Small Changes

by Marge Piercy

  Several times Beth caught Jackson’s eyes but he did not approach and she could not seem to move. She felt stifled. Not only was she literally choked, with the smoke and pounded by the loud music and loud talk—everyone was shouting and a few people from Logical had noisemakers—but she found herself rooted by the archway. She had nothing to say to these people. She felt awkward and ugly and, yes, sorry for herself pinned like a plain brown moth to the arch. Everywhere men were on the make looking over the women and making their selections for the remainder of the night. Everywhere men and women cooped in constricting marriages were wriggling through the night’s narrow cracks. What had she come for?

  Phil and Miriam were swooping back and forth among the other dancers, doing a sort of war dance, when Miriam swung too wide and her outflung arm caught Tom, standing close by. His drink spilled forward on her. The glass fell and broke.

  Neil pushed forward at once, grasping her shoulder. “Now look. You’ve spoiled your dress.”

  “The cleaner will get it out. I can change. I’m sorry! Let me pick up the glass.”

  Dorine ran off to the kitchen. “I’ll get it.”

  “Well, don’t stand there dripping.” Neil urged her out of the room ahead of him. “Running to and fro, bouncing around like a child. How much have you had to drink tonight? Didn’t you see how people were staring?” His voice was low but it had an edge that would cut paper cleanly.

  “I was just having a good time.… The dress isn’t ruined … I’ll change.… It’s only a glass, Neil.”

  Dorine knelt picking up the pieces and mopping at the spilled liquor. Neil was still pressing Miriam through the crowd to the stairway, his hand in the small of her back. “You act like a child allowed to stay up late. Hurling yourself around and trying to make everyone look at you. Really, when you drink too much you become an exhibitionist!” Up the stairs they went and out of the party. Neil no longer looked sour. Miriam looked upset, confused, but Neil looked relieved. His forehead lost its seam of tension. Beth did not think that Miriam would dance any more that night. Upstairs he went to select the dress she would put on, and when Miriam came down again Beth suspected she would be feeling in the wrong. She would be ashamed. Already as Miriam climbed the steps the swing was gone from her walk. Embarrassed, she hurried out of sight, just ahead of Neil.

  “Did you see that?” Phil asked her. “Papa spank. Jesus.”

  Jackson turned abruptly from Jaime, who was showing him a wire puzzle, and headed out of the living room. Beth watched him go to the study where the coats were piled and then she went after him. “You don’t have to speak to me tonight,” she said at his elbow. He jumped, turned and saw her. “Just so long as you take me along.”

  He cleared his throat. “A bargain. Can you find your coat?”

  In a clumsy rush to avoid speaking, for she did not know what to say, forcing herself upon him in panic and despair, Beth stuffed her arms any which way into her jacket and muffled herself in her scarf and pulled on her gloves and trotted after Jackson. He stiffly held the door wide and they went out without saying good-by to anyone. Striking across the lawn of unbroken snow to the corner, his step was long and loping. The boom of the music drifted muted from the windows that laid out piers of light on the snow.

  “I hope you don’t mind walking,” he said gruffly. “No choice. Unless you can fly like the little bird you sometimes imitate? … Now why did I go there? Why? Don’t tell me. In fact, don’t talk. At midnight I turn into a scarecrow.”

  As they passed under the street light Beth looked sideways. What on earth was she doing with him, tall, unspeaking, his head bowed into his collar for warmth, his hands jammed in the pockets of his stained worn trench coat which was all the coat she had ever seen him wear, spring, winter or fall? It was cold and they had a long walk ahead. She was glad for her jacket, her only luxury: it was a quilted nylon navy blue jacket, lightweight and warm in the sharpest wind, filled with down: a blue padded jacket that always made her feel irrationally but pleasantly like a Chinese peasant.

  Another block and another through streets of black shadow and white snow, in cold like a frequency too high to be heard that attacked her nerves. She felt like giving him up. But where would she go and how would she get there? As they were crossing the Charles, the church bells and sirens and car horns announced the end of the year, the beginning of the new. He did not pause or look at her.

  With sharp assertion she put her arm suddenly through his. Startled, he tightened the stance of his arm. But she could think of nothing to say. Without a word he was taking her back to Pearl Street and that, after all, had to be what she intended in leaving with him: although she could never tell him that she had had nothing so much in mind as to escape the party where she had no small talk, no ready flirtation, nothing to do except watch and experience a growing discomfort. It was the commerce of sexual selection and manipulation, prancing and infighting, that made the whole room menace her, shouting this was how things were, ugly, eternally ugly, and never could they be changed. She could not tell him that she had not so much intended to pick him up as to change what she was stuck staring at. As they turned onto Pearl Street, she dragged on his arm. He looked down then and cleared his throat. “Want to come up? For coffee?”

