by Marge Piercy
“Tell her what?”
“Did you tell her about Judith?”
“We have customers,” I said, making my way to the register.
“My money’s on Crystal.”
“For what?”
“To get rid of Judith. But don’t worry, David. If what the boys used to say about her is true, you’re going to have a really good time.”
JUDITH
Stumpy came over just after breakfast to help her with the garden. She had planted the peas on St. Patrick’s Day, four weeks before, but digging the entire garden was a task Gordon had always done. Now Gordon sat in a deck chair wrapped in a blanket, overseeing Stumpy’s digging and her cultivating and planting. They went along in tandem until half the garden—broccoli, lettuce, beets, carrots, leeks—was put in. The sun warmed her back, even though the air was chilly. This soil was her creation, compost, grass clippings, seaweed added to the sand and decayed into a rich brown soil. She loved the feel of it in her hands, looking almost edible, fudgy. Gnats swirled in the path. A mourning cloak butterfly wandered among the pines. She had never found April cruel, but fecund, full of promises that would eventually be kept, promises of growth and productivity. She thought of David. She had not seen him alone since the morning he had arrived unannounced. Being outdoors made her wish he was with her. She had imagined putting in the garden with him instead of Stumpy.
Stumpy stayed for lunch. After he left, as Gordon was retiring for his afternoon nap, he said, “I thought you’d get your young man to help. I’m sure he has some sort of mechanical cultivator that could turn the whole thing over in half an hour.”
“I’d meant to ask him, but he’s been avoiding me.”
“Did you have a fight?”
“I think he was upset that morning he appeared right after we made love.”
“Did he think I was too old or too sick to get it up?”
Actually he usually was, but she simply smiled. “I think he knew in theory we make love, but it caught him by surprise to walk in. He’ll get over it. The more serious problem, I suspect, is that after candidates’ night, the reality of running for office is scaring him shitless.”
“He certainly seems flightier than I expected. Do you think he’ll back out?”
She shrugged. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Is he more afraid of winning or losing? Or is it the public process that scares him? Standing up in front of people he’s known all his life and making a fool of himself. I’ll really regret it if he blows his chance at the seat. He’s the best shot we’ve ever had.”
“I promise, I’ll give him a pep talk. I know he can win. He has more support than he realizes. He’s seen as honest, hardworking, young—”
“And unknown politically. Meaning he hasn’t pissed anyone off yet.” Gordon looked totally exhausted. Fatigue overtook him often with the abruptness of a blade dropping. She had to help him to bed. She sat beside him as he lay waiting for sleep. “I’m making a lamb and barley soup,” she said softly. “The bakery is open and I got a nice bread. I’m always so glad when they open in the spring. The geese fly overhead, the robins come back, and the bakery opens ….” He was asleep, she realized, and slipped out, shutting his door soundlessly.
She decided to go over to David’s after supper. She could not allow the unspoken estrangement to persist. She must work through whatever had gone wrong. His car was outside and the light on in his kitchen. He had given her a key and she used it, although once inside, she called to him. “David? David? It’s me.”
He leapt up from the table, apparently startled. He looked almost afraid. He must have been brooding—probably about the election.
She came to him at once and kissed him lightly. “I know you’ve been avoiding me.”
He looked petrified now. “What do you mean?”
She suspected he was afraid that she would withdraw from him if he chose not to run. For all that she had promised Gordon she would try to get him to commit, it was even more important to her that he not feel their relationship was in any way dependent on the election. She thought it would be good for him to run and to win. It would give him confidence that he had not had since the end of his baseball career. But if he was not ready, she would not coerce him, even to please Gordon. Two relationships could be a lot more complicated than Gordon realized, balancing each of them against the other. Doing justice to both men. “I’ve been pushing you hard to run, and you’re angry.”
He scratched his head, still avoiding her gaze. “I’m not angry.”
“People will be disappointed if you back out—particularly Gordon. He’s sure you can win and it means a lot to him. But I want you to do what you want to do. I want you to do what’s best for you, and if that involves withdrawing from the race, then do it.”
“That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?” Now he looked at her, finally.
He was so tense, she could feel it. She loved him even more than she liked to admit to herself or to Gordon. She was besotted with him, the light eyes in the face already tanned from outdoor work, his shock of black hair, the line of his mouth and chin, the sound of his voice, tentative, always issuing from lower in his chest than she expected. His fine blunt hands were on the table, pressing against it as if to keep the world in place. “I want things to be better between us.” David was a good man, and she did not want to make things harder for him.
He sat down slowly at the table, still holding her gaze, and she sank into the chair across from him. She said, “I think it’s been tying you in knots. I don’t want the election to come between us. You’re too important to me.”
“You wouldn’t hate me if I decided not to run?”
“Hate you? Never. David, you may not believe it right now, but what we have together works for both of us. We have a lot to give each other, a lot to teach each other. It may not be a conventional relationship, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work for us—and work well.”
She could tell he was full of doubts—she could feel them churning just under the surface of his apparent calm—but when she rose and walked over to him, he stood and took her in his arms. Patience, she thought to herself, patience. It’s taking him a while to get used to the situation, but he does love me.
