Small Changes

by Marge Piercy

People here went to bed with each other much more quickly than she would have permitted anything beyond kissing back home. In a way she was glad to be relieved of the responsibility of metering herself into doses, deciding if she could permit the hand on the breast through the sweater, the hand under the sweater, the hand on the thigh. Fear had always been mixed with excitement, the fear of making the mistake. But to decide before she even knew someone that she was going to pop in bed with him—men had surely invented that rule. She felt no desire toward Tom. She could not imagine wanting to be touched on her body by someone she did not know well. However, there did not seem to be a great deal of choice for women here any more than there had been at home. Either she refused, and then she would never come here again and explore the new world that had opened—for she could just imagine appearing on the doorstep, hi, I’ve come visiting, can I stay to supper—or she accepted as an instant lover this strange foxy man sitting on the bed fixing her with his bright narrow blue eyes and waiting for her to deliver herself to him. She still knew no one in Boston. It might be months before anyone else noticed she was alive. Sighing, she got up and went over to sit beside him on the bed.

  He kissed her a few times pleasantly and she was just beginning to think perhaps she could enjoy being with him when he left off and began to remove his clothes. So she got undressed too and they climbed into bed. She noticed that he did not have an erection. Once they were in bed he put his arms around her and began to caress her, but he began talking again, compulsively, bitterly talking.

  “That was Laverne who called, my ex-wife. She says I can’t see my children this Sunday. Bonnie’s invited to a birthday party. Laverne makes out it would be this terrible deprivation, this social disaster, for Bonnie not to go. As if a four-year-old kid knows what a birthday party is. It’s the mothers who dig that sort of thing. Kids couldn’t care less, they end up throwing the cake at each other and fighting over the toys they’re supposed to give to the birthday boy. And she says my baby, Tommy, Jr., she says I gave him a cold last time. Which is a lousy lie.”

  His fingers cruised on her body, hard and grasping and nervous. His bony shoulder pressed on hers, his mouth was against her ear. It was almost as if he caressed her to compel her to stay and listen. As if she might run away if he did take off her clothes and nail her down to the bed. People were stranger than she had ever realized. She wished there were some way she could communicate to him that she would willingly listen to his troubles sitting across the room in the comfortable chair. Perhaps he could not talk that way. Perhaps he needed the touch of vulnerable naked flesh.

  “She’s making Bonnie into her. And she’ll do the same to Tommy if I don’t stop her. See, Laverne is beautiful, nobody could deny that. When I met her she used to do occasional modeling for the department stores. You know, she’s a bit taller than me, but that never bothered either of us. A man is as big as he feels. When she walks into a room, even today, after she’s had two kids, every man turns around to look. I like a woman who can wear clothes, a woman with style. Not one of your fleshy cows like Miriam Berg. But Laverne’s trying to make Bonnie a little fashion plate too. She wants to keep both kids near Mama and make them just like Mama and deny me my rightful share in my own flesh and blood.”

  He did not actually enter her that night but made her come with his hand and had her do the same. When she got up to dress, he urged her to come back to bed.

  “I’d just as soon go home. Besides, I have an eight o’clock class.”

  “Didn’t know you were in school. Okay, okay, I’ll drive you to M.I.T. in the morning. Please. Come on, stay with me. I don’t like to spend the night alone.”

  Sleeping with him was difficult on account of restlessness. Mumbling, grinding his teeth, he rolled and bucked and occasionally his outflung arm would strike her. Still he seemed vulnerable in sleep. She thought to herself, as long as she was clear about him and did not confuse convenience and curiosity and fringe benefits and ordinary human concern with real affection, no damage would be done. Curled in a tight ball way on her side of the bed, she fell asleep playing a Bach concerto for two violins that Larry had used to put on sometimes early, just after the store opened.

  When they got up everyone else was still asleep. He seemed to expect her to make breakfast so she did in a perfunctory manner. He shaved while she got things on the table and then he turned on the news. They ate across the table like a couple married ten years or two strangers sitting beside each other in the subway. The kitten mewed and begged till she put down some cat food.

  As they left, the front end of the apartment was still heavy with the smell of grass. She would have preferred to share some rather than drink the cheap harsh wine all evening. Sometimes she had smoked grass with Jim. As she followed Tom out to the door with the broken lock, she glanced at Jackson asleep on his cot with only a sheet pulled over his long body and the yellow and black Mexican blanket folded at the foot. He was breathing in deep sleep. The kitten climbed the cot, galloped across his chest, and curled into his armpit without waking him. One long arm was clasped over his chest holding the sheet to him, and the other was hanging off the cot’s edge. His left shoulder was seamed with a strange purplish scar. His hand dangled open, not quite limp, as if it were grasping at something in the air. Tom going ahead of her into the hall was already into a monologue about his thesis adviser and his peculiarities and the handles by which he could best be manipulated, and she was glad he never looked over his shoulder to catch the fascination with which she stopped to examine Jackson sleeping.

  4

  Come Live with Me and Be My Love

  Two or three afternoons a week Tom would arrive at the office at a good time for bringing her back to his place for supper and the night. He said her room was a rathole. She was glad he did not want to sleep there, leaving her privacy intact. Much of her interest in seeing him was wanting to spend time in his apartment with the relaxed meals, the strange banter, the music she could immerse herself in. They had more than a hundred records. The third evening she got Jackson to show her how to work the system. Saturday mornings she no longer went religiously to browse the secondhand books. On the shelves of the Pearl Street apartment she could find books as rapidly as she read them. Usually there was grass. She drank the wine with supper but not afterward. Now that Tom understood she would go to bed with him on demand, he did not press the wine on her.

  They teased her about not eating meat. Jackson called her Peter Rabbit: they had chosen an identity for her. Still they let her eat what she chose and did not hassle. Except for Dorine, who tried to pressure her into sharing the housework.

  “If you get married, you’ll get cleaning out of your system,” she said to Dorine firmly.

  “Do you think Lennie will? Marry me?”

  Dorine told her Lennie had been in love with a girl who had died, either committing suicide or O.D.ing, Dorine was not sure because Lennie refused to talk about it. The girl had been blond and beautiful and Lennie had painted her—perhaps he still was. Dorine would always be second best, but she accepted that. Perhaps Dorine thought that was all she was worth. Desperately she wanted Lennie to want to marry her, so desperately she could hardly bring up the subject with him. Two months earlier she had moved in. She knew that Tom Ryan did not like her, and she was glad he was thinking of getting an apartment alone. This was news to Beth.

  “I’ll tell you something else you don’t know,” Dorine whispered in the kitchen, motioning her closer. “Tom isn’t divorced the way he tells you. He’s just separated from Laverne. I think he’d go back in a flash—Lennie thinks so too. We don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She thanked Dorine, However, if Dorine could have heard Tom muttering on and on about Laverne and Tom, Jr., and Bonnie, Dorine would not have bothered warning her. Beth was Tom’s hot-water bottle. She believed Tom had sex with her mainly to assert his possession, his right to her ear and comfort. Sometimes he would put her hand on his cock, sometimes he would push into her.
Either way he was not with her but off in his head, sweating and trembling and going rigid as a board and clenching his teeth. Whether he was coming into her hand or inside her, they were equally unconnected.

  Often they saw movies. He chose them, in part because she knew nothing of Czech films or old thirties comedies; but she did not think he would have consulted her if she had. Anyhow, she enjoyed going. She was uneasy about him paying their way. Certainly he had little more money than she did. However, she settled it as fair since he chose the movies and since that was the only expense he did come by in seeing her—she kicked into the supper fund and gave a few dollars whenever Jackson went to make a deal for dope.

  Once in a great while they did something else. They heard an all-Mozart concert that Professor Owasa had given him tickets to. One Thursday night in mid-May they went to a coffeehouse to see someone perform they all seemed to know, since Lennie and Dorine, though not Jackson, went with them. When they arrived the singer had not yet begun. The room was only twice the size of the apartment and people were buzzing to each other. Dorine hurried to a table up front where Miriam sat, who jumped up and hugged her. The man who had been sitting with Miriam, head on hands, paid no attention. All Beth could see was a shaggy blond head and a dark blue turtleneck and the hands dug into his hair. Those fingers would have looked gaunt and spidery if they had not already been tanned. Tom was gossiping about his department with another man and Lennie had gone behind the small stage, so after a while she got up and drifted over to the other table.

  “Well, of course it would be better if there were just the two of you. Maybe I can get you that job, so you’ll be able to afford it. But if Ryan does move out, it won’t be nearly so tense, right? I mean, you get on with Jackson,” Miriam was saying.

  “Oh, Jackson’s easy to get along with.… I mean …

  “As long as you don’t try to come close,” Miriam said dryly, shifting the rough multicolored shawl more closely about her. She was wearing a long red gypsy dress with her glossy black hair curling over the shoulders and tangling over the shawl. Her large dark eyes were fixed intently on Dorine, her hand resting on Dorine’s shoulder. Her coloring seemed ruddier than ever, perhaps from a day’s exposure to the sun: she glowed like a light bulb.

  At Miriam’s remark the man looked up. His eyes stared at her back, flicked briefly over Dorine and Beth, returned to Miriam: blue-green eyes in the new tan of the face, shocking as a splash of sea water. She could not help gaping. He was probably the best-looking man she had ever seen close up. He was about Tom’s age, in his twenties. Pulling a bag from under the table, he took a swig and put it back, still watching Miriam. He seemed to be pretending not to be in the room, not to be visible, not to be knowing that others were there. He was making a pane of glass around him, except for Miriam.

  “Bethie! How are you?” Miriam, turning from Dorine, saw her. A warm bath of attention spilled on her, the sudden satisfying of an unknown hunger. Beth moved forward involuntarily, into that warmth. “You’re going out with Tom Ryan now, umm?”

  Beth nodded. Large eyes seeing her over the high Tartar cheekbones, enormous eyes dark brown with flecks of light.

  “Beth, don’t let him set you against me. We don’t get on, as you may have noticed. That’s a dull story. But, like all stories, there are two sides. Don’t let him persuade you I’m all claws and fangs.”

  She was surprised that Miriam should care what Ryan said to Beth: after all, they were not yet friends. That was how she put it to herself: not yet. “I don’t expect people I like to like the same things I do or the same people.”

  “Don’t you really?”

  “It would be like expecting you to be vegetarians too.”

  “I always want to make everybody tangled up with each other. I want to be sharing good things. It’s an awful compulsion.”

  “It’s the Mama Mountain in you,” the man said. “A dogmatism of the blood. Drown you in warm milk.”

  Miriam introduced him as Phil and he mumbled acknowledgment. Once more he looked around the room warily from table to table, counting or searching. Then he seemed to relax very slightly and, unfocusing his eyes into the distance, lit a cigarette. Miriam watched with obvious anxiety. “Phil, are you all right? Are you sure you want to stay?”

  His face became a mask of cold irony. “Indeed. Why not? One good trip is like another, but each bad trip is unique and irreplaceable.”

  “Especially if you decide beforehand it will be bad.”

  “Aw, but how I avoid disappointment. Besides, it takes a certain amount of gall for a man to sit down to listen to the spewings of his dead self.”

  “Indeed!” She mocked his tone. “You seemed alive today. We were out on Hal’s sailboat, all day. But since you’re dead now, Philip, I guess there’s nothing to be done but bury you under the table.”

  “Bury me no place but in your body, Miriam. Take me all in and let me be born again.”

  Beth realized he was drunk. He sat so neatly and spoke so clearly in a voice that climbed and dipped and sang a bit veined with coldness or suddenly furred with sex, that it had not occurred to her till now that he was very drunk.

  “Look, Hal’s getting ready. You want to come up and sit with us? This is a good spot. I’ll put up with Tom Ryan for an evening for your sake, if he’ll put up with me.”

  Tom seemed eager to join the other table. “Well, well, what made the great bitch extend herself? This ought to be interesting. Phil is, I presume, drunk? I mean, it’s evening and I’ve seen him sodden at ten in the morning. Not that he’s anything so archaic as an alcoholic. He puts it all in, anything to fog the mechanism. Grass, hash, acid, coke, even heroin. Nothing so selective as being an alcoholic. One time last year he got really sick from taking too much aspirin—can you believe it, aspirin?” Tom muttered all the way to the other table.

  Phil came into focus as Tom pulled up a chair. “Well, well, if it isn’t Mr. Ryan himself, the lace-curtain third-generation boyo. God Save the Dean, Mr. Ryan, tell me, are ya a doctor yet?”

  “If it isn’t the Stage Irishman, drinking his whiskey in his brown bag under the table and blathering to the ladies about what he would do—if he only could.”

  “For that matter, we could ask the lady present which of us truly can. I mean, if you want an objective opinion.” Phil was grinning. He had a long straight nose, thin well-formed lips, a fine jaw. When he grinned she could see a tooth missing just to the right of his canines. His teeth were poor, apart in front and that one missing, which made him more human to her.

  “So Hal’s agreed to perform a few of your songs tonight—your few, few songs. We could do a sing-along, those of us who have heard those old familiar ditties so many times. Unless you’ve written something new?”

  The singer had started:

  “I am your bride of Ivory Soap.

  Select my model by horoscope.

  Breasts of chromium, platinum womb.

  My brain is a dentist’s waiting room.

  I do not age, I do not tire.

  I am the product you desire.”

  “And ruin my image? Who would you academic creeps scorn, if I wasn’t around displaying my gutted body and burnt-out brain? I’m a local monument, the hunchback of Harvard Square. I should be given a retainer. Every time you see me you make a resolve to kiss ass a bit harder.”

  “I am white as lavatory tile.

  I wear a no-iron dacron smile.

  Buying is my favorite sport.

  Consumer research men report …”

  “Shh, Phil. Would you both shut up? I want to hear Hal, even if you don’t.” Miriam sat listening to the singer, a pudgy, cherubic-faced man with an enormous mane of streaked blond-on-brown hair and a big barrel voice. He played acoustic guitar and was backed up by a drummer and a bass player.

  “I am stumbling here

  with gulls’ cries in my ears,

  hunting a lost key,

  lost coin, lost year.…”

 
Although Hal announced his songs he did so with a drawled mumble unlike his singing voice. Thus all the songs sounded as if they were Gumpty Grubble written by Muddle and Mutter. Still she knew the moment Hal started one of Phil’s songs, because a shudder of pain would go through Phil, while everyone else at this table seemed to draw tighter.

  “Here is the golden place

  where I lay down to sleep.

  Here I dreamt until I felt

  the sharp salt wavelets creep

  about my feet

  and woke in the day’s debris,

  papers, driftwood, seaweed

  and rotting spawn.

  That other body gone,

  my golden love is gone,

  only the setting sun here with me,

  only the sunset

  floating like an oil slick

  on the sea”

  That had a flowing melodic line. It was pretty. But so self-pitying. Though Beth listened to Hal, she watched Miriam, sitting with her arms crossed as if she were chilly, pushing her heavy breasts higher against her. Why should Miriam prefer this man to Jackson? Perhaps she did not know as much about men as she seemed to. This one, Phil, was handsome, but what could you do with him? Jackson was solider: she longed to give Miriam advice. Miriam’s big florid body seemed to make her more vulnerable as well as more visible. Now Hal was playing a bluesy song. Tom was drumming his fingers, looking around. He winked at her, mouthed something to a friend two tables away.

  “The stinking Hudson

  runs deep and wide.

  That’s Jersey smoking

  on the other side.

  I smell like a loser

  but I’m mean with pride.”

  Besides, Beth thought, maybe being married had given’ her some insight. Miriam was loving with her eyes, as Beth had loved Jim. Perhaps Miriam had had a quarrel with Jackson that Phil with his ready tongue had taken advantage of. Tom was always ready to needle and gossip and spar, but with Phil he became embattled in an ugly way. Perhaps Phil had made Tom dislike Miriam. Though the talk implied something had happened between them.