by Marge Piercy
He put the water on to boil and toasted Friday’s bread. Tomorrow he would find out if they had landed the transistor quality control contract. Could he charge some of Schmidt’s time to it? Expensive man to ride on overhead. Boss Tweed was watching his overhead. What was he supposed to do when the research money dried up? Freeze half his department? Thaw them when the money thawed? Give Mavis two more weeks and if she didn’t start producing, he’d have to ax her. If the contract didn’t materialize, how would he get through Monday afternoon with Boss Tweed? A bullshit line, but what? He spooned sugar into his instant coffee. The difference between the bachelor and the married man is that the bachelor gets instant coffee and an imaginary quarrel for breakfast, while the married man gets both in their true form.
Not bad. He had a dry sense of humor. “Not dry, dried!” she had screamed at him. Lederman dropping that hint about the place for a good statistician in demography studies at the University. Um, to do research again. He had been, he was twice as good as Schmidt, and here he was reduced to worrying about how to support a department like a family without birth control. Demography indeed. Get out of the ratrace and do some work again. But publish or perish, and could he still?
Letting Lederman outmaneuver him. Vulgar old swinger. Vain, posing around, giving Muriel the leonine profile. Old fraud, old gouger, speculator and board room policitian. He, Asher, had his competencies and his fields of interest or knowledge, but he never thought of himself as exceeding the sum of his parts. Which is why an ambitious manipulator like Lederman could run circles around him. But Muriel wasn’t impressed with that old tomcat.
Yesterday’s mail still lay on the kitchen table, including a notice that the maintenance in his co-op was going up. Again. Where did the money go? He spent as much as he had when he was spending for two. Maybe if he could get an offer from the University, he could use it to raise his ante at the office. Best to go slow, feel his way. It was a good building anyhow, architecturally interesting and comfortable, even if the central poured concrete hall did act as an echo chamber. Money, money, where it went. Down and out. Dissolved. Taxes punished the bachelor. Sometimes he thought he should start his own consulting company, but the trouble. The capital.
Asher drove to Muriel’s as much to give his car a little run as to avoid walking through the snowpiled streets. If he left the car too long the engine might not start Monday. A car in the city was madness: if only there were clean efficient public transport, silent Unirails as at the Seattle Fair or bus-sized helicopters. A car was a joy briefly while new: like a wife. He studied the Consumer Reports roadtests for he hated being cheated, hated the idea of buying with his eyes and being manipulated by his weaknesses. Whether he was buying a car or a watch or a camera, he wanted the object to be dependable, clearly the best and biggest of its class, a New York Times among merchandise.
On Sunday he went to Muriel’s because that day her ex-husband had the children and she was lonely. With the children away they could make love conveniently. Finally, Muriel cooked a nice Sunday dinner.
The French provincial livingroom smelled of the roast. He felt his hunger, enjoyably. They sat on the blue couch while Muriel spread the redevelopers’ prospectus over the marble top of the coffeetable. He turned over the glossy pages. “They made a goodlooking job of it this time.”
“I’ve been on tenterhooks to see the proposals.” Her delicate perfume tickled his nostrils. Her soft pale brown hair lay sleekly against her faintly concave cheek. Muriel was a tiny graceful woman with something always tinkling at wrist or earlobe, dressed well but severely except for that flutter. They were both on the planning committee of UNA—not the usual reactionary neighborhood falange but liberal, full of professionals and dedicated to a balanced interracial community, and effective—at times. He sighed. Though a little too addicted to studies and at times a little too redolent of group therapy. Last Thursday’s meeting had run till eleven thirty, with all sorts of people not even active in UNA up in arms about the renewal effort in their blocks.
“Let me tell you, I have my suspicions who was behind that attempt to pack the meeting.” At her throat an antique cameo rode with profile clear as her own. “The same reds who tried to take over the school committee are behind this.”
“Muriel …” he protested mildly. Rhetoric of her ex-husband, a Nixon man. Tedious but she was growing out of it. In time.