“You’re so precious to me, David. I’ve missed you these past two weeks.”
“I’ve missed you too,” he said, and began easing her toward his bedroom. Through her body and mentally, she relaxed with a sigh. She would have to tell Gordon she had not persuaded David to make a commitment to run, but with great relief she could feel his focus shifting from whatever had been distressing him at the moment to their bodies pressing together, the sweetness of their mouths joining. It would be all right. It would be good again, she was sure.
DAVID
Between Thanksgiving and Memorial Day there were two restaurants in Saltash open after six P.M. One served steaks and seafood and was favored by the retired crowd. The working people gathered at Penia’s. Crystal asked me to meet her and the kids there for dinner on Friday night. She told me she had a surprise. Penia’s was noisy and smoke-filled and dark. The beer was warm and the pizza was cold, but you could feed a family of four for under twenty dollars. It was the one place in the entire town I knew I’d never see Judith—she was suing them.
“Crystal, you didn’t go and get me anything, did you?”
“As a matter of fact,” her voice was all whisper and giggle, “I took something away.”
Kids were kicking a soccer ball in the parking lot when I arrived and filling balloons at the men’s room sink. As we stood in line for a table, Michelle’s daughter, Kelly Ann, met two boys from her class, arms up to the elbows in a tank of tropical fish. No, Laramie mumbled, he did not know them. He would not lift his gaze from the tops of his shoes. After the waitress finally took our order, she slouched to the table behind ours and cleared it, chatted up her two booths and ducked into the ladies’ room before entering the kitchen.
“What’s
the matter?” Crystal said. “You keep checking your watch.”
“I’m hungry.”
“You look nervous.”
“Just because people stare at us when they pass.”
“You’re running for public office. Think that could be it?”
“I hope not.”
“I know, I know. Because the last thing you want to do is win.”
Laramie frowned. I didn’t know much about little boys, but I had never met one so worried about his mother. He not only watched her, he absorbed her every word. His mood changed with our conversation. Every time I opened my mouth to speak, he seemed to set his jaw and wait for her response. When the waitress brought Crystal’s tea, he started playing with the bag, sloshing it up and down.
“Cut it out,” Crystal told him.
“It makes faster this way,” he said.
I ordered two more cups when the pizza arrived, told Laramie to dip the bag in one and to leave the other alone. I gave him my wristwatch and asked him to time which got darker first. Crystal looked at me as if I was a cross between Piaget and Santa Claus.
If the kid sensed that I was tense, he wasn’t far off. Sure, Penia’s was cheap and a place where kids could amuse themselves. But eating here on a Friday night with a woman and her children was like an announcement to the town, WE ARE AN ITEM! People weren’t looking at some guy running for selectman, they were noting who was screwing who.
“Can I ask you a question?” Her voice was apologetic and she hadn’t touched her food. Laramie stopped eating and waited for my answer. Her cheeks were flushed. I imagined them warm against my fingertips. “It’s a serious question.”
“Ask me anything you want.”
“Why don’t you want to run?”
Although we could hardly hear each other above the jukebox and the rattle of plates, she seemed to be doing everything in her ability to coax me into a better mood.
“You’d be so good.” She slid her hand under mine. Laramie saw the gesture and relaxed. What he did not see was the nail of her middle finger moving in circles around my palm.
“Because everybody in this town would rather hate each other than change anything,” I said.
“Is that the real reason?”
“It’s easier to fight about the way things used to be than to face up to what really needs fixing.”
“You mean my boss?”
“Johnny Lynch got rich off this town. You look around this restaurant. There isn’t one local kid here who didn’t lose a piece of his family’s land to Johnny. But who do they hate? Who do they make jokes about and try to run off the highway? Who do they blame for being poor? The retired people, the city people. Do they remember what school was like here when we went? You know why Tommy Shalhoub dropped out of school? Because he couldn’t read. Because we had a teacher who made him read out loud and hit him on the head with a book every time he made a mistake. Guess what? She’s still teaching.”
Laramie and Kelly Ann fell silent. Crystal withdrew her hand. I assumed the conversation was over. Then she asked, “Is that how your friend Judith feels?”
Laramie’s face turned the color of a gravestone. How would he even know her name? I don’t believe a muscle moved in his entire body—or mine. Crystal nibbled on her pizza, reached across the table to put another slice on Kelly Ann’s plate. “Would you like another soda, you two?” Kelly Ann sucked the air through her straw and nodded. “How about you, Larry Stone Face? Do you want to tell me about her, David?”
“Well, she’s a good customer. They have a very big garden. She and her husband, Gordon, have been married for thirteen years. He’s got cancer. She nurses him as best she can.”
“She sounds much older than you. How many children do they have?”
“Gordon has five by other marriages. But none together.”
“Mmmm.” Crystal flashed a grimace of pity. “So she became a lawyer.” She wiped Laramie’s lips with a napkin. “I’d like to meet her.”
I laughed, involuntarily. It was unthinkable.
“David, if the two of you like each other, I’m sure she and I will.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I won’t push you. But I think it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like meeting your mother or an old family friend. I hope you’ll change your mind,” she said.
