Storm Tide

by Marge Piercy

  Judith had had perhaps fifty battered women as clients. Why didn’t she believe Crystal? She was not sure if she was being intuitive or whether she simply wanted to withhold sympathy. Her doubts made her feel guilty. “It’s difficult to leave the father of your child, even if he’s violent.”

  “It was hard. But I couldn’t wait any longer. He had been hitting Laramie too ….” Crystal closed her eyes and sighed heavily.

  “But if you had the money in the bank to leave, I don’t understand why you got in trouble for bad checks?” High hard line drive to right field. It’s going, going, gone.

  Crystal stared, her face going blank and tight. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who told you that?”

  “I have friends in Seattle,” Judith invented. She could hardly say that the assistant district attorney had told her.

  “Well, whatever those friends told you is a pack of lies. The problem was Liam kept drawing money out of the bank. He had some bad habits. I was trying to pay bills, and he never told me he’d taken money from our account. But the important thing is that I got away from him and I got Laramie away …. He’s the treasure of my life!” Crystal’s voice took on a breathless quality. She reached out and touched Judith’s hand. “Is there anything like the bond of giving birth? It’s the richest experience we can ever know, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve never had a child.” As if you didn’t bloody well know that.

  “Oh! I’m so sorry.” Crystal drew her hand back as if burnt. “Are you still trying? It must be a little late.”

  “I’ve never tried. I never felt the need.”

  Crystal’s eyes were wide and pitying. “Having Laramie was the best thing in my life. Until I met David.” Crystal beamed.

  Judith made herself smile. She motioned to Mary. “I’ll have a slice of your wonderful blueberry pie. A la mode.” She’d probably fall asleep in her office from eating such a pig-out lunch, unless heartburn kept her awake, but it was a small revenge. Crystal had observed every bite of her hamburger and every french fry. “And coffee,” she called after Mary. She had to stay awake this afternoon. She’d have Mattie brew her a big pot.

  “I’d never be satisfied with one child,” Crystal was saying in the same breathless voice. “I couldn’t feel fulfilled. And I think only children are at a disadvantage.”

  “If you’re going to law school, believe me, you don’t want another baby. Not until you’re established in a practice.”

  “I’m sure you know all about being a lawyer, but I’d never give up bringing life into the world for anything so … dry and dull. I see all day what a successful lawyer does. The opposite of motherhood. The opposite of being nurturing and loving.”

  “David thinks you’re planning to go to law school.”

  “David is my angel, you know that? He saved me from despair. He restored my faith in men. He wants to be the father of my child.”

  “Does he?” Judith was coldly furious. Either David was lying all of the time to her, or Crystal was lying. Either way, it was ugly. If David had a child with this woman, she would never, never forgive him. Had she made that serious an error about David? Was he as much a liar as she suspected Crystal to be? Had she made David up, or was he trapped, manipulated? If so, how?

  “More than anything else, I want to bear his child. That’s how much I love him … David and I grew up here. I think we’re fated for each other. We probably seem like a dull ordinary couple to you, but I think we’ll have a good family life together. Because we really love. Don’t you think that’s the most important thing?”

  When Mary brought the check, Judith did not volunteer to pay. She told Crystal she’d pay two thirds, since she’d eaten more, and handed Crystal the check. It took Crystal three tries to figure out her share, and then she was off by a dollar thirty-two. Judith simply made up the difference.

  As she walked back, she shook her head. She knew a little about gambling because she had defended a few gamblers. Dealers in casinos were in the direct line of fire. Besides dealing, they sold chips, paid off winners, and collected from losers. Every move they made was watched by the floorwalker, the pit boss, the casino manager. They had to be fast and cool as ice. They had to do sums in their head. Crystal would never have made it onto the floor of the smallest and cheesiest establishment. It was a story, a romance. Crystal the battered woman, Crystal the dealer. Judith had no idea what it all meant. Was Crystal covering up something? Or nothing? Did Crystal herself know the difference? Perhaps she simply wanted to make herself interesting to whoever was before her. Perhaps she needed to make a more compelling story of her life.