“I could have died for poor Dr. Palmer. Imagine that man getting up to say the doctor couldn’t speak for local Negroes. As if he isn’t one of our finest community people.”
About two thirds of the way through any project those people turned up objecting, indignant, ready to shout. Who are you? their eyes challenged, but if in return you asked one, Where were you at the preliminary meetings? where were you when we were sweating over plans and knocking heads with officials? he would look at you as if you were crazy. If you asked him why he hadn’t joined UNA if he was so interested in his neighborhood, he would say, Them? What would I want with them? I work, I got no time. A blank wall.
“If you knew what that big house looked like when Dr. Palmer bought it, the money he’s put in. He told me the sweetest thing. He’s so pleased with the grounds and the big elms that he’s taken up feeding birds—with seeds? He’s fed them until he has a flock of sparrows like little butterballs, almost too fat to fly.”
“If we could have persuaded the families who fled how well men like Dr. Palmer would fit in.”
Muriel’s small princess face looked wistful. “The panic! Real estate sharks going door to door, telling people, ‘They’re moving in nextdoor, the neighborhood’s turning. Sell while you can get your money!’”
The white inhabitants who had stayed all liked to recall the harassment, almost in ritual terms. It was a remembrance of battle and a mutual reinforcement of purpose. Staying was an act, after all, but he grew tired sometimes of congratulation.
Muriel nodded at the bay window on the street where two old frame houses dripped ugly carpentry. “If those roominghouses don’t go! I was talking to the head planner yesterday. A little park would be perfect, like the one you got for your old block. He said Netty Fox was pushing the site for some of that scattered public housing she’s always steaming about. Well, I said, put the public housing on her corner, then, right in her front window!” She turned her tiny firm chin to him, leaning closer with a subdued rustling.
“The banks won’t permit it, never mind Mrs. Fox.” He patted her hand. After dinner, must. “The planners write it in, but they know it will be cut.” He had mixed feelings. When he drove past a cleared slum, chaos formed into clean towers, he was impressed by how reason and moderate expense in the public sector could improve the city. But he knew all the arguments against the building of cleaner ghettos. And everybody said, not on my corner, and every alderman said, not in my ward.
Muriel gave him a trusting smile as if he had fixed the banks for her. She had cute ways: every flick of her wrist or tilt of her head were bouquets for him. He liked that. Together they bent over the prospectus. Towheaded girls with doll buggies and freckled boys with catcher’s mitts played on spanking white sidewalks under big shade trees. Crystal towers set in a park of dewy lawns. A fenced playground where slides and swings and a jungle-gym invited. Some woman had got up to ask the planner whether neighborhood kids would be allowed to use the playground. “Oh yes,” he had assured them, “until the first incident.” A suburb in the city. He did not know.
He did not like the idea of putting people out of their homes, and those at the meeting had been emotional. The University was not exactly a liberal force in the neighborhood. Its administrators had opposed UNA many times, preferring white covenants and real estate deals. Now with the University working with them instead of against them, doors opened, businessmen listened and contributed, city officials were helpful. In the past, what a roundabout course he had had to pursue when trying to get something as simple for his neighbors as a stop sign for a corner where two chil
dren had been struck. To keep that working relationship, one had to make compromises sometimes.
“I have to decide not only how to vote at the next meeting, but whether to sign a consent. My co-op is in the area.”
“But your block isn’t blighted.”
“We’re not scheduled for any demolition. We’re just part of the planning area.”
Muriel beamed at the wide lawns. “I’m sure you won’t have much trouble deciding.”
“I wish they’d go at things in a more democratic way.”
Muriel’s potroast reminded him of his mother’s and he told her so. She kept passing dishes. “The children will be sorry they missed you. They adore you. Mikey said the other day, Why does Uncle Asher have to go home? You can give him my room and I can sleep in Judy’s. Isn’t he a riot?” Her delicate face pinked to match the cameo at her throat.
