by Marge Piercy
Then I had my second moment of clarity in the midst of my private tornado of angst. I was looking out at the main garden, the late July light gilding the ripening tomatoes on their stakes and the lacy leaves of the honey locust outside my office, the first marigolds orange among the bush beans. This house was mine, not his. I had paid for most of it. I had bought the land adjacent to it and the land across the road over his objections and out of advances on various paperbacks. We now had close to four acres. I loved this land and this place, and I was not leaving it. Why destroy a house I had designed? Why make the cats live in a tiny hot apartment in the city? Why abandon what I loved to a man who did not care about me or our life together?
I am astonished when I review this important and miserable summer how little documentation there is—a couple of poems. I seem never to have written anyone about my situation: instead my long-distance bills were astronomical, for I was on the phone daily and nightly to friends in Boston and to Penny in New Hampshire. That night I spoke to Penny to clear my mind; then I called Robert at his office. I told him the situation was unendurable, that I resented the way he was treating me, and he could live at the office with Rosemarie or he could change how he was behaving with me. But I would not deal with Rosemarie any longer. Either he put some effort into our relationship, or it was terminated.
I had just hung up when Penny called him, I later learned. She told him he was behaving like an asshole, and if he wanted to move out, just to do so, and stop tormenting me. He should be honest about what he wanted. I think he was shocked to realize that other people were observing and judging him.
That night he asked Rosemarie to leave for a time, to return to Long Island while he worked on his relationship with me. She was furious and never forgave him. She had been so sure of him that this reversal shocked her. Their connection abraded, although each made attempts for the next few months. There was a large charred area in the middle of all of our feelings, our interactions. I did not understand why he had agreed to send her away, but I did not think it was because he could not stand to be without me. I suspected more practical considerations of property and finances were involved, but I could not get an answer from him. He only said he did it because I asked him to.
I would never after this point trust Robert the way I had. Until the summer of 1976, I was quite convinced that no matter what involvements he or I had, our connection was strong, was at the center of both of us and would survive. We had been living with multiple relationships since 1966, and I took our strange lifestyle for granted as suited to us. Now I no longer retained that conviction. I had been shunted aside and almost banished. I believed that if I had walked out and moved to Boston, he would have merrily installed Rosemarie in the house, and they would have lived there together. That might or might not have worked out. When I had acquiesced to Estelle’s and his desire to be alone, they had quarreled and broken off both their personal and work relationship. But I was not interested in whether he would be happy alone with Rosemarie. I no longer felt sure of my connection with him. I was eager to strengthen and repair that relationship, but I no longer fully trusted it, or him. I had a growing persistent suspicion that he was looking to replace me with a wife more to his liking. His work situation remained problematic and sometimes impossible. I earned money and put that money into the household, but I did not bring in enough for a truly affluent lifestyle. He greatly enjoyed dining out at fancy restaurants and traveling for pleasure. My allergy to cigarette smoke made both of those problematic for me in the mid-1970s. I was not as yielding as I had been.
In truth, I had changed. I was stronger. I was stronger physically. Although I had been ill in May, my recovery was quick. By early June, I was healthy again. I was stronger in my conviction of my own worth. Even the limited success I had with my writing—and I never expected to write bestsellers—had bolstered my innate sense that I was supposed to write, and that my writing was something some or even many other people could relate to. I had changed agents the year before. My new agent, Lois Wallace, was getting foreign sales for me. Woman on the Edge of Time was being translated into several languages. Feminism had given me a spine. At some point in those weeks, Robert remarked that he had expected me to publish something eventually, probably poems, but that he never expected people to pay so much attention. I had always thought he supported my writing because he believed in it. I had been wrong.
My reputation was growing, and sometimes when Robert was with me, there would be a fuss he found disturbing. Woody was far less bothered, since he knew me as a writer before he knew me as a person. He took a certain amount of fame for granted. Robert never did. I had changed and did not want to change back. I still had peasant virtues. I could cook almost anything, gourmet or budget, and make it taste good. I was a talented gardener. I was cool in emergencies and capable of action. I enjoyed luxuries but could live on much less. I communicated well with animals. I relished pleasures of the mind and the flesh equally. I could make a dwelling comfortable and attractive on little money. I liked sex and I knew men’s bodies and how to give and how to take pleasure. Sex came easily to me. But I wasn’t the earth mother I had been. I watched my time carefully and put work first. I was no longer flattered by the attention of almost anybody. I was not nearly as willing to sacrifice myself to Robert or anyone else. When we grew short on money again that fall, I discarded offers that I go off to Idaho or Arkansas and teach for a semester. I wouldn’t go into exile alone to support him. My assistant and the wastepaper basket were the only ones who knew of these letters. I knew if I mentioned them to Robert, he would expect me to go; but I had set limits to what I would sacrifice.