  Whatever Crystal was or wasn’t, there was one truth evident: she was an enemy. She was trouble.

  DAVID

  Getting out of my truck to help Crystal load her things, I’d expected an icy reception from her roommate, but Crystal and Michelle were laughing together. Michelle couldn’t seem to help her enough. “Anytime you want me to take Laramie,” she said.

  Crystal gathered Michelle’s little girl into her arms: “Now you know I’m not leaving you. I’m just moving in with David not two miles from here.”

  In fact things proceeded as they had before: except that whenever I came home, Crystal was in my living room, my kitchen, my bathtub, my bed. Crystal found curtains for the second bedroom and the kitchen windows. She covered the old couch with an Indian madras spread. The women in her office gave us a cast-iron frying pan and a set of plates, a bedside lamp, and a coffee table. Although I didn’t want her to start paying rent, she insisted. She found an old student’s desk in the garage, stripped it and painted it yellow. The more she invested in the house, the more it became hers. I had not asked how long she might be here. I could never ask “the question” in front of Laramie, although he seemed to be waiting for it. Whenever things got quiet between his mother and me, he inched closer or took a seat in a corner, drawing his knees to his chest. Nor did Crystal offer an answer when we were alone. The night she moved in, while I ran out to Penia’s for pizza, she started scrubbing the kitchen floor with steel wool. The next night after work, she began on the bathroom, and the next night shampooed the carpet. “David, is there something you wanted to ask me?” she said when she noticed me watching her.

  Caught off guard, I muttered, “No. I mean, yes. You don’t have to do all this.” Or something like that. Anything else just felt plain cruel.

  Soon after they moved in, Crystal and Laramie started arguing. Sometimes it was about getting up in the morning or finishing his toast or cleaning up his stuff, it didn’t matter. The kind of terrible rows that used to go on between Crystal and Kelly Ann became a commonplace occurrence in our house. I started spending more time with the boy, making him breakfast, getting him off to school, reading his books together.

  One day I heard Crystal shriek from the bathroom. Laramie started crying soon after. Crystal’s frustration was humiliating and sharp. “What is this? You’re going to be eight years old. You can’t do this!”

  I arrived to find Laramie in tears, his pants and underwear swaddling his shoes. “Look at this!” Crystal stood over a small puddle of urine in front of the toilet bowl.

  “It just happens,” Laramie said. “I can’t help it.”

  “Well, you better help it, young man. Or we’re going to be asked to leave this house, and you know what I mean.”

  A ripple of guilt tore through my gut. Did I have that kind of power? “Crystal, please,” I said. “Leave us alone for a minute.”

  “You don’t have to do this, David. He’s old enough to know better.”

  “Please,” I said, and ushered her out. Laramie stood before me with his eyes down, arms folded. I had not seen my own boy naked since he was three years old. I had never taught him anything about his body. And who was going to teach this kid if not for me? “Laramie, what’s going on?”

  “Sometimes when I sit down on the toilet, it just happens.” Fear and shame clotted his voice. “The pee goes all
over the floor.”

  “You know what you have to do? This happened to me when I was a kid.”

  “It did?”

  “Happens to all little boys. You have to hold your penis down so the pee goes into the water, instead of between the bowl and the seat.” I didn’t touch him; he wasn’t mine, after all, but I illustrated what I meant with my hand and he understood. Nothing that I’d ever done before had made me feel as much like a father.

  Most nights after work, I attended a meeting, spoke to some group or stood outside the post office during its last hour before closing to shake hands. Half the people I spoke to sought me out with an ax to grind. Some said they admired my drive. “I don’t know you from Adam,” an old man told me. “But I’m voting for you because you believe in yourself. You must, you’re out here every damned night.” He didn’t realize he was casting his ballot for a guy who was putting off going home.

