Did they imagine it was an easy decision for her? Perhaps she should seize on their doubts as a convenient exit. But Tom was persistent. He had succeeded in persuading Mac and Sherry, the most strongly opposed, that if Sandra María thought Daria could help, they would try her out.
“What does Mac have against me?” Daria burst out.
“He says your class interests are opposed to ours,” Tom boomed. For once he was out of his work clothes, his flannel shirts and overalls, dressed nicely in maroon wool sweater and navy wool pants. He had doffed his red kerchief, but the little stud still winked in his ear. She did not know why she always found herself staring at it. It seemed rakish.
“His class interests! He’s at Harvard.”
Tom gave that big grin that opened his face, his teeth bright against his ruddy skin and dark hair. “You noticed that. We’re his material.”
Sandra María said, “Ah, but Tom wanted you to do it more than Mac wanted you not to. Tom doesn’t take on Mac often, but when he does, I notice he wins. Eh, Tom? Throwing your weight around.”
Tom was scratching Sheba’s belly as she writhed on the floor, insistent on attention. “I can always threaten to sit on him,” Tom said morosely. “He’s just a welterweight.”
“You’re not fat,” Sandra María said. “It’s just how you usually dress, like a slob. You’re strong as an ox. But when you changed out of your overalls tonight, I almost fainted with surprise.”
Daria decided that Sandra María was not his girlfriend, as she had thought at first. She flirted with Tom, as Daria noticed all the women in SON seemed to, but pro forma as a kind of teasing that had become ritualized.
“Has anybody alive ever seen an ox?” Tom tried to push Sheba away a little. “I’ve spent my whole life being compared to one. What the hell kind of beast is an ox, anyhow? I bet neither of you have any idea.”
He wasn’t fat; he was big-boned and muscular, actually. “It’s a castrated bull,” Daria said sweetly. “I looked it up once, when I was reading a Paul Bunyan tale to my daughter.”
Sandra María burst into a short sharp peal of laughter. “Oye, Tomás, I didn’t mean that!”
He glared at both of them, his face glowing dark with anger. “With a public image like that, I should retire to eat grass in the park.”
Sandra María was trying to repress her amusement. “Don’t you think Daria demonstrates an ability to retain researched materials? She might be good at this paper chase.”
Daria was becoming embarrassed by Sheba, rolling around the floor howling for attention. Maybe she was spoiling the cats, now that she lived alone. Tom was sitting in a heap, steaming and broody. Something in the epithet had pierced his defenses. Finally the women ignored him, speaking to each other. Sandra María said, “My building is owned by Revco, a trust set up by Charles Petris. So is the building next door. But the one on my other side is owned by Anthony Porfirio—your brother? Now, is he a straw for your husband?”
“A straw?”
“Sometimes they put a building in somebody else’s name to conceal ownership or hide assets. Like putting Fay’s building in your name. Often it’s somebody with no resources and lots of loyalty to the real owners—”
“Tony has resources. He’s a public adjuster who lives—very well—in Belmont.”
“A public adj
uster … Fascinating.” Sandra María beamed at her.
“Not really. It’s something dull to do with insurance,” Daria explained.
“Public adjusters help people who’ve had fires collect from insurance companies. Especially if there’s any question about the legitimacy of the fire. They take a percentage of what their client wins.”
“But why is that interesting?” Daria stared at Sandra María.
“How close are you to this Anthony brother?”
“At the moment we’re not speaking. He’s taking my husband’s side in the divorce.”
Daria found she could not successfully ignore Tom, brooding on the far side of the room. Perhaps because of his size, he had a strong physical presence that forced itself on her awareness, as if chafing her.
“Tomás, compañero, listen to me for a moment and stop making like a volcano about to erupt.”
“Oxen don’t erupt, according to Mrs. Walker.”
She had trouble keeping herself from smirking. She could not have said why she knew what would get to him, but she had known. They were such opposite types, they set each other on edge simply being in the same room. He was always staring at her as if she puzzled or annoyed him too. She was sure each of them loved to figure out how to needle the other.
“Anthony Porfirio is a public adjuster,” Sandra María said with the air Ross had when he discovered a ruby kinglet at the feeder.
“Porfirio … her brother.” Tom looked up, coming into sharp focus. “I bet his knowledge of fire is proving useful to all.”
“Tom’s our resident conspiracy buff.” Sandra María was trying to make him smile.
“What conspiracy?” Daria asked. Sheba was making a nuisance of herself. Even Ali seemed alienated and had taken refuge on a bookcase, from which he peered down at her.
Tom turned, his dark eyes gleaming with anger. “You tell us.”
“Tom just means that your search among deeds and mortgages may sort out the situation of who owns what with whom.”
Sandra María, Daria realized, was talking as if their cooperation was settled, and somehow it seemed to be. There was something quick and light in Sandra María that Daria liked. Sandra María was a small orange flame at which she could warm her hands and her mind. Although the woman was only five or six years older than Robin, she seemed a full generation more mature.
Sandra María bounced to her feet. “Mariela’s sleeping at my mama’s tonight, but I still have to truck on home. Up early tomorrow. But Thursday A.M. I can meet you at the Government Center T Station. There’s only one entrance. Nine o’clock on the nose. I’ll show you the ropes. If you can get into it, it absorbs you.”
Tom rose to follow Sandra María out without saying good night. What a moody vein he had in him. She smiled. As he was going out he swung back suddenly, putting an arm out and catching the door as it was about to shut. “I wouldn’t tell you except she’s too small to be allowed to have kittens, but your cat’s in heat.”
“Sheba? She’s too young.”
“They all say that. Too young or too old. Or maybe you think she’s castrated too.” He slammed the door.
Tom was right. Poor Ali tried. Although they were litter mates, he was not quite sexually mature. He tried and she tried and they hissed and screamed and spat and chased each other through the house. They drove Daria crazy. Such insistent sexuality, the little wriggling body, as Sheba pursued her from chair to bath to bed, offering herself. Annette’s big orange cat took up residence on the stone terrace off the living room in spite of the cold and the snow. Sheba rubbed shamefully against the glass and they sang duets through the intervening French doors.
City Hall was a massive new building of poured concrete nine stories tall standing in a windy plaza downtown. Sandra María came up the escalator just behind Daria wearing a maroon wool coat with a pom-pom hat on, against the near zero cold of the morning. They hastened together out of the wind into the tall glassy lobby. Sandra María led her directly to the tax assessor’s office, where she fended off the query that greeted them and made directly for the books spread out on a wide shelf.
Sandra María spoke softly in her ear. “Always seem as if you know exactly what you’re doing or they’ll tell you you can’t do it. You look up the street in this book first. This is assuming you’re starting with a building and you want to find out who owns it. Let’s look up the building next to me. First we find what ward and precinct it’s in—that’s how they file things here. There, you see, that’s Ward Twenty-one, Precinct Seven. So now we pull out that book and we look up the address and we find out who pays the taxes—where the tax bills are sent. Revco Realty Trust.”
“But that doesn’t put you much further ahead, does it?”
They were crossing the lobby to the elevators. “Sure it does. When we finish up here, I’ll take you across the street to the Registry of Deeds.” Sandra María pushed the button for the eighth floor. “Now in this place, you have to know exactly what you’re looking for, because they won’t help you much.”
Daria thought, she really is mistrustful. Perhaps that was what being Puerto Rican in Boston did to someone, even a woman as young and pretty and bright as Sandra María. Certainly Sandra María seemed a little paranoid. Daria had always found that if you spoke nicely to people in bureaucracies, you could generally get them to help you. It was a matter of not being defensive or unpleasantly aggressive.
“This is the office of building inspectors. That is, the one for complaints about the inside. They have a different office catty-corner in the building for outside things, structural things. You’ll see.” They walked into a long and drab office with a counter around the entrance.
Leisurely a young woman came toward them. “What do you want?”
“We’d like to see the file on Seventeen Granville,” Sandra María said in dulcet tones, with a friendly smile.
“Who are you?”
“You have a file on Seventeen, don’t you?”
“What do you want to see it for?”
“We’d like to check out the recent violations.”
“What for? Who are you?”
Daria could not believe that rudeness. She stared at the young woman. Sandra María did not appear to find anything extraordinary. She simply persisted, never raising her voice, “We’re with a tenants group. We’d like to see the file on that building. We’re legally entitled, according to the decision of—”
“Do you live in the building?”
“I live next door.”
The woman stalked away and at first Daria thought she had simply deserted them. Finally she came back. Seeing they were still waiting she asked, “What was that number?”
Finally she brought them a folder and slapped it down on the counter. “There’s nothing current.” She did not let go of the folder.
Sandra María had to pry it gently from her. Daria got a brief look at reports that listed complaints by tenants and reports by building inspectors. Then the woman snatched the file away, repeating “Nothing current! Nothing current!”
“What does that mean?” Daria asked in the hall.
“There’s nothing on the court docket now, on that building. Either the tenants gave up or the complaints were settled in court.”
“That woman was crazy. She won’t last long at that job.”
“Sure she will. That’s how they all act in City Hall here.”
Indeed as Sandra María led her from department to department they were challenged, they signed in and had to leave their phone numbers before seeing the file in the other, structural office of building inspection, they were called stupid, their conversations were butted into, they were refused, harassed and yelled at. With a great sense of relief Daria followed Sandra María across the street.
“Now most of what you’ll be doing is in the Court Building, the Registry of Deeds, but I wanted to show you the whole process before we settled down. I hope you’re not dressed too warmly?”
“But it’s f
reezing!” They crossed Cambridge Street and went through to the second building. Just inside the door they had to pass through a metal detector and have their purses searched, as if they were boarding a plane. The guard took Daria’s little cassette recorder. She was to get it back when they left. Then she followed Sandra María through a low tunnel into the old part of the court, through a high marble nineteenth-century lobby and up a rickety elevator that was operated by a chatty balding old man.
The building was hot: she understood Sandra María’s question. The Registry of Deeds was a vast room with many tables and few chairs with walls painted in marine and pale blue, full of men and women bustling about pulling out the heavy books and shoving them back. She felt far more comfortable there. The information was accessible although obscure, and the atmosphere was purposeful, intent.
The room was divided into grantor and grantee sections, sellers and buyers, and in those sections, by blocks of years and then alphabetically, every heavy book numbered. Daria looked up herself and there she was as Daria Porfirio, having bought ten buildings over the past four years from Ross Walker, from Anthony Porfirio, from Revco Realty Trust (Fay’s building, she recognized at once), from Red Robin Trust. She had sold four buildings, she found in the other index, basically to the same set of characters. One building of hers in Dorchester, recently sold to Tony, had been in a lot of trouble with the city for back taxes. She had been a lively real estate operator, buying and selling, getting mortgages on mortgages, scrapping with the city, wheeling and dealing mostly in the SON neighborhood, but also as far away as North Cambridge and Dorchester.
Ross ran for a solid page. The little entries told her cryptically what was in each of the massive books scattered around the room. Some were statements of trusts. Red Robin was a trust set up by Ross two years before. Revco was indeed the Petrises, but Ross appeared as attorney. Walton was Ross and Tony in business together. She was astonished to see that Robin too was down as owner of a couple of buildings, one on Fay’s street. Reklaw was, as she had supposed, Ross again but this time with his law partner Roger Kingsley, who was King Cole Realty and seemed also to enjoy an ongoing relationship with the Petrises.