Michelle was spending Friday night at Tommy’s, a deal the two mothers had worked out, and a fact that Kelly Ann forgot until she came home. Then she refused to get undressed, to turn off the TV, to brush her teeth or stop crying or get into bed. With every story we read, Kelly Ann demanded another, until we had read four of them and Laramie had fallen asleep. When we turned out the lights, the little girl turned them on again and insisted she didn’t have to go to sleep if she didn’t want to, Crystal wasn’t her mother and this wasn’t Crystal’s house. I couldn’t believe how tired I was, how the effort of staying awake and dealing with Kelly Ann, while attempting to control my temper, was as much work as I did in an eight-hour day. I crawled into bed—on the nights when Michelle slept out, Crystal had a real bed—already half asleep. “Don’t you want to turn the light out?”
“Then you won’t see my surprise,” she said.
“What is it?”
“You have to guess.”
“Where is it?”
“Oh, I think you know.”
“So I’ve seen it before?”
“Not as much of it.”
“I don’t understand. There’s more of something?”
“Less. But I think you’ll like it more.” She peeled off the covers and inched her back up the headboard. Slowly and with great ceremony, as if unveiling a work of art, she drew her night gown over her knees, her thighs. I’d been watching her face, her thick, deliberate smile, when she licked her finger and dragged it down her belly to where she had shaved herself smooth. Her mons was as soft and bare and pink as a child’s. “I did it for you,” she whispered. “Just for you. Do you like it?”
The truth is I had never seen an adult woman shaved before. I couldn’t say that I liked it, for it disturbed me. I felt momentarily ashamed. I only knew it excited me, that I was fascinated with the act itself, so bold and spontaneous in its eccentricity.
“But she’s so cold.” Crystal’s voice rose and slowed like a girl child’s. “Don’t you want to kiss her?”
As I covered her with my mouth, she dug her nails in my shoulders. “I want to know everything you like,” she said. “You can ask me for anything and I’ll make it come true. Anything, do you understand me?” She lifted my head until my eyes met hers. “There are no private parts. There are no secrets. My body inside and out is yours. You can do anything with me. I’m your anything girl.”
DAVID
High Street, Saltash, was two lanes wide. Local guys enjoyed a good conversation in the middle of it—windows rolled down, pickups idling, one facing east, the other west, as traffic and tempers built up in both directions. Sometimes it was a demonstration of local rights, a protest against the out-of-state license plate behind them; sometimes just business, the closest a working man came to a car phone. It was also the fastest way for news to get around, and the afternoon I took on the Department of Roads, Bridges and Waterways, they tell me cars were backed up for a quarter mile.
I’d been working the Carlson job. Bob Carlson was a friend of Marty’s and one of our best customers. Like a lot of affluent couples from the city, the Carlsons paid late and changed their minds on a whim. One Monday night, they decided on a party at their country home that weekend, for which they expected their fencing erected and their landscaping complete. I hadn’t scheduled the job until the middle of May. Much as I wanted to tell the Carlsons to shove it, we needed the business.
Although it was only mid-April, the air was sweet with narcissus and the acid tang of pine sap. Spring peepers trilled at sundown and clouds of gnats rippled the air like waves of heat. Even after I sent the crew home, even as the sun touched the tree
tops, I worked without a shirt. The Carlsons’ was one of the only houses in Johnny Lynch’s new development. When Bob Carlson heard that the lot across the road sold, he wanted a fence. Eight feet high, one hundred long, it had taken us three days to complete.
Just beyond the fence, I heard the growl of truck gears, heavy equipment climbing, and caught a glimpse of a front-end loader, the kind road pavers used, laboring up the hill. It was odd to be starting a job this late in the day. I couldn’t see the road crew but heard them horsing around. I didn’t think much about it. I was driving spikes in a tier of landscape ties, trying to finish before sundown. The stench of the diesel smoke, the noise of the big machine were unpleasant enough to ruin a mild spring evening, but when the loader’s engine started straining, roaring loud enough to explode, when I noticed the big rig rolling over the property line, I ran down the drive to take a look. The driver was forcing the loader’s bucket under the root ball of a twenty-foot tree, attempting to lift it. The harder he gunned the engine, the farther forward the vehicle tipped, its rear tires leaving the ground. The light was fading. A thick blue cloud of smoke billowed down the hillside, but the lettering on the equipment was unmistakable. This was no moonlighting road crew working on Johnny Lynch’s road, this was the Saltash Department of Roads, Bridges and Waterways, and the idiots were three feet from my fence.
A couple of guys watched from the edge of the road—Harlan Bowman and Tony Brockmann among them—arms folded, beer bottles in their fists. When they saw me coming, they turned their backs. Tiny Sauvage ran alongside the machine, waving his arms, shouting instructions.
I called, “Hey guys.” They ignored me. “This is a private road. What are you doing here?”
Harlan Bowman lifted a baseball cap stained with motor oil and ran his hand through his hair. “Clearing trees.”
“It took my crew three days to put up that fence. Don’t you think he’s awful close?”