I also would no longer put anyone into my study to sleep. He had a large office; I had a small crowded one, although one I loved. I moved the bed out. I was demanding more respect for my writing and my writing time, not a popular move with Robert. He had four large rooms at his office, and two of them served well for guests. The office downstairs, used by my assistant, also had a bed in it. But my study—the room where I worked and kept my books and paper and files—was now off limits to everyone but me—and the cats.
We took a great many walks that fall. We explored sand roads on the Cape in areas where we had never gone and we revisited old discoveries. We were both trying. When I was given any grounds for hope, I succumbed. I had always imagined we would grow old together. I had thought that he would lose interest in affairs and we would settle into a calmer and deeper companionship. During this period, Woody came out frequently, and he and Robert got along, although never as well as Wayne and Robert had. Robert knew that Woody was on my side, totally, and there was little in that for him.
Robert was still seeing Rosemarie occasionally, but it was not satisfying. She did not want a part-time relationship. He felt I had caused the breach by my ultimatum, one that I did not regret. After that, whenever he was angry with me, he would bring up my interference in his intimacy with Rosemarie. I felt I had saved myself and perhaps our marriage. Of the latter I was hopeful, but not convinced. I knew I had chosen to preserve myself. He could accuse me, but he could inspire no guilt. I was not ashamed of having gotten her out of my life. If she had bothered to be polite to me, no doubt in the long run she could have done far more damage—but she was too sure of her hold on Robert and too contemptuous of me to make the effort at a friendly facade.
Robert talked of moving back to New York. I listened but did not chime in with my perennial willingness. I had put down roots on the Cape. Still, he was spending more time with me than he had since Estelle arrived. My primary emotional support was coming from Woody and close female friends, but I felt as if Robert and I had at least partly repaired our intimacy. It was a heavily damaged structure but one we could still inhabit, so for a time, we did.
TO HAVE WITHOUT HOLDING
Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
> the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.
It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.
It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.
I can’t do it, you say, it’s killing
me; but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry.
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbounded bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.
SIXTEEN
INTERLUDE ON SLEEP AND GARDENING WITH CATS
Cats are athletes of sleep, champions. A cat’s ability to drop off any time and almost anywhere never stops enchanting and amazing me. Sleep is mysterious to me. Sometimes I climb into bed exhausted and cannot imagine how I can ever move from this restless raw fatigue into unconsciousness. It appears to me to require some kind of divine intervention to sink from one state into the other. There are nights when I cannot cross over, doomed to look at the greenish light of the clock again and again, telling myself if I fall asleep now I’ll still get four hours sleep, three and a half, three. Other times of course, I doze readily and then it’s morning.
Some nights when I have trouble sleeping, Malkah comes into bed and purrs me to sleep. She seems to bring sleep with her, like a dark halo around her thick apricot and white fur. She presses her bulk into my side and sometimes gently kneads me. Sleep seems to emanate from her and I slide down into it.
I make an effort to train my cats to sleep at night and get their exercise during the day. Each has a preferred spot on the bed, fine unless they all get in a pile and leave no room for a mammal bigger than a squirrel. In the daytime, they nap where they choose. Dinah and Oboe like my monitor or the sunny bay window. Malkah and Max switch off the two couches in the living room, only in cold weather sharing one. Usually at least one other cat is with each of them, but the pairing-off varies. Efi is most often curled with Malkah, the two grays together with or without Max, but every day is a new ball game. Any configuration can be found. This morning, it is Oboe, Efi and Malkah. I wonder what rules the pairings, why Efi and Oboe, the two cats who pair with anyone at their choice, one day prefer Max and the next Malkah or Dinah. Cat affinities are mysterious. You will almost never find Malkah and Dinah curled together.
Woody is the epitome of a restless sleeper, kicking his legs, turning over and over like a roast on a spit, mumbling in his sleep, dragging the covers off the bed’s edge. He has his own bed in his room—an accident of how we began—but we had not been married long when he began to use it. Sometimes he goes to sleep in my room, then moves to his. In very cold weather or during storms, we sleep in my bed. During power outages, we sleep in his—with its independent stove. Sometimes I think the vigor and freshness of our sexual relationship has something to do with often sleeping separately. When we get a new kitten, that kitten sleeps in his room until ready to be integrated with the population. Then, every time, they move to my bed, which the presence of the other cats makes ultra desirable. Woody complains while he is the foster mother, but then he complains when they desert his bed. He likes to complain. It feels natural to him. He was unhappy a long time, and complaining makes him feel as if he is warding off greater evil.
The cats like it when we begin working outside in spring—all but Efi, who is a little alarmed and increasingly curious. Max in particular likes to oversee our activities and will often come and stick his face into mine while I am kneeling. He arrives with a curious high interrogative meow and then proceeds to insert himself into my work. He examines the plants, the tools, the hole. We have to cover with agricultural cloth all newly dug-up and seeded patches in the vegetable gardens. Otherwise Max thinks we have created great new litter boxes for him. Freshly ploughed earth is irresistible. Even Malkah sometimes succumbs. Once the seedlings are up and growing, the patch loses its appeal.
I took Efi out on a leash for the first time yesterday. She was terrified and stood and howled. Then she began to be curious and to sniff the air and the ground and the greenery. But in ten minutes she was more than ready to go back in. It was an acceptable beginning; I hope I can teach her to walk on a leash as Arofa did. None of the other cats will. Max was a master at slithering out. With Malkah I would not even try. It would terrify her, and she never ventures far. She is on a leash of her own making. The gray cats I tried very hard to teach to walk on leashes. They would simply collapse, civil disobedience style, and let themselves be dragged. Sometimes I would put them on a harness and attach a long clothesline to it while we were outside with them, so that they could run around and still be safe. They liked that but preferred an enclosure Woody built for them or the gazebo. The other cats were intrigued by Efi’s first walk. We went along, accompanied by everybody except Malkah, who reacted with shock and anger. She hissed at me. She did not think Efi should be outside. Oboe and Max took a great interest in her stroll and accompanied her.
Lately Efi has been sleeping with me too. Until recently, she curled up with one or more of them but never pressed into my side. Now she has studied Malkah’s pleasure and imitates it. She is slowly becoming more of a lap cat. Sometimes she will push one of the other cats out of my lap, as Oboe used to do when he was young and bumptious. Now she demands me and demands Woody. Mine, she says, mine! Oboe adores her. He finds her exquisite and spoils her with his attention, but she returns it fully. Except when Efi and Malkah go on the mouse safari, Efi tends to be sharply diurnal, like the Korats. She goes to bed when we do and gets up when we get up.
Oboe and Dinah visibly dream. My Colette, a Burmese, had nightmares, especially when she was young. She would whimper and moan and sometimes her fur would stand up. I would have to wake and soothe her. Both Max and Malkah sometimes have bad dreams and cry out, but not as often as the year we rescued them from the shelter. Efi seems to sleep with a smile on her face.
When I was much younger, I had elaborate dreams. Sometimes I would dream the same thing twice in a row, the second time revising and refining the story. There were characters, environments, denouements. As I have become more productive and write constantly for publication, I dream far less vividly. I produce simple anxiety dreams, nonsense fragments of my day focused on sex or anxiety. I rarely use my dreams in writing. I know poets who are obsessed with dreams and try to create poems from them, but I think people’s dreams are mostly of interest to the individual who just woke up. One of the nuisances of communal living is having to listen to other people’s dreams at breakfast.
Often when I am away I miss the cats in my bed. In spite of their occasional restlessness and mine, I sleep better with my cats than without. It is one of the times we are all mammals together, sharing the same experience as well as the same space. We take mutual comfort in one another’s warm presence and soft breathing. Who sleeps with whom and where is of paramount importance to cats, just as it is to people. It is one of the ways they express their trust, their affection, their bonding. Of course, when Woody is gone, I sleep little and fitfully. I miss him most in the evenings, the night, the morning. During
the day I work, but after work, I feel his absence like a vacuum I circle aimlessly. We need each other in a daily way, need to talk, to touch in order to feel complete. Perhaps we are overdependent, but we fill a need each has had lifelong.
SLEEPING WITH CATS
I am at once source
and sink of heat; giver
and taker. I am a vast
soft mountain of slow breathing.
The smells I exude soothe them:
the lingering odor of sex,
of soap, even of perfume,
its afteraroma sunk into skin
mingling with sweat and the traces
of food and drink.
They are curled into flowers
of fur, they are coiled
hot seashells of flesh
in my armpit, around my head
a dark sighing halo.
They are plastered to my side,
a poultice fixing sore muscles
better than a heating pad.
They snuggle up to my sex
purring. They embrace my feet.
Some cats I place like a pillow.
In the morning they rest where
I arranged them, still sleeping.
Some cats start at my head
and end between my legs
like a textbook lover. Some
slip out to prowl the living room
patrolling, restive, then
leap back to fight about
hegemony over my knees.
Every one of them cares
passionately where they sleep
and with whom.
Sleeping together is a euphemism
for people but tantamount
to marriage for cats.
Mammals together we snuggle
and snore through the cold nights
while the stars swing round
the pole and the great horned