He was embarrassed for her and forced a chuckle. “Mikey’s a little devil. But a good boy.” He had thought of marrying her. Taking more potroast, he thought of it again. She had a nice house and Mikey was right: there was room for him. She was truly interested in the same things that he was. She was a good woman, settled, not about to jump out the window or rave about Relationships or start staying out late at night. “Oh yes,” he said elegiacally. “If my marriage had not … I’d have a son of my own. But dreams break as well as bones, Muriel, and no doctor knows how to set them.” A fanning of humidity disturbed his sinuses. He took more potroast and asked for bread.
Pie and icecream for dessert. The pie was warm. “So you made this yourself! Wonderful.” Even as he spoke he was surprised at himself. Actually he was sure it was from the Co-op, where just yesterday he’d almost bought the Dutch apple.
“Well.” She hesitated. “So glad you like it.”
He finished the piece with dismay. Besides, two of another man’s children. After one such mistake.
As they sat on the couch she turned to him with soft warmth, but he had overeaten. Fortunately she never hinted around. They discussed the next meeting. He was mounting a slow campaign for the chairmanship. They counted his votes, and this time he lacked only one. they went through the committee looking for their next conquest and worrying how they could hold their weakest votes against the blandishments of Netty Fox. Muriel was a real helpmate, and she knew how to argue a point without antagonizing. Even that scoundrel Lederman always asked after her and perked up when she was on a delegation.
He drove home indirectly, through the streets of the prospectus. Dusk was settling. Puddles stood in the gutters: better storm sewers needed. These streets seemed more crowded, harder used than Muriel’s or his. A gang of colored boys were blocking the street, though when he blew his horn they drifted aside. Then a tough threw a snowball hard against the back window of the car. Narrow grimy crowded street. Black smoke billowed from a chimney—burning something illegal. Dirty obsolete wooden houses, cheap shingle-sided multiple dwellings, apartments cramped together without a bit of green space. Really, he was a snob to sneer at the pictures in the prospectus, when a child could invent a healthier environment than this. No plan was perfect. Political action always ended in less than you’d hoped for. He had lived in the city eight years and he could not imagine leaving, but its politics were as grimy and archaic as this street. The machine of the city and the machine of downstate grinding hopes of reform between them. Politicians who ran as Polish or Irish in the third generation, as if that were a program. People shrugging their shoulders and blaming everything on the Syndicate, like peasants talking about the will of God. Irrationality and interconnection and the payoff. Even businessmen were unwilling to cross city hall, because the mayor stood on the back of his machine and acted as the friend to business, jiggling ordinances, zoning laws and taxes to attract or keep industries.
Three white beatniks came noisily out of a basement, a girl with long black hair with her arms around both men, one with a moustache and one with a beard. The big hulking one struck him as familiar, but Asher had already looked away. Stare and you encourage them. He drove more quickly, afraid another hoodlum would throw a snowball and break his windshield.
He felt relief as he turned on his own street with its wide lawns, the gray Gothic dignity of the fieldhouse. In front of a fraternity some students were rollicking in the snow, having a mock battle, while the snow was flying. Teaching, what would it be like now? He could always do consulting on the side. He’d run into Tom Lovis at that fund raising affair for Senator Botts, and Lovis had given him the word about the possibility of a research park. If that came off, the other possibilities might open. Lovis had done pretty well for himself. He was moving up fast. Written some of John Roger’s speeches when he’d run for the House. That was a role Asher had sometimes imagined for himself: one of the hard working politically knowledgeable cadre behind a good clean liberal candidate, one of those who helped him define his position, consulted in crisis.
He let himself into his apartment. Danish with clear true blues and greens: he approved of his livingroom. He liked it better than Muriel’s. Undoing the button on his trousers, loosing his belt, he sat in his adjustable tilt chair and reached for his briefcase, settling it against his leg like a faithful dog. In a while. First he resumed his survey of the Times with the magazine section which he read completely except for the recipe and school ads, but not excluding those many advertisements featuring lissome, elegant, bare but never vulgar ladies, erotic and soothing at once and somehow in the public interest.