  To get warm. “It’s so cold tonight.” The small victory of forcing speech out of him sapped her defiance and she was glad to follow the bleak stained tails of his trench coat upstairs. He walked into the apartment snapping on every light, past the neat cot with the Mexican blanket, past the doors of his room and Phil’s. Now slowly he went before her down the step to the kitchen. On the table a chessboard stood with a partially played game. He looked it over cursorily before stowing it on top of the refrigerator. Then he put on a pot for instant coffee.

  “Who do you play chess with now?”

  Eyes the color of dark honey under his raised brows. “She did teach me to play.… Oh, John or Rick, from Going-to-the-Sun. But I always beat them. I’ve got much better. Do you play?”

  Beth shook her head no. “I have no talent for playing games.”

  “That could be refreshing.” His smile lit and was gone. He sat down across from her. He wore one of his blue work shirts, the button gone from one cuff and that sleeve partly rolled up, leaving his forearm bare, sallow and hard as knotted wood. “It bothers you to see Tom with his wife?”

  “Tom Ryan?”

  “I don’t mean Tom Thumb. Thought you didn’t play games?”

  “I just couldn’t believe you meant him. I don’t like the way he looks at his wife, that’s all, and he doesn’t mean well by Miriam.”

  “I saw you looking at them.” With a somber knowing half-smile. “It’s hard to forgive yourself for being wise afterward.”

  “Tom? That meant so little. Are you wise afterward?”

  He got up. “Come on, I’ll put on some music. What would you like to hear?”

  “Mainly you talk. I’m tired of the inside of my head tonight.” Beth followed him to the living room.

  “No more rock music. Seems like we’ve forgotten to listen to anything else for seven years. I used to be into jazz. I used to love baroque music. That’s how we’ll welcome in the new year—with something sane and joyful, like Torelli.” Then he took a seat in his swivel chair by the door-made-desk.

  Beth kicked off her shoes and lay on the cot, propping the pillows behind her head. If he found her position provocative, let him act on it.

  “You were looking sad tonight. If it wasn’t Tom, who is it?”

  “Just me. That party brought out all my fears. All the little worms.” Beth heard her voice shaking and clenched her hands in futile annoyance.

  He flicked a burnt match into a cup, sucking on his pipe. “Cry if you want to. You sound close to it.”

  “Will you comfort me?”

  He contracted to stillness. “I Wouldn’t know how.”

  Beth smiled. “Then what’s the good of crying?”

  “I though
t women were supposed to enjoy that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, did you, now? That must be a comforting idea for you” She looked at him through her lashes. “You get ten points for turning the conversation on me right off. I wasn’t the one who hightailed it out of there. I just came along.”

  “For the ride?” He ducked his chin, smiling. “Some scotch? Nothing to mix.” Unfolding himself to his feet, he fumbled under the desk and came up with a bottle. Beth reached out. Jackson started to hand it to her, then paused. “Glasses.” He brought in two shot glasses, holding hers quivering with scotch till Beth got up to take it. Then he sat down on the cot, stuffing the pillow away behind him and resting his feet solidly on the floor. “You go sit in the desk chair.”

  “Why?” Beth stood over him grinning.

  “Because I said so. Behave.”

  “I was comfortable.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  She sat down beside him. He finished his shot and put the empty glass between, frowning with all the lines of his eyes and mouth, like the intricate grain in good wood. “Don’t provoke me, Beth. Something will happen.”

  “Let it. What on earth else are we here for?”

  “No.” He took his head in his hands. “Will you please not make matters worse?”

  “Why is that worse? Why bring me here?”

  “I don’t know.” He spoke into his hands. “I’m guilty sometimes of double-think. I wanted not to be alone.”

  “Well, you aren’t.” Firmly she took hold of his hands and, kneeling, tugged them from his face. “Don’t you find me at all attractive?”

  “Shut up. Drink your whiskey.”

  “Fine idea.” She drank off the glass, gagging. “We can both get a little drunk and then it will be all right.”

  “I’ll put you out!”

  “Miles from my home, in the cold and the snow?”

  “Then stay and be unhappy with me. But do it quietly like a good person and listen to Torelli.” He leaned back, his eyes half closed, his fingers tensed around the shot glass propped on his chest.

  She listened, but the wall was hard. After a while she let herself down, resting her head on his thigh. Slowly his hand came down to burrow in her hair, stroking, wandering, knotting around the roots. Strong wiry hand, cold at first, taking warmth from her. She lay still, concentrating on the music and his hand. She had guessed right, she did like for him to touch her. Gratefully she lay under his hand, which slid to her nape, held in a stronger grip, then withdrew to the hair and the safety of that fleshless caress.

  Yes, it would be like that, cool, quiet, remote. She could share a part of her life with him and he would not crush her. She imagined a relationship with him that would be almost ascetic; they would come together without pressure now and then and they would talk a great deal. He would not overwhelm her or threaten her, but rather quietly they would be together. He did not seem to want much of the world’s goods. She thought she felt in him some fastidious, reluctant, Puritan iron that would not swamp her with demands. Miriam had wanted him to love her, to want to marry her; but she only wanted a tangential cool caring. Slowly she turned toward him, her cheek against his thigh, and gently touched his chest with her fingers.