  Thursday nights I had a standing date with Judith, but the week before, the week Crystal moved in, Judith had to take Gordon into the Dana Farber clinic. I was nervous about the following Thursday date that Wednesday night when I took the “family” out to the movies and then to the supermarket. “You okay?” Crystal kept asking me, stroking my thigh in the dark theater, placing her hand on top of mine as I pushed the grocery cart. We talked about getting shelves and painting the living room. Crystal didn’t mention my seeing Judith. As we drove back, Laramie asked if he could get a dog, mother and son waiting in reverent silence for me to decide the fate of their lives. It was half past nine when we got home. Another hour passed before we got the food put away and Laramie to sleep. Still, we made love that night. Crystal made love to me every night that week, but Thursday morning she set the alarm a half hour earlier than usual. When she came back to bed, she took me in her mouth. “Shove him all the way in. All the way down my throat.”

  As Crystal showered, I realized that one difference between Crystal and Judith, between Crystal and any woman I had ever known, was that sex for her had little to do with her own pleasure. She was glad to have an orgasm and sometimes seemed surprised; but her satisfaction derived not from the intensity of her pleasure but mine. I felt no small amount of shame sometimes. I knew, despite her cries of delight, her grunting in my ear, “You stud! Your cock is God!” that the excitement was an act, a sideshow, and that I was the audience. Yet I could not stop myself. Use me, she said, use me, and I did.

  When she stepped out of the shower and was toweling her hair dry, she said, “I forgot to tell you, Tommy’s coming over with some stuff I forgot at Michelle’s.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. When you’re at Judith’s.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. I forgot something. The exercise bike I bought at the flea market.”

  “I could have picked it up.”

  “I didn’t want to ask you. You’ve done so much.”

  “But why tonight?”

  “That’s when he said he could do it. You won’t be here. I’ll be all by myself. You said I should make some friends. I thought it would take some pressure off you if I didn’t always depend on you. What’s the matter? You’re going to be doing what you want to. You’re going to be with another friend.”

  A friend? I made love to Judith. What did that say about Crystal and Tommy? What had Michelle walked in on that night? Why had they been on the couch in the dark together? There were lights in that room. There were two other chairs. Did she think that because I slept with Judith that she had the right to sleep with Tommy? Did Tommy think he could walk into my house when I wasn’t here and make love to the woman I was living with? I left for work that morning with raw intestines and my head on fire. I couldn’t accuse her, not when she knew exactly where I would be and what I would be doing. It was a silent threat: be with Judith and I’ll be with someone too.

  The following night was Friday and Crystal was waiting for me at the door. She ushered me into the kitchen. “Do you like it?” So much seemed to depend on my answer.

  “Of course!”

  “It’s all here, right?” The table was covered with an old lace cloth instead of the usual vinyl. “I did the whole thing like the book said. I got it all, I think.”

  “I helped with the bread.”

  “Oh, I know you did, Laramie,” I said. “It’s beautiful.” He was wearing a dress shirt and a Bruins cap. My sister had lent Crystal The Complete Book of Jewish Observance. Crystal, doing her best to create a Shabbat meal, had fashioned candle holders from upturned egg cups and baked a braided bread. “They didn’t have poppy seeds. Is sesame all right?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Thank you.”

  She had located—probably from the back of my sister’s liquor cabinet—a bottle of cherry wine labeled Kosher for Passover. She and Laramie stood at something like attention as I recited the blessings. She wore a silk kerchief and a white Greek fisherman’s shirt with balloon sleeves. She had roasted a chicken, and instead of the potato kugel in the “Suggested Menus” chapter, served macaroni and cheese. They began to eat only after I did (Laramie watching for the nod from his mother), and sat in dead formal silence, waiting for something to happen. I had never been one to initiate dinner table conversation. Moreover, my father had led the few ritual dinners we had, and after his death, Marty did it. When I shared Shabbat with Judith, she was the source of prayer and song, shadowy memories for me. The truth is, I didn’t know much about being a Jew or how to teach anyone else.

