Storm Tide

by Marge Piercy

  She handed him three, each handwritten in her loopy feminine curlicues, each addressed to the editor of a different local paper and signed in her own name. They were each two paragraphs long, as he’d advised her, and quite good. “David won’t mind?”

  “I have a right to protest the killing of innocent animals no matter what he thinks. He never asked me what to say in the election.”

  Johnny hoped people would assume her opinions were David’s. But her relationship to the new selectman was too valuable to jeopardize. “I don’t want to cause any family problems.”

  “Family …” Crystal repeated. She looked pleased at his choice of words. Then she looked down in embarrassment. “Mr. Lynch?”

  “Oh, now.” He was afraid she was going to cry. Because he’d used the word “family” to describe her arrangement with David Greene?

  “I didn’t mean to be sticking my nose into your private affairs. I mean about Mrs. Lynch and your children.”

  “You mean William?” He rarely mentioned his second son to anyone in this town except, on occasion, Abel Smalley, who could obtain information about the California prison system. But Johnny had a hunch. “You’re about his age, aren’t you?”

  “He was a nice boy,” Crystal said.

  “I doubt if there are many around here who remember him that way, but thank you, dear.”

  “He was nice to me. He took me to the junior prom, even though I was a sophomore.”

  William had many girlfriends before he got involved with drugs. Had Crystal been one? He tried to figure out what she would have looked like at age fifteen. William had gone out with many pretty girls, but in Johnny’s memory, they blurred.

  “Anyway, I’m very sorry.”

  Those eyes, like an infant’s, that was the only way to describe them, so sad and vulnerable. Johnny looked away. “Crystal, you didn’t get yourself arrested for armed robbery. My William did.”

  “I’m sure he just got in with a bad bunch. It happens, especially when you’re away from home and off on your own. I understand that, Mr. Lynch.”

  “We were talking about children. Which you know a great deal about. I only pray to God your boy doesn’t end up the way mine did, and that I have the strength to help William when he finally comes home.”

  “You will,” she said, her hand hovering above his but not touching, not yet, he thought. She said “You’re the best boss in the world, Mr. Lynch. I see all the time how many people in town you help. People nobody else seems to care about. You don’t turn anybody down. You have the biggest, kindest heart in Saltash, Mr. Lynch.”

  JUDITH

  Every social worker in the county and every health worker knew Judith would take on those unpleasant cases of abuse, not only unsavory, but sometimes dangerous for the lawyer as well as the client. When a woman left an abusive man—or began to get ready to leave—she was in acute danger. Sometimes her lawyer too could come into the line of fire. But occasionally domestic troubles were plain bizarre.

  She had two new cases. One was a bigamist. Betty Clausen and/or Sirucci had married Sirucci without getting divorced from Clausen. “But Sergio was ready to marry me. Dick wasn’t paying child support. He never paid his child support after the first two months. What could I do?” Betty was a slender nervous woman with dark brown hair cut very short, who hailed originally from northern Maine. Her children were being entertained in the outer office by Mattie, who was great with kids. She kept a supply of toys and games in a box.

  “Divorce would have been a really good idea, Betty.”

  “But that takes time. And Sergio was ready to marry me right then. How do I know he’d marry me in a year? I have two kids and he was willing to be their father. They never really had a father, not a loving one. Not a good man like Sergio. And I didn’t even have a current address for Dick.”

  To Betty it all seemed logical. Her kids needed a father; here was a father. Ergo she had to marry him immediately. “But you’d told him you were married?”

  “He’s such a sweetheart. Of course I told him I’d been married. How else did I get two kids? But I said their father was dead. In Sergio’s family, there’s no divorce. At least I could say I wasn’t a divorced woman, because I wasn’t. But if a man picks on you all the time and hits you and hits your kids and doesn’t pay a penny for them, how can that be marriage? So if you aren’t really married—”

  “The law doesn’t distinguish between a good marriage and a lousy marriage, in that both are equally valid marriages and require a valid divorce to end them. Betty, there are places like the Dominican Republic where you can get a divorce overnight.”