  “Behave, or I’ll put you in the desk chair.” He gave her hair a sharp tug.

  “Ow! It won’t do to treat me like a mischievous child. You’ll have to talk. Why not?”

  “I don’t love you.”

  She banged her head vindictively on his thigh. “What makes you think I want you to? Is it still Miriam?”

  “It’s me, me, the way it’s always been!” He tangled his hand in her hair and turned her head so she could no longer see him. “I’m much older than you are, Beth—”

  “Too old to go to bed with me. I understand—ow!”

  “I do not provoke!” He pulled her hair again, laughing deep in his chest.

  “I do!” She sat up. “Stop that or I’ll fight back!”

  “I though you were already. By the way, why don’t you grow your hair out? It would be even softer.”

  “Why, would that remind you of Miriam too?”

  They faced each other hostilely. At his movement she jumped, but he picked her up and, standing easily under the burden, started across the room. “Anything human reminds me of something.” Dropping her in the desk chair, he stepped back. “I’m not treating you like a child, I’m treating you like a woman. You’ve sneaked and grown into one. That’s the exact trouble.”

  She stopped her ears. “Don’t flatter! I hate it! If you wanted to, you would. You just don’t want to, and that’s all.”

  Leaning against the desk, he waited for her to put her hands down. “I can’t take advantage of a mood and a reaction—”

  “Why not? I’m willing to.”

  “Nine out of ten men would be too.”

  “Don’t you dare congratulate yourself on your virtue! It just means not giving me what I ask for.”

  “Besides, Phil might come home.”

  “We can go in your room and shut the door.”

  “No! No! No!” Gesturing widely in dismissal, he banged his elbow on the desk. “You don’t know who you are yet. I know myself too well.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Can’t you imagine what it’s like after you’ve run through yourself? I know the gambits open to me. There are some I won’t repeat. The pain outweighs the pleasure.” With a heavy shake of his head he went to the next room, where the needle had been beating its head against the record label, and put on a Bach cantata. Reaching into the bookcase, he pulled out his stash and began rolling a joint.

  “What are you scared of? I’m not going to make big demands or expect much.”

  “That’s what they all say”—he passed her the joint, holding in the smoke and the end of his sentence—“the night before the morning after.”

  “Oh, don’t be so pseudo knowing. We’re going on tour soon. Isn’t that safe enough? Only the king who murdered every woman he slept with had a surer thing.”

  He grinned. “If you kept this up for a week, I bet I’d give in.… I can’t imagine you being an actress.”

  “I’m not, in an individualistic sense. I don’t think what we do would mean much to you.”

  “Does it mean much to you?”

  “Yes!”

  “So fierce. See, you are young.” He rolled a new joint.

  “Wanda’s your age. Commitment isn’t always naïveté.”

  “Maybe she’s a slow learner.… You must imagine the world is covered with time and time is thick. Very thick. There have to be a great many people to burn up that time … like candles slowly eating the oxygen in a room.”

  “If we expect little and take what we can get tonight, why will we be disappointed?”

  “You can’t expect as little as I give. You don’t see me.”

  “I could say the same. What do you want?”

  “Nothing I can have.” The record played. They smoked down the second joint. “The night’s ration. All things in measured poverty. Besides, in its way it’s been pleasant. We’ve distracted each other.”

  Whether it was the dope or the Bach or simply fatigue, she was more relaxed. But not yet defeated. What would he do if she reached over and kissed him?

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Lean forward and I’ll tell you.”

  The wary, affectionate glance of an old adversary/friend. Time seemed to have flattened, as if she had been trying to seduce him for years, and there was pride in her persistence as in his denial.

  At length he stood. He rose and stretched to the ceiling, scratching himself thoroughly all over his chest. “You sleep in here, on this good old cot. This is a virtuous house, and it’s time for bed. I gather that Phil is not going to honor us with his presence tonight.”

  She lay restlessly at first, dully colored geometric shapes forming on her tired eyes. However, it was from a sound sleep she woke to make out after a moment Jackso
n, in briefs and undershirt, standing like an indecisive stork at the foot of the cot. As he remained there still, brooding on her from the dark, she finally whispered, “I’m awake.”

  “Well, go back to sleep. It’s good for you.”

  “Why are you up then? Come in and get warm.”

  “I had to piss.”

  “In my room?” She sat up, the sheet slipping forward. “Are you cold?”

  “As the grave.” His grin was skeletal in the moonlight. He took hold of her foot through the blanket and squeezed it. “So cold nothing will ever warm me. Good night, sweet Beth, and pull those covers up.” She heard his chuckle as he padded away, and the dry creak of his door as he shut it.

  Clutching her knees, she sat up staring into the dark. From her lack of success she certainly couldn’t plan on making it a habit to seduce men. She felt her first attempt a total failure. Sighing with disgust, