by Marge Piercy
Yours,
Lou
Now how in hell did you ever think that could be a note from his lover?”
“I was looking for another woman, not some man.”
“We should turn this over to the AG. But you put Walker first all this time. You trusted him instead of me.”
“I was married to him for twenty-two years, Tom, twenty-two years! I couldn’t discard that chunk of my life. And yes, it was hard for me to believe in landlords burning their own buildings. I did think you were exaggerating. I thought you were being a little bit paranoid about fire.”
“Just going along, humoring me. Thinking I’m some kind of nut.”
“Can’t you see my situation? I had three children with him. Do you tell your kids your ex-wife is ambitious, status mad, obsessed with control and being skinnier than anybody?”
“Andrea hasn’t committed any crimes against people.”
“Would you leap to believe it if someone told you she had? For all you know, she deals heroin or runs a string of call girls out of her garage.”
“Ummm.” He actually looked at her, sideways out of the corner of his eyes. He would not yet turn his head.
“I was committed to trying to hold on to the best feelings I could salvage. I fought hating him.”
He finally turned his head and met her gaze for the first time. “How do you feel about Walker now?”
“You know the answer. You could tell when I was manipulating Lou last night. I hate him. And I find that excruciating. It’s a defeat.” She felt dangerously close to despair. Since the fire she had tried to keep busy, to keep moving, to proceed on every possible action that could improve her family’s situation; always underneath she had felt despair like a fathomless dark sea under the floor washing away the foundations. “Do you think I’m so stupid and easygoing, I’m not angry, murderously angry, at someone who tried to kill me?”
“I’ve been feeling a little used.”
“Because of putting in the cabinets? I know. You work all week and then we try to get you to do it for us free. Listen, Tom, as soon as some money comes through, I’ll hire someone to do the work. I don’t want to go on imposing on you.
“That’s not it.” Abruptly he rose and started pacing.
From the couch she watched him lurch to and fro across the room. “Have I seemed … too demanding lately? Perhaps moving here …”
“Why didn’t you move in with me?” He glared at her.
She was silenced by surprise. “Move in?” she repeated clumsily, her mind momentarily blank.
“Why wouldn’t you? Why go through all this rebuilding?”
“But … I thought it was a bad idea just to move in to save myself trouble. That would have to be something we talked out …”
“Why didn’t we talk about it? Why didn’t you ask me what I wanted?”
“But …” Realizing she had never seriously considered moving in, she pictured his apartment and understood why. “It was never a possibility. We could never live together in that space.”
“Why not?” He stopped in front of her, glowering.
“Tom, your apartment is beautiful—for one person. You’ve made a gorgeous big space, with one small bedroom for guests and when your daughters come. But I have two daughters and Tracy lives with me part-time. I have a secretary. I work at home. There’s no room for my office there.”
He cocked his head, his face relaxing. Then he let himself down lightly beside her. “How often does this secretary come?”
“Three to four days a week, nine to four.”
“I forgot about that.”
She realized that she was not in despair, after all; she had been distracted. Was it a remnant of her Catholic girlhood that made her view despair as one of the ultimate sins, or just a matter of her disposition? Tom was opening up, as so often requested on her part. She must be a little more honest too, it was coming close to home on that. “Tom, it’s more than I’ve said. I like living with Sandra María. Plus I’ve taken on a relationship with Mariela. Where were they going to move? What was going to happen to them? They’ve been burned out twice. Mariela’s taken this hard, very hard.”
“Then it wasn’t because you don’t ever want to live with me?”
She was about to say she hadn’t ever really considered it, when that struck her as cruel, since obviously he had been thinking about the possibility. She felt a little pushed, but then she had been pushing him to open up to her. What did she want? Intimacy Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays? “Tom, I couldn’t live in your place,” she temporized.
