by Marge Piercy
Leaving Annette still unpacking the freezer, she went around the outside of the house to shine her flashlight through the window of her office. The venetian blinds were down. It was frustrating, but she could not figure out how to gain access to her office to find out what remained. A year’s work. Her notes. Her files.
Sandra María got out of a cab, as Daria was still trying to peer through the window. “Daria! For a moment I thought you were a burglar already.”
“How is she?”
“They’re keeping her overnight. But they say she’ll be fine—weak for a while. A day’s bed rest. She had a lot of poison in her blood. They made me breathe a heavy oxygen mixture for a while.”
“Is she frightened?”
“Very upset. She kept asking about the animals.”
“Torte’s dead. We’ll bury him when it’s light. But don’t tell her yet.” She found tears starting again and backhanded her eyes roughly.
“He was an old dog. He had a good life with you.”
“But he didn’t deserve to be dumped by his master and he didn’t deserve to suffocate under a bed, alone …”
“What are we going to do?” Sandra María made a hopeless gesture, of palms up. “I guess I’ll have to move in with my mamá Or Ángel.”
“No! We have to figure it out.” Daria began walking toward the back.
“I don’t know if we can camp here really.…”
“No! We can’t. The house is gutted at the core. Maybe it can be rebuilt, but I wouldn’t bet on it. And not by us.”
“I was afraid you’d think we could get Tom to fix it up.… I think it’s past that.”
“I know it. What I loved here is gone.”
“Daria, are you all right? Of course you aren’t.” Sandra María held her, rocked her.
“I liked living with you and Mariela, I really did. At first it was to save money, but I like it better than I did being married. Maybe someday you’ll live with Ángel, but till then, I like us being together.”
“So do I. Believe me, it’s ten times better. Better for Mariela and better for me.… Maybe we can find a big old house to rent?”
Annette was waiting for them. “I took the food out for you. Don’t you think you should come home with us and get some sleep? I’m exhausted.”
“Oh, Annette, I’m sorry. I should have sent you home half an hour ago. Go to sleep, now. I’m not thinking straight.”
“But don’t you want to get some rest?”
“I will. Don’t worry. I’ll go with Sandra María.”
Annette seemed relieved to escape. Daria felt grateful, although that overlay her resentment of Annette for dropping her entirely after Ross had left. She did not want to sleep at Annette’s, but she recognized that both Sandra María and she were close to exhaustion. Her head and her stomach both ached, as if simultaneously too empty and too stuffed. Sandra María turned to her in the light of the lantern sitting on the drainboard. “What now?” Sandra María asked, leaning back on the refrigerator door.
“I should call Tom.… But we have no phone.”
Sandra María sighed. “I felt so purposeful last time. How many times can you get burnt out? I feel as if I can’t move.”
“Burnt out physically. Burnt out emotionally …” Daria tried to stir herself. “Maybe we could just lie down and sleep on the kitchen floor.”
“No! And wake up with no hot water and no bathroom? I need some taking care of. I think I want to go to Mama’s for the balance of the night.… How am I going to drive my car with no keys?”
“I’ll drive you. Doesn’t Ángel have a set? He can bring them to you when you get up today.”
“So much work to do.”
Wordlessly they hugged. Daria said, “I’ll stop at a pay phone on the way to your mother’s and call Tom. Then I’m just going to land on him.… I wonder how he’ll take it.”
“You could double up at my mama’s. Really.”
“With two cats and a hundred phone calls to make in the morning? No, Tom has me for the moment. I want taking care of too. He might just do it.”
It was well after five when she finished telling Tom what had happened and climbed into the loft to resume the sleep interrupted hours before. Worries, images chased round and round in her head. She found herself moaning and twisting in the covers. The man she used to lie beside for years and years had just tried to kill her. Had just tried to burn her at the stake. Had just paid someone to roast her in her beloved house. Had destroyed that house. For money or for revenge? Revenge against what crime, what betrayal? How did he justify himself? As she tried to sleep, she kept seeing little snapshots far more brightly lit in her memory than they had been in the dark house: her rocker upside down, its runners smashed to kindling; Torte lying under the bed with his head in his paws; the chandelier reduced to a pile of broken shards; the mullioned windows bashed out; the boards of the living room Sandra María and she had sanded and polished, nothing but a crater.
Finally Tom sat up. “I’m going to put you to sleep. And then just get up myself. Do you know, you smell like a burnt dinner? I’m going to draw you a bath …” He let himself down and she heard him moving about.
“With crayons,” she muttered, remembering an old joke of Robin’s, the little girl with pale gold hair. She began to weep. “I couldn’t bury Torte. It was too dark to see in the yard.”
“We’ll take care of him later.” He stroked her hair, standing by the loft, his head on a level with hers. “Your bath is running. I’m off to work early. I can get started ahead of everyone, because I’m doing finishing. I’m going to take off at twelve and come back here. Are you listening, Daria?”
Under his hand she nodded.
“Then we’ll go over to your house and bury Torte and get whatever else you need and see what the scene is. I can tell if it’s repairable—okay, peaches?”
She nodded again.
“Don’t worry about what’s going to happen. You can always stay here indefinitely.”
“I don’t think so,” she mumbled into the pillow. “It wouldn’t be a good idea for us,” she almost said yet. “The divorce and all.”
“Fuck him. He just tried to murder you.” He sniffed at her as Marcus was doing from the other side. “You really do smell like a barbecue gone wrong.”
“I’d have been a barbecue by now if it wasn’t for Ali.… Where are my cats?”
“Under the couch.”
“Give them something to eat, okay?”
“I did. A saucer pushed into the gloom. Four yellow eyes glaring at me.” He rolled her over the edge of the loft, catching her. “Come on, peaches, your bath is set. Wash your hair too.”
“What are you so cheerful about?”
“I’ve just decided to solve everybody’s problems. I’m going to shoot your husband, and then I’m going after Lou.”
“Oh, very funny.” She let herself be pushed toward the tub. “That would solve all my problems? You’d be in Walpole prison and Sandra María, Mariela and I could move in here.” She let her clothes drop.
“All those buildings and no place to live. Poor little rich girl.” He started scrubbing her back. “Okay, now I’m going to get dressed, eat breakfast and go to work early. By twelve-thirty I’ll be back.”
She yawned hugely, the hot water loosening her. Then she nodded, words dissolving like sugar cubes in her head. While she was still soaking, she heard him leave. She could hardly manage to crawl from the tub, dry herself and creep toward bed. She almost decided to sleep on the floor instead of trying to climb the loft, but the sheets and pillows and quilt looked too inviting not to make that last fading effort. Even the pain from her hand could not keep her from sleep.
She slept through till eleven, when the snarling of the cats woke her. They were lined up, Ali slightly in advance of Sheba who posed with her fur standing up like quills, turned sideways in puffed up menace. Marcus at the other end of the living room with his fur on end was making operatic sounds back. She
was terrified and slid out of bed to stop a catfight, but it seemed none of the parties intended to advance within ten feet of each other. It was a battle merely of bloodcurdling oaths and arias of homicidal intent, delivered from a safe and comfortable distance.
Images from the night began to flash through her mind again. Torte lying across her lap, heavy with death. The hall like a shaft in a coal mine, dripping, dripping. She shook herself like a dog, the way Torte used to do, she shook herself hard. She must move. She could not let Ross do her in, as he had tried. She must not cooperate. She would survive him. She would survive his attack and his malice.
She remembered too, standing in Tom’s sunny apartment holding herself across her breasts and watching the bushed-up cats, how Sandra María had seemed devastated by despair. She must think not only of herself but of Sandra María and above all, of Mariela. To be uprooted again, again to wake terrified and choking, again to lose, again to move, again to start her life over: what price would Mariela pay? She must not let Ross’s malice crush Mariela. She must create hope for all of them. Instead of focussing on Torte’s dead body she would focus on the face of Mariela as she had last seen her, flushed she now knew from the carbon monoxide poisoning, but rosy, relaxed, flowerlike. She would keep Mariela in mind and she would move fast, she would speed ahead, she would do the five hundred things that needed immediate attention and she would salvage from the wreckage some kind of hope, flowerlike as Mariela’s face.
She found her head clear and her purpose sharpened and herself hungry. She ate granola and found coffee he had left in the Chemex. She put a low flame under it and called the insurance company and then Dorothy. Dorothy was with a client but called back as she was finishing her second cup of coffee.
“Isn’t this Tom’s number?” Dorothy asked sharply.
“Dorothy, I told you the truth when you asked me. This has developed since. Maybe your idea started it off …”
“You should have told me.”
“Ross doesn’t suspect, by the way.”
“I think you’re right, but I also think you’re lucky—so far. You can blow the whole thing. You shouldn’t be staying there.”
“The reason I’m here is quite simple.”
After Daria had run down the story, Dorothy said, “This is a whole new ball game, although what we can prove is another matter.”
“I’m going over shortly.… Dorothy, if I own those other buildings, what’s to stop me from moving into one of them?”
“Are you going to start evicting tenants?”
“There’s one he began renovating. He left a couple of apartments vacant in there. Only the second floor is occupied.”
“Are you changing your minimal demands to include that building?”
“After last night, you bet I am. That and two others. I don’t want him owning so many buildings in my neighborhood.”
“Do you have a key?”
“SON does. They’ve been patrolling at night, to prevent fires. Fay has all the keys.”
“Who’s Fay? Never mind. Why not move in? It shows a healthy interest in the real estate and might argue in your favor—your name’s on the deed and you’re living in it.… Are you sure your home’s totalled?”
“I think the insurance people are coming by today.… Do I want to tell the adjuster I think it’s arson?”
“Not if you want to collect.… But if you want to introduce that in evidence in the divorce, you can’t have it both ways. It can’t be arson for the divorce judge and accidental fire for the insurance company. I’ll get right on the horn to Walker and Company. How long are you going to be at Tom’s?”
“Around twelve-thirty I’m going to Lexington. Then I plan to move directly into the ground floor apartment of that house.”
“Good. I would strongly advise against taking up residence with Tom while we are in this critical negotiating moment. I have your husband’s fifth revised statement of net worth before me and remember, we’re proceeding to the depositions tomorrow.”
“Of course I remember. I’ve been dreading it.”
“You’ll have your lawyer and your accountant and he’ll have his. As long as you tell the truth under oath, you’re in no trouble—unless they find out about Tom.”
After hanging up, Daria rubbed her hands ruefully. How she would have preferred that Dorothy not find out; how she would have liked Dorothy’s suspicions to remain just vapor. She had no need of Dorothy’s legal reasons to dissuade her from moving in with Tom. A forced intimacy would crush any chance for a real one. No, what she wanted was to continue her new family with Sandra María and Mariela, whom she must check on. Next call, the hospital. Living with her new family, she operated from a position of strength with him. Intimacies she might have tried to force from him came from them, leaving her a grace with Tom to work out what they could without desperation. She must keep that.
The hospital said Mariela would be released that afternoon. The insurance company called back to say the adjuster would view the house soon; it had already been arranged, they said. Fay clucked with sympathy and ran over between customers having their hair done to drop off the keys. All this time Ali and Marcus sang challenges to each other from opposite ends of the living room. Sheba had climbed on the couch and was washing herself, bored. After a while she shuddered and stretched out like a long black bow. Ali and Marcus were Still attempting to terrify each other vocally.
“I’ll tear your paws off one at a time and eat them for breakfast,” sang Marcus, tucking his own paws under him neatly and giving a small lick to his plush grey velvet.
“Listen, you ball-less freak, I’ll tear out your ears by the roots and feed them to the mice,” Ali sang back, tucking his black paws under and throwing a quick glance at Sheba to see if she was admiring him. Sheba was asleep. Neatly he arranged his tail along his sleek side.
By the time Tom appeared to collect her, Ali was curled up with Sheba on the couch, embracing belly to belly, while Marcus snoozed in the loft on Tom’s pillow. She felt confident nothing violent would result from leaving them alone together.
They swung by Northeastern to catch Sandra María on her way to her one o’clock lecture. Tom double-parked and Daria ran in. Sandra María came plodding along still in Annette’s old dress with her own coat over it, looking blear-eyed and sad. When she saw Daria she cried out, “What’s wrong!”
“You know what’s wrong—nothing new.” Daria kissed her. “Don’t be upset. So Mariela is getting out at four? When can you leave here?”
“I could cut everything but this one and borrow notes. What’s up?”
Daria dangled the keys Fay had given her. “Our new apartment.”
“Where?” Sandra María snapped to attention. “How big is it?”
“I’ve never seen it, to tell you the truth, but Fay says it has three bedrooms. It’s that big yellow house Ross has near the park that he started renovating. We’re moving into the ground floor apartment.”
“The building where Bobbie died?”
“Come on, we almost died last night. And it’s not that apartment—that was on the top floor.” She did not remind Sandra María that a second and never identified body, too charred for identification, had been found on the stairs.
“Listen, I’ll meet you at our old house in Lexington at two-thirty, three o’clock. Okay? But how do we know he won’t burn us out of there next?”
“Because we’re going to scare the hell out of him,” Daria said with far more confidence than she felt.
24
Tom was inside with the adjuster. Daria had just helped Sandra María load her Dodge with salvage to carry to their new apartment. Daria collected her day’s mail, dropped neatly through the slot in the front door to lie on what remained of the flooring just inside. When she heard a car pulling up out front, she thought Sandra María had forgotten something. It would take many trips to salvage what they could. She strolled around and met Ross trotting across the lawn. She stopped so abruptly she alm
ost lost her balance. Seeing him was like hitting a wall. Her eyes fixed on his hair. Fiery, she might call it. What a weak chin he had, fishlike. She realized that she found him unpleasant looking; she no longer experienced him as attractive. She was no longer even slightly in love, as if the fire had burned up those emotions entirely. “Surprised to see me alive? Or had you heard the bad news already?”
“Sweetheart,” he said with something of the old emphasis, “I was worried sick when I heard!” He made as if to embrace her but she ducked back.
“You had reason to be sick: here I am stubbornly alive.”
“A terrible thing. I told you to get that furnace cleaned. If only we had sold the house …”
“How do you know it’s supposed to be the furnace?”
“I spoke to the insurance agent, of course.” He brushed past her to the front door, then hesitated.
“Didn’t get your key back yet?” she cooed. “Never mind, there’s no front hall anyhow.”
“Where is he? I know I’m a little late. I took the Pike and there’d been an accident.… Is he here?”
“The torch with your key?” She stopped herself from saying “Lou” although she wanted so strongly to scare him that she had to call up Tom’s angry face to control her tongue.
“You’re crazy, Daria. Spite has unbalanced you. I came over here frantic with worry. And what’s this business of some child going to the hospital?”
“There were three of us living here.” She followed him around to the back of the house. How awkwardly he moved, like a wind-up toy. He lacked Tom’s animal coordination. “Would you like to see Torte’s body? I just buried him. I’d be glad to dig him up.”