  Crystal poured me another glass of cherry wine, half cabernet sauvignon, half Robitussen. “Eat slowly,” Crystal reminded Laramie. “I know it’s not as good as she makes it but—”

  “It’s wonderful,” I said automatically. “It’s very good. Don’t put yourself down.”

  “—but it’s my first time. I wasn’t putting myself down. Did you have a good night last night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I haven’t seen you since yesterday morning. I just asked if you had a good night.”

  In fact it had not been good. The question I could not bring up to Crystal was the first thing Judith asked. How long is she going to be there, David? I said I didn’t know. Why? she asked. Why can’t you set a date, tell Crystal she has two weeks to find a place? That’s a little stiff, I said. All right, two months, David, but make a deadline. How long am I supposed to go on like this? You live with her now. So what? I said, you live with your husband. So you see her five nights a week and I see you two, Judith said. So I’m involved with a man whose house is off limits to me. So you’re not even with me when you are here.

  Because all I could think about was Crystal and Tommy. I had driven past my house on the way to Judith’s at seven. Tommy’s truck was not there. Which meant he could have come and gone—or that he wasn’t coming until after dark.

  “Judith and I mostly dealt with the election,” I said. “It was business.”

  She swept crumbs from the table into her palm. “What kind?”

  I didn’t want Crystal to be jealous of Judith and me, but the fact that she did not show the slightest concern seemed to prove she had gotten even. “Strategy stuff,” I said grudgingly. “We decided to send out a last campaign letter to arrive in the voters’ mailboxes the morning of the election.”

  That night I wanted her with a fierceness fueled by pure anxiety. Everything I’d felt a hundred times seemed new: the tickle of her hair as it lay on my inner thigh; her nipples dangling above my lips. Her breath in my ear made me shiver. I came the first time just kissing and again inside her.

  We lay together afterwards in a cold sweat, barely able to move. Sex had left us more wounded than satisfied, more exhausted than content. I listened to her breathing as she certainly listened to mine. Neither of us could sleep. “You want me out of here, don’t you?” Crystal said in the dark.

  “It’s just that I’m used to living by myself.”

  “Tell me the truth. You think I can’t feel it? Nothing I do can make
you want us. If I wash the floor, you just think I’m doing it so I can stay here. If I try to make the kind of ritual you like, it doesn’t compare to the way she does it.”

  “I never said that.”

  “I can feel it. You’re mad at me all the time.” I reached for her and she pulled away. “Do you think I want to impose on you? It’s just so hard for me, David. You don’t know how much it costs to have a kid.”

  “I told you I’d help you. I mean it.”

  “I don’t want your money. If you want us out, okay, just say it. If it wasn’t for Laramie I wouldn’t even be here. His father doesn’t help. He never sends anything. Do you know how hard that is? Laramie thinks nobody loves him. I don’t want him to grow up like that.”

  “You’re a good mother, Crystal. There’s none better.”

  “I’ve made such a lousy life for him.”

  “No, you haven’t. He’s a good, beautiful kid.”

  “He really loves you, David.”

  “And I love him.”

  She was suddenly still. “You do? You mean that? I don’t care how you feel about me. But if you could care for him. He can’t take being kicked again and again.”

  “Nobody’s going to hurt him or you.”

  “We’ll move as soon as I get the money together. I promise. I want to pay off my debts. And then I’ll work on saving enough to rent a house. I won’t be a burden to you.”

  “You’re not a burden.” What else could I say? I had the sense if I ever said flat out, I do wish you would move, I feel crowded out of my own house, she would utterly collapse. I had to go gently around her. “I know how hard you work to please me. I know I’m not easy. Don’t cry, Crystal. You can stay as long as you need to. Why are you crying?”

  “I wanted to hear you say that.”