“I’m sort of bored with my apartment anyhow. I haven’t done anything new to it in more than a year.” He frowned again. “But it’s more than living space that’s at issue,” he said with a return to sullenness. “I’m sick of hiding out and lurking around. I’m sick of acting scared of that turd you were married to.”
“Am married to. Still.”
“I do wonder if that’s the reason?” His voice was thick with sarcasm. “I’ve introduced you to my friends. I think the real reason is that—just like Andrea—you’re ashamed of me.”
She jumped up. “That’s nonsense!” Of all the silly fears for him to come up with. She felt a loosening of tension. Everything else had been on the mark or close to it, but this was so ridiculous she felt more like pulling his hair than arguing seriously with him. “How can you say that with a straight face? You’ve met Tracy. You haven’t met Robin because she and I are not speaking.”
“You have to do something about that soon,” he said in his normal voice, an aside in his anger that made her smile. “I haven’t met your friends. I only met your secretary after the fire.”
“You never even told me you’d been involved with Dorothy when you sent me to her.”
He raised a puzzled eyebrow. “That was a century ago.”
“Not to her.”
“Oh.” His anger was lifting slowly, like fog. “I guess I thought if anything she might do me a favor for old times’ sake.”
“That strikes me as ill-conceived, but never mind. Tom … is that when you had your ear pierced? With Dorothy?”
He looked puzzled, his hand touching his lobe as if expecting from the contact some illumination. “Yeah … it was. One of those stupid things. We were intense for a while, and it was what we did instead of rings or something like that. I’d forgotten.”
“Anyhow, I’d like you to meet my family. Besides, I haven’t met yours.”
“I wanted to ask you to my sister’s seder, but I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”
“I’ve never been to one. Of course I would have gone.” She put her arms around him. “Stop sulking. Your wrongs are imaginary.”
“I’m not sulking.”
“You can meet Gretta tomorrow. Want to meet my sister Gussie? She won’t tell the boys.”
He pulled her toward him. “Peaches, my family is dull as a day down in the Registry of Deeds. All they talk about is people I knew in the fifth grade and what the kids said yesterday.”
“What will they say about me not being Jewish?”
“Probably they’ll figure Italian is closer than Wasp. At least it’s the same sea.” He drew his finger along her cheek. “I do want to meet Gretta. But look, you backed into this thing with me. You didn’t really choose it. Don’t you see that’s a problem for us?”
“I’m not convinced. I have a long record of choosing not to know things I really know. Gussie said that to me. I’d like to change.” She knew from the strength of her relief that he wasn’t just bored with her, how much she wanted to continue.
“I guess I’d like it if we were more of a couple. Working together’s been good and what we’ve been doing, important. But I need more than that.”
“I thought you were mad because I was asking too much.” All day she had felt pressing upon her the fear that it was over, as if she expected it to go quickly bad the way things with Ross had gone slowly bad. Maybe she suspected that
all love relationships were doomed. But when she tried to imagine her life without Tom, it seemed to her not so much lonely as drab.
“Daria, nobody minds putting work into what’s theirs. But we haven’t made ourselves into an us yet.”
Her head was flying apart. For a moment she couldn’t formulate any reply. Seven, eight voices were screaming in her head, everything from grab him, love me, to run, run, run. “You’re talking about … emotional commitment?”
“It’s called love,” he said dryly.
She had been worrying whether he was capable of it, but was she? She knew she could love him, but she was afraid. “Is that what you want from me?”
“When I realized you’d lied to me, I was furious. It really hurt. You take him far more seriously than you take me.”
“That’s history. You and I have just begun, tentatively.”
“I feel like you’re more tentative than I am.”
“But your marriage broke up three years ago. Mine is still fracturing!”
“Do you think if you wait three years, you’ll meet anybody who’ll appreciate you more as you are inside and outside than me?”
“Don’t you think I appreciate you?”
“Not as much.”
“Tom! You’re comparing me with young girls who chased you, years ago. But a lot of times young women want a man, a boyfriend, and you’ll stand in for the ideal till you’re clearly not ideal or until someone better comes along. I’m a knock-down drag-out realist. My appreciation may not sing and dance and do doggy tricks, but it’s based on you and not on some fantasy.”
“I guess I do want to be adored a little more.” He was grinning.
She smiled back. “I will try.”
“Saturday morning early I’ll get started on the cabinets.” He rose and strolled out to the kitchen, his walk looser, rangier. When he wasn’t angry, he was always graceful, she thought, following him. “The Wongs agreed to move to the top floor?”
Daria nodded. “It’s a good deal for them. We’re giving them a break on the rent for an apartment that’s renovated. Theirs wasn’t.”
“You ought to put a fire escape on. Leave the front stairway open for all floors. Close off the back stairs at the second floor and open it up inside the duplex. That’s your internal stairs.”
“That’s a great idea.… You’ve been thinking about this house.”
“I can hardly help it. I’m always sitting in people’s living rooms redesigning the whole place. We could make something really fine out of this structure.”
“I want the dining room back, the way it was originally. We can leave that bathroom in, but I want a dining room instead of a bedroom there.”
“I assume the second floor has the same layout?”
“Identical, but it wasn’t renovated.” It was fun to talk about the plans with him. It reminded her of the best years with Ross, when they planned their antiquing jaunts, when they used to talk about the girls seriously, caring and worrying and figuring things out together. “I’m going to take the living room upstairs for my bedroom. Sandra María’s going to move upstairs, over where she is now.”
“Would you like me to draw up tentative plans?”
“We seem to have had too much that’s tentative. How about some definite plans?”
He ran his hand along a joist exposed by the removed cabinets. “I’d enjoy that.”
She had a moment of feeling that in some way they had merged, an almost tactile sensation of connection. In some recipes before cooking is commenced, the disparate ingredients must sit together for a time: it is called the marrying of the herbs, the spices. At a certain point the flavor is different than the sum of its parts. That is happening, she thought, we are changing each other, we are making a new whole.
Friday morning, once again Daria took the subway to Dorothy’s office, this time not bothering to be prompt. Once again when she walked in no one was present except Dorothy and her secretary. “Again?” she shouted. “I can’t take this. Dorothy, I can’t! Can’t we compel them somehow? Somehow?”
Dorothy grinned, putting her hands on Daria’s shoulders and pressing her into a chair. “You can stand this. In fact you can stand it just fine. Prepare for good news.”
“Ross dropped dead of a heart attack last night. I’m a widow.”
“They caved in. We have a settlement. We couldn’t get all the additional buildings we were asking for, but we did better than I ever expected. It’s a good settlement. Frankly, I’m proud of myself. Phyllis is just typing it up—I’ll have it for you in five minutes. Want some coffee?”
Daria paced, declining the coffee for she felt too wired to need caffeine. “It was Donald’s report?”
Dorothy nodded. “His lawyer convinced him you’d proceed with relinquishing your half of the insurance settlement to have his hide if we didn’t get a total agreement fast. He may have that adjuster in his pocket, but he doesn’t have the insurance company.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am. Let’s ram it through quick, before he gets tired waiting and tries to do me in again.”
“He’s in a bigger hurry than you are. Once this is signed at his lawyer’s this afternoon—by messenger no less they’re picking it up—he flies down to the Dominican Republic Monday and you’re divorced as of Tuesday.”
“Divorced by Tuesday? Is that legal?”
“Perfectly, so long as the property settlement is worked out under Massachusetts law, and we finally accomplished that feat. I forgot to ask, do you want your maiden name back!”
