by Marge Piercy
With a deep moan suddenly he changed and instead of carefully levering himself he writhed and bucked and heaved and seemed to spread out through her. She stopped judging him as a lover. She stopped thinking. For a period of suspension she simply moved with him and felt him in and around her, felt him like a storm or like her own flesh in strange high breaking waves.
When he had come at last and lay inert and winded on her and then slid slowly out and off, she kept her arm around him. There they were landed back in reality, all covers flung off, his body runneled in sweat that had drenched her too. She was rather stunned, rather pleased and if anything more fascinated than she-had been on the couch, when she had recognized her sexual curiosity about him.
“You didn’t come,” he said in a minute.
“I haven’t done this in months. I don’t think I could ever come the first time with anyone, although I’m not generalizing from much of a sample.…”
He was not done with her. He slipped his hand between her thighs and began to work on her with a finger inside and a finger on her clitoris. She felt embarrassed at first. She was used to being excited before entry, but in her limited experience, if Ross was not able to make her come by intercourse, that was the end of it until next time. It felt oddly naked and selfish to lie with a man working on her and her reactions exposed and apparent and singular. “You don’t have to do that.”
“But I want to.”
She decided to believe him. She relaxed and floated on the sensations. The orgasm that finally released her was neither deep nor prolonged, but that she felt it at all surprised her. She was beset by questions she could not or did not dare formulate. She was also exhausted. Between them they pulled the covers roughly over them. As she lay in his arms trying to decide how to begin talking over what had happened, she realized from his breathing that he was asleep, and then she was.
She woke early, having to pee, and almost fell off the platform before she realized where she was. He lay on his side curled toward her in deep sleep. In the light from the kitchen they had never turned off, she stared at him and for the first time thought him handsome with his dark brows, black curly hair, his strong nose and chin, his sensual mouth. He lay like a fallen tower in the bed, and she had to resist an impulse to wake him as if accidentally to investigate further the sexual energy and concentration she had not guessed in him, at least not consciously. The powerful curve of his shoulder and back was exposed above the quilt. His eyelids closed and flushed with sleep, he looked utterly vulnerable, a vast child-man, a creature in whom sensuality and sensitivity and that loud morality warred.
She shook herself abruptly and let herself off the edge, creeping with her scattered clothes to the bathroom to dress. Seven-thirty. She must go. Tracy would be coming. Tracy! Panic hit her. She felt plastered over with sex, reeking. She must rush home at once, bathe and make herself presentable. It was crazy of her to have done this. She stood in her coat, pondering a note and finally left one on the dining-room table next to a vase full of the vermillion berries and stark black twigs of deciduous holly, “Gone to pick up my daughter, D.”
Then she fled to her car. She drove home, feeling as if she had been raised high in the air and all her joints and muscles shaken hard, and then given a good long hot sauna. Her body was loose, liquid, formed of warm honey and chocolate. She must pull herself together before facing Tracy. She would hurry on home and clean herself, the house, straighten, bake, plan, offering a silent apology to Tracy.
18
Once she got home, bathed, dressed and had breakfast, instead of feeling exhausted she found herself bouncy with energy. She took Torte for as long a walk as he would tolerate. Then she decided it was late enough to call Sandra María.
It took Sandra María five minutes to make up her mind to move in. The rest of the conversation was working out details. Sandra María said she would ask her boyfriend Ángel to locate a decent used car. She was prepared to move as soon as Ángel arrived and drove her to Allston to pick through what remained of her belongings. She did not know if she still had any usable furniture.
“I want to get out of there! I’m a marked woman. I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel it’s safe for Mariela. That fire was set, Daria, I know it, and it was aimed at me. Because I’m a troublemaker. I organized the tenants in our row. Mr. Petris knows I’ve been researching him.”
She imagined the bland egg-shaped head of Sandra María’s landlord and felt, privately, that Sandra María was being hysterical. “A fire’s so frightening. I hope you can salvage something.”
“Whatever, let’s see if we can get everything straightened out this weekend. I can’t just camp on Mama. And, you know, I told you about what I don’t want to do, and pressure from him will just grow if I don’t make another move fast. I want Mariela settled. This has been a real trauma for her.”
After Daria got off the phone, she ran upstairs to look at the two rooms across the hall. Robin’s old room was thoroughly cleaned out, but Tracy’s was full of her things. On the phone she had warned Tracy she would probably have to rent that room and give her another instead. Tracy had been agreeable, but any minute she would be arriving to find changes that would be all too real. As the day went on, they could only become more evident. Tracy might feel martyred indeed.
As she turned away, she felt the sensation of his mouth on hers, that full sensual kiss. It welled up, rising as if her body and not her mind remembered being in bed with Tom only hours before. She had a twinge of acute embarrassment, a hot flush burning her skin, and cringed before the imminence of Tracy’s arrival. What she had done seemed inappropriate.
Slowly she felt her way downstairs, gaze blind with memory of how he had looked asleep beside her, his eyelids flushed, his mouth relaxed, heat shimmering off him. She could not honestly find in herself regret for the night. At least someone had wanted her, if Ross didn’t. She was still a functioning woman, miraculously. That had been an odd breakthrough for both of them, but she expected little change in their antagonism. From the lateness of the hour, the excitement of the fire, they had fallen into bed. Nonetheless she found herself smiling as she floated down to plan supper.