  “First, I don’t have the money to fly to the Caribbean. Second, how would I explain it to Sergio?”

  “How are you explaining the situation now?”

  “He’s very upset with me.” She began to cry. “I couldn’t take the chance on him not marrying us. We needed him. We were having trouble making it. This is a real marriage, not like my last one.”

  Betty hoped if she could only explain to the judge how badly she wanted and needed Sergio, the judge would understand she had been obliged to marry him right away, and everything would be all right.

  Judith had ten minutes before her next new client to make notes on the interview. Perhaps she should plea bargain and represent Betty as a devoted mother only trying to care for her children. That might go over. Sooner than put herself and her children on welfare, your honor, this mother of two …

  The other new case was a reasonably straightforward divorce. The only question was why the woman had stayed so long with a man she described as abusive, unfaithful and often drunk. She was four years older than Betty and looked ten years older. “But where would I go?” she asked, as if she had never heard of a rental unit in her life. She had married out of high school, worked as a waitress, a salesperson in a teeshirt shop, a chambermaid. She had always worked and never made a living.

  After that interview, Judith sat in her office feeling overcome with despair. The lives of women were often so grim and desolate and patched together. No wonder a woman like Crystal grabbed at a hardworking and affectionate man. She despised Crystal because Crystal had destroyed her best hope of a good relationship with David; Crystal must hate her for the same reason. They were in each other’s way. Pontificating about how good a woman Crystal was or wasn’t, was irrelevant.

  She was having supper with David on the island, but meeting him here. Natasha was home for the interval between vet school and her summer internship, and tonight she was cooking. Natasha was a good cook, taught by Judith. At seven-thirty oyster stew and corn bread would await them. She needed the time alone with David before the family scene.

  “Any progress?” she greeted him.

  “I called Laramie’s father.” He told her the conversation. “I don’t know what to believe.”

  She could not come down unreservedly on the side of Liam, as she would have liked. “You have to understand that his wife no doubt was listening to every word. The truth in these matters usually lies somewhere in the middle. It is likely they did actually live together for some period of time. It is likely that Crystal was more interested than he was, and didn’t believe in his attachment to his family. Most probably when he learned she was pregnant and meant to have his child over his protests, he moved out. He may have hit her or just yelled enough to frighten her. We have no witnesses. Certainly he did not exhibit goodwill toward her once she announced her pregnancy.”

  “You sound like a lawyer again.”

  “I am a lawyer, David. I deal with desperate women every day, women who think they’re helpless and some who actually are. I look for remedies. I send them to counselors and social workers, I send them for medical assistance, I send them to safe houses. I go to court for them. But their desperation sometimes causes them to do foolish and self-destructive things …. What worries me most is Crystal’s penchant for getting pregnant as glue in a relationship. Have you straightened out the matter
of a second child?”

  “I’m dealing with that,” he said, his face and tone warning her, no further trespassing.

  “I hope so, David. I hope so.”

  Although they made love that evening and he spent the night with her, she had to recognize that it was not as it had been. She was more reserved. She could not help it. She needed a sense of commitment to let herself go sexually. She did not feel that commitment from David. She was reluctant to end the sex, for she and Gordon no longer made love. He simply did not have a sex drive, and any brisk physical activity could cause a dangerous coughing fit. But she had to recognize that the intense almost overwhelming pleasure she had felt with David had diminished into something merely pleasant. She had felt for a while that she had two mates. That had been an illusion, for David had not felt mated to her. If Betty was a desperate bigamist, one could say she herself had tried to be a sane and pragmatic bigamist. She had failed as thoroughly as Betty.