“I’d love it, but all my books are under his name. Too bad.” She ran through the agreement, as the secretary handed it to her. She had got what she asked for during the first round (suffering the loss of the Lexington property and splitting that insurance money instead); and three of the buildings she had requested the second time, Fay’s, the Schulmans’ and her own. She had also got Ross to agree to pay off the mortgages on those within two years. As Dorothy had insisted, the property had been used to raise money for other purposes far beyond its value and that money had to figure in the settlement, or the buildings were doomed to abandonment. The building Daria was living in had a modest mortgage she was prepared to assume; his renovations had been financed from the fire insurance. She would use the money from the Lexington fire.
“Daria, I know it’s not everything you wanted, but it’s all we’re ever going to get. If you delay longer, you may end up with far less. He claims to be in such a precarious position he could choose bankruptcy. I’m not convinced a judge would give you as much. Your adultery, if discovered, weighs ten times as much as his. And if you have to use the arson evidence in court, you can’t get that money, obviously, to renovate your Allston house.”
“Okay. Just add a note that I can remove my plants from the yard at Lexington until, say, November fifteenth of this year.”
“I’ll draw up a memo to that effect right now and you can sign it, but I believe we should go ahead with or without your rosebushes. No delays, Daria, take it from me. He was furious about Donald. He went on at great length how it had never occurred to him to stoop so low as to hire detectives.”
“It never occurred to him I might do anything interesting.” Daria signed. This was considered a good settlement, she thought as she returned on the subway: she was receiving twenty to twenty-five percent of their married property.
That night at her new flat they drank champagne, California but satisfying to all. Orlando came by with Sylvia to have a private conversation with Tom. Then he said to them all, “Hey, you know, there’s some guy sitting outside in a green Subaru. I seen him around yesterday too.”
Sandra María sat straight up in her chair. “I saw the same car.”
Tom went to look. “I think old Walker hired a detective belatedly.”
Daria walked over. “After all, we have Donald. But let’s play it close to the vest. We’ll all live a chaste life till Tuesday, okay?”
The surveillance contin
ued through the weekend, although the detective could have learned little except that Mariela’s girlfriend Suzi dropped by, that they were visited by Fay, Ángel, Tom, Orlando, Sylvia, Elroy, Eleni, Gretta, the oil truck making a delivery, and that a great deal of building activity went on. Work on the kitchen began at eight o’clock sharp on Saturday morning, as Tom had warned. By four Sunday they had a beautiful kitchen. Then Daria in an access of joyful energy unpacked her dishes, glassware, utensils while Ángel, Sandra María and Mariela had a picnic in the park in the mild May afternoon and Tom lay on the couch drinking beer and watching the Red Sox play the Yankees on the grainy-pictured set Mr. Schulman had dug out of his basement for them, while Fay kept them company as chaperone. They were taking no chances, with the divorce so close at hand.
When she finished they decided to go out to eat. Daria was beginning to feel curious about her new neighborhood, and Tom was eager to share what he enjoyed. Fay took off to prepare supper for her sons. As they all left, Tom crossed the street and rapped on the rolled-up window of the green Subaru. “Pardon me, but I thought I’d just tell you, Mrs. Walker and I are going out to eat. We’ll be back in two hours, if you want to catch some supper yourself. When we get back we can tell you where we ate, if you want to put it in your report.”
The man, about Donald’s age, but thinner, balder, stared at Tom and then laughed silently. “Tell me where you’re eating and I’ll meet you there.”
“I have a yen for Rubin’s Deli, but if it’s crowded in there, it might be Grecian Yearning or the Allston Depot.”
“Then I’ll have to follow you. Too bad.” The man rolled up his window and started his engine.
Monday morning the green Subaru was gone and a phone call to Dorothy confirmed that Ross had flown to the Dominican Republic. By Tuesday she was a divorcée. Her decree would arrive in the mail. It felt strange. She had been pushing on a massive oak door that she could scarcely budge, leaning her weight on it and thrusting with all her strength until her muscles ached. Suddenly it had folded back like a paper fan, leaving her still poised to push, unbalanced with surprise. She was free to move forward now, it seemed, at her own speed.