Sun spilled into the dining room, winter sun yellow as cheese catching the row of cobalt bottles. A pair of cardinals, red male, green female with their strong flesh-colored beaks, picked at her offering of seeds. When had she last made a meal she wanted to make for people who would sit down and enjoy? People she wanted to talk to, not boring clients of Ross with whom she had nothing in common. For whom she was his pet chef. Yes, I own this famous writer of cookbooks, this unlikely personality from your TV, so my table is justly famous and reflects prestige on my business dealings. She found herself humming and stopped, astonished. She was humming a silly song by some group whose name she did not even know, a so-called New Wave group Fay’s son admired, something that had been blaring from Johnny’s ghetto box the last time she was in Fay’s busy kitchen. What surprised her was not that she should be humming a rock song but that she should be humming at all. Ross had trained her to keep quiet, unless requested otherwise, her and Robin, who could not carry a tune either.
She stopped humming and leaned against the refrigerator. In the long run the rejection by Robin hurt more than the desertion by Ross. Would they ever be reconciled? She was not yet ready to forgive Robin, and Robin showed no sign of missing her or seeking her company.
Tracy arrived at ten-thirty in a red Fiat sports car that sat in front of the house for fifteen minutes while she had an intense discussion with the boy driving it. However he did not come in and as the top was up, Daria peering out invisible she hoped behind the draperies, could not get a good look at him.
Tracy finally came dragging a suitcase and duffel bag, with a bookbag over her shoulder, luggage a little excessive for a weekend, Daria thought, until she discovered almost everything not in the bookbag was dirty laundry.
“Mama, how are you doing? Have you been keeping up your spirits?” Tra
cy hugged her before running off to say hello to Torte. The cats were out on the ledge, but when they heard Tracy calling, they came running in great awkward stiff-legged bounds through the snowdrifts. Torte growled, wanting the greeting to himself and pressing his nose into Tracy’s palm. Maybe he would cheer up for the weekend.
As Daria had been calling Tracy at least once a week, she did not have a great deal of news, aside from recent events she was clearly not going to report. The other news she must break carefully. “You know, ducks, I’ve been looking for someone to share the house—”
“Did you decide you really have to? I thought maybe when things settled down, you’d find you didn’t need to bother:”
“I’m afraid I can’t manage the house just by myself—”
“By the way, Daddy’s behind on my tuition.”
“Damn it!” Daria struck her palm in weak anger. “He said he’d pay that. All right, I’ll try to get hold of him. Or maybe you better ask him directly.”
“I don’t want to!”
“I don’t want to talk to him either. And he’s not mad at you.”
“He’s always mad at me.”
“Tracy, I think you will have to call him. What I’m trying to say is, if he doesn’t come through, I’ll pay it. But that means I definitely need a housemate. I have a good prospect anyhow. Her name is Sandra María Roa Vargas. And she has a little girl Mariela.”
“Sandra María Vargas … she’s not Puerto Rican?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Did she answer an ad or what?”
“No, I’ve known her for a while. She’s a graduate student in public health at Northeastern. I like her, Tracy, and I think I can get along with her. She just got burned out of her apartment last night—”
“Burned out?” Tracy’s eyes were wide. “Where on earth did you meet her?”
“She’s involved in a neighborhood organization with a lot of people I know.”
“Around here?”
“No, in Allston. Anyhow, her daughter is six and I want to try sharing the house with them.”
“With a Puerto Rican woman and a little girl?”
Daria nodded, meeting Tracy’s gaze steadily. “Fifty years ago when your grandparents came over to the United States, people used to talk about Italians the way they talk about Puerto Ricans now, even the same jokes. I didn’t ask her to move in as a minority representative or to achieve racial balance, Tracy. I asked her because I like her. I thought we might have a chance at getting along. You ought to have met the crazy ladies who came to answer my ad.”
“I wonder what the neighbors are going to say?”
Daria blinked. “Oh my. To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about them.” She had had little contact with her neighbors after explaining to the first few about her separation. She suspected they all viewed her as already moved out and were waiting impatiently for the couple who would surely buy the house and assume a social role in the ongoing web of couples.
Tracy visibly thrust back her shoulders and stuck out her chin. “I think it’s wonderful, Mama, how you’re coping. If we don’t have money any longer, and we have to share our house with all sorts of people, I think it’s very strong of you. We’ll just have to get along with them as best we can until things get better!”
Daria suppressed an urge to giggle. “That’s the spirit. Now the hard part. Obviously Sandra María is going to need two adjacent rooms for herself and her daughter. I’m afraid that’s going to have to be Robin’s old room, which is cleared out, and your old room. We talked about that on the phone.… I’m sorry, Tracy, but we’re going to have to manage that way. I was thinking you could take your father’s study downstairs for a bedroom. It’s as big as your old room and it has that handsome oak panelling …”
“No, Mama. I don’t want to be downstairs. Why don’t you take that for your office?”