  Perhaps Crystal’s need was greater, and she should simply get out of the way. If David would only fight for his relationship with her, she would persist. But if it did not mean that much to him, then she could not allow it to mean a great deal to her. He seemed to be choosing Crystal, or at the least allowing Crystal to choose him. She did not sleep that night. As she lay beside David, she found herself reluctantly but inevitably beginning to let go.

  In the morning after he had left for work, she lingered at the table with Natasha. Her first appointment had canceled; that couple had reconciled. Her next appointment at ten was with the insurance company representatives. She finally had a good deal for Enid from the fall through the planking outside the pizza parlor. “I’m on the verge of giving up on David.”

  “But why?” Natasha put her sharp chin into the cup of her hand. “Don’t you think you’re better for him? Don’t you think he loves you? I see the way he looks at you.”

  “Crystal will do anything to keep David. She’s a mother alone with her son and little ability to support him. I keep thinking about Yirina. My mother wasn’t the world’s most honest and truthful woman, but she did really love me, and she did her best. Men were a means.”

  “But you know you’re better for David.”

  “I don’t know if David understands that, and I’m beginning to think what’s best for everybody is for me to give up and get out. I can’t go on fighting her. It’s demeaning. And I can’t help knowing how hard it is for her. Like my mother. Like so many of my clients.”

  “But if you love David, you have to stay in there and fight for him.”

  “I thought I loved him, but I’m not sure any longer if I ever knew him well enough to love him. I can’t go on combating Crystal. She’s the wife now. Let her take what she needs. I can survive without David. I don’t think she can.”

  Natasha said, “Or she thinks she can’t.”

  “It amounts to the same thing, in the end.” Crystal needed him; he seemed to want Crystal. What room was left for her? Only the way out.

  DAVID

  I saw a small red car race up the dirt road, stopping just behind my truck. Alan McCullough shouted over the lawn mower, “It’s your sister!” and the two of us watched her run up the hill. “David, Mom’s had an accident.” Holly was gasping. “They’ve taken her to the hospital. Come on.”

  My mother volunteered two mornings a week in a day care center in the Universalist Church. Crossing High Street at noon, she was struck by a kid on a bicycle. “Did she break something?” I asked. “Did she hit her head?”

  “I don’t know.” Her nose almost touching the wheel, elbows pinned to her sides, Holly’s whole body seemed to be aimed at the hospital, as if steering a bullet through summer traffic.

  “Did they catch the kid?”

  “How do I know? Crystal was calling from the ambulance.”

  “Crystal? How the hell—”

  “I don’t know, David! I just don’t know anything.”

  I left Holly to find a space in the lot and ran to the E.R. entrance. I was halfway to Reception when Crystal called out to me. “We’re okay,” she said breathlessly. “It’s a minor concussion. That’s the good news. But she’s in X ray now. They think the ankle is fractured. Her kneecap may be cracked. Over here!” Crystal waved to my sister. She draped her arm around Holly and repeated what she’d told me. “I saw a crowd outside my office window. I ran out when I heard the sirens. When I saw who it was, I couldn’t believe it. She was so strong, she kept trying to get to her feet. She wanted to kill the kid. He was laughing. I swear they had to hold her down. She kept yelling, ‘You little one-armed worm.’”

  “It was Jimmy Compton?”

  “He thought the whole thing was a joke. The rescue squad was hovering around him as if he was the one who was hurt. But he just got on his bike and rode away. I think we should press charges. I’m going to ask Mr. Lynch. I think we have a case.”

  My mother’s accident was like a reunion for the Greene family, the first time (I’m ashamed to say) since my father’s funeral that we spent more than a seder or Thanksgiving meal together under one roof. My mother left the hospital in a cast, making cooking for herself, even showering, difficult. Ten months of the year finding help would not have been an issue. However, in Saltash everyone had a summer job or two or three. In her way, she managed to put a cheerful spin on a bad situation and see herself, after years of living alone, as the matriarch of a small but dutiful clan.