Anna
Monday–Sunday, November 10–16
In midmorning a boy strode in with an envelope, asking for her. She nodded him gone and slid it into her desk, unopened.
“What’s that?” asked lean virtuous Mrs. Cavenaugh. “We can’t let things pile up without attending to them.”
“No,” Anna said meekly. “I’ll take care of it.”
She kept hopping downstairs but her chance did not come until noon. She told the girl who ran the machines, Oh, go to lunch, I have a little job but I’ll xerox it myself, and showed her a letter she had been holding up. As the girl left, Anna tore open the envelope and without pausing to look at the pages, ran them through, crammed all back in the envelope and went at once.
The snow had melted, leaving the lawns a faded watery green. In a block she unbuttoned her coat. The big yellow envelope felt conspicuous. Never had she cheated when she was in school and she had never given her students exams they could cheat at. Nevertheless when Leon had assumed she would help she had not hesitated. Ducking into the Oriental Institute she hurried across the lobby past the guard. Leon, Leon where are you, damn your eyes? Slowly she walked the aisle between cases of Egyptian artifacts. That unreliable bastard. Why couldn’t he get up when he had to?
Letting the envelope trail the floor between two fingers she headed toward the great Assyrian winged bull, toward the sideways-walking, wallhigh winged bull with the face and beard of a man. Strong, full of dignity, he surmounted photographs of his excavation. Muscular pillars for legs, sexual cannon, broad and deep man’s forehead. The beard extended square and curly like a cultivated field. Beast labeled a cherub: how did your name decline to pink-assed tutti? As she stepped back to admire the brawny legs, stout chest and heavy fullfeathered wings, she knew it reminded her of Rowley.
Hand fell heavily on her shoulder. “Hi gang. Got it?”
Turning she handed the envelope over. “I made two copies.”
“Good girl.” Leon peeked in. “I’ll keep the other, you never know when. Tonight let’s take in the old Bette Davis flick at the Clark.”
“Aren’t we going to have lunch?”
Shook his head. “Promised to have it back by twelve. Let me tell you, if my Uncle Burt wasn’t such a big slob donor to his old frat, we’d never have got a touch of this.” With a salute he turned. She watched him shuffle off, one long arm swinging loosely in the rhythm of his walk, the other stiffened against his side to hold the envelope in place. A patch of sunlight
came to life on his orange hair, then he passed under the arch and out.
She drifted after slowly. Fake spring. The campus squirrels waddled across the lawns. If she looked at them they caught her eyes and stared back, expecting food. On a day like this she would have found herself energized, ready to shout at her classes in angry joy. She would have cursed, my god, half the semester over and what have I taught them? Finished the day with a good fatigue, despair at results, but pleasure in the process. Well, she could climb a bench and lecture squirrels: mountebank to nutlovers.
Wednesday, November 12: The streets were dark as she walked toward Leon’s through no man’s land of leveled buildings, a slough of mud pocked with stacked bricks and loose rubble. In mid air the elevated Illinois Central station lights blinked in the wind. She walked fast, for the empty fields had no protective passersby. The arc lamps dipped like branches, the cold-colored lights bobbed. Near the tracks new townhouses (suburban living in the city) were building. On a completed wall someone had chalked FAT CITY. Oh yes. Then the long arcaded viaduct past columns columns columns, echoes of mayhem and cars whooshing through puddles.
She rapped. In an island of light Leon slumped in the director’s chair, brows meeting. Facing him Paul was centered on the swaybacked couch. Turning, Paul looked surprised but not pleased. Tête-à-tête interrupted. She understood. So clear out, it’s my turn. Paul slid toward Leon and she took the other end of the couch, collapsing with a loud sigh.
Paul said shyly, “I wanted to thank you both for the exam.” He picked at loose stuffing through an old burn.
“Did it help?” she asked.