“But I have my office …”
“But that would make such a darling bedroom, I’ve always thought so. It’s such a cute little room. It has its own back stairway. I can run down to the john under the stairs or I can use yours.”
“But, Tracy, it’s cold in there.”
“So we can get a space heater. I’m hardly here in the winter and in the summer it’s the pleasantest room in the house. That private stairway doesn’t help you. I mean, you don’t come in late and not want to wake people.…”
Daria wanted to refuse. She was attached to her little office; she had written all her books there. She was used to its limitations and its virtues. She liked being able to run down to the kitchen or cross the hall to her bedroom. On the other hand, Tracy was being asked to sacrifice her old room; Daria should also sacrifice her accustomed arrangements. “All right.…”
“You’ll have more room to work downstairs, Mama, and that room is set up like a real office. And I know exactly how I’m going to fix up my new bedroom. I’m going to paint it pale peach—”
“Love, why don’t you wait till you come home for spring break to paint? If we’re moving everybody around today, it’s going to be hectic enough.”
“Okay, but let’s get your stuff out now.”
By lunchtime they had moved Daria’s office downstairs and then put some of Tracy’s clothes into the small closet. Daria also gave Tracy the closet in the master bedroom that Ross had used, and then they filled that. They were chattering over French toast and coffee when Tom’s van arrived outside and Mariela came running up to bang on the door. Daria had a brief intense desire to run and hide under the bed. With Tom’s van, she was sure, had come Tom.
“We’re here! We’re moving in, Daria.” Mariela shouted up at her. “I’m coming to live with your kitty cats. Because Mr. Rogers died. He died in the fire but Mamà says he went to sleep first from the smoke so it didn’t hurt like it does if you touch the stove. Where are the kitty cats?”
“What’s your name?” Tracy knelt. “Oh, you’re so cute,” she gurgled, fussing over Mariela exactly the same way she did over the kittens. “I’ll show you where my cats are. Do you know how to pet cats? You don’t pull their tails or whiskers.”
“I know all about cats, because Tom has a cat. Who are you? Tom’s cat is named Marcus. He’s a boy and he’s Russian and he’s grey. Do you live here?”
Tracy would be all right with her. Daria felt weak with relief. She turned then to immediate problems. Tom, a wiry young man she assumed was Ángel, Sandra María and Elroy were carrying armloads of random objects up to the house: piles of dresses, a few open boxes from which she could see protruding a toaster and a lampshade, a vase and a pair of boots. Torte began barking hysterically. Closing him in the study that was now hers, which still held Ross’s papers and old lawbooks with her furniture huddling in the middle, she ran out to help. She had the sense of her life as having suddenly doubled in speed. She had been plodding along considering, mulling, brooding, grieving, and now everything had begun rushing in a blur of jerky motion like an old two-reeler comedy, Keystone cops doing pratfalls and wild horses galloping.
“They haven’t even sealed the building properly. They’re not going to investigate. They say since proposition two and a half they don’t have the money to investigate every fire people claim is arson.” Sandra María was panting as she dragged along an orange crate of books. “Oh! I have to spread these out to dry. Is there a basement, maybe?”
“Right down the kitchen stairs, I’ll show you. What happened to your thesis?”
“Some of it’s readable, some of it isn’t. What I had in my briefcase is safe. I’ll have to do the first chapter over again, I don’t even want to think about it yet.”
Daria carried up an armful of coats from the van, passing Ángel and Tom wrestling along a four-drawer filing cabinet between them. Then she found Tracy, who was playing with Mariela who was playing with the cats. “Tracy, we’ve got to move everything out of your old room—that’s for Mariela. We must hurry.”
“Oh, she can have my old twin bed. I don’t
want it. I know what I want, Mama. I’ll sleep with you tonight, but then when I come back next time, we can go buy it—a four-poster bed. And I don’t want a little bed. That’s fine for a child. I want a full adult bed.”
Daria raised her eyebrows. What Tracy was saying, translated, was that she wanted a double bed in her new room, which combined with the desire for the use of the back stairway spelled out to Daria that Tracy was sleeping with the red Fiat’s owner and had got very involved with him and expected to go on being so. Tracy was making plans that included spending nights with him here. Now that Ross was gone, Tracy must be convinced she could persuade her mother. Her mother suspected she might be right.
She had another moment of wanting to lock herself into her own bedroom, crawl into bed and pull the quilt over her head. Wait for them all to go away. Wait for them to settle among themselves the new and exotic shape of her world.
Actually a lot was taking shape without her. Tom and Elroy were doing most of the hard hauling. Ángel and Sandra María carried in the lighter objects and bickered about where things should go. Ángel had a strong aesthetic sense and Sandra María had strong practical ideas. The van was quickly unloaded so that most of its contents reeking of smoke and soot stood like a sale of damaged goods in the middle of the living-room floor. The fire had come down through the ceiling and through the stairwell and destroyed everything in the living room beyond use. The kitchen too had been badly damaged. Mariela’s room and Sandra María’s bedroom had suffered mostly water and smoke damage, and most of the salvage came from there.