  Marty grilled chicken on her first night back, which we ate surrounding her on the screened-in porch. Laramie relished the extended family. He chased my sister’s girls through the grove of locust trees, in and out of the barn and Georgie’s old apartment upstairs. Although Laramie was between the girls in age, he was more a mascot than a friend. For hours he searched for them in a game of hide and seek. They dressed him in silly costumes. They played fish and giggled constantly, their voices rising in shrieks and then falling in hushed exchanges.

  “I’m so lucky.” My mother beamed that night. The following morning Holly volunteered for the breakfast shift and I arrived to prepare lunch. Still no luck in finding a caretaker. That evening I made a lasagna and the happy family dined under the mottled shade of the tall black locusts. I volunteered for the morning shift the following day, but my mother looked uneasy. “I’d rather Holly came. I have to wash my hair or I’ll look like a scarecrow.”

  “Sorry I won’t be around for dinner,” Marty said. “I’ll be in Toronto.”

  “Of course, Marty.” The demands of my brother-in-law’s schedule were never questioned.

  The girls were looking pensive and whispered in Holly’s ear. She sighed, “Mom? Do you think David could do the morning? The girls have an ice skating lesson at eight and it’s almost an hour away.”

  “In the summer?”

  “We’re trying to keep their training consistent.”

  “I’m learning a double axel,” Kara said. “My instructor says I have a good line.”

  “How wonderful!” my mother said.

  “But I’ll be here at seven,” I said.

  “That’s not necessary, David.”

  “But Mom, I want to make you breakfast.”

  “I said it’s not necessary. I need help getting dressed and … things a daughter should do. Not you, David. You go to work. It isn’t right for a son to be playing nurse. It isn’t right.”

  The happy family sat in stunned silence. Holly was once again in the wrong. I was uncomfortable, but how could I force myself on my mother? I tried to think of some reliable teenager to hire.

  “I can come,” Crystal said.

  My mother protested.

  “But I can. I don’t have to be at my desk until nine. If I’m a little late, Mr. Lynch will understand. He’s the best.”

  “Are you really all right with this?” Holly was still frowning.

  “We’ll have fun. Won’t we, Laramie?”

  Tonight the girls had dressed him up in lipstick and rouge, an old white shirt of my
father’s and a velvet curtain sash. No, he didn’t mind. For Laramie, clearly any attention was better than none. He liked it, he told Holly when she offered to wash him off. He liked having sisters and a grandma.

  Johnny Lynch had no problem with Crystal coming in late every other morning after caring for my mother. One day he showed up for lunch. With my mother sitting in a kitchen chair and supervising, her ankle propped on a cushion, Crystal made sandwiches and served iced tea. She’d begun wearing a blouse I remembered as my mother’s, blue linen with embroidery. Another day, Holly touched Crystal’s rose ceramic earrings. “Mom, I gave you these.”

  “They were too heavy for me.” My mother never seemed to enjoy Holly’s presents.

  Holly liked Crystal but had always mentioned her to me with a kind of mischief in her voice, as if to suggest sex. Now the two of them conferred about my mother daily. They went over their schedules at the kitchen table, sharing shifts, giving each other a little extra time at work.

  In early August a Mrs. Falco, the librarian’s mother, called to say she had lost a client and had time to care for my mom. She had a good reputation. I thought we should grab her. Holly agreed. Only Crystal insisted there was no reason to waste the money. She said my mother shouldn’t have to depend on strangers.

  The evening before Mrs. Falco was to start, I was watching a Red Sox game with Laramie when Crystal came in with a large box. “What’s that?” Laramie was intrigued.

  “Mom gave it to me,” she said. Since the accident, Crystal had begun speaking about my mother as if she’d known her all her life. Like dolls at a tea party, we’d been assigned roles. I was Daddy. My mother was Mom. Laramie and my nieces were the Kids. Nobody questioned it; nobody blinked. Crystal had simply redefined our family with herself in the middle.

  Laramie began pulling at the wrapping tape. “Please can I see?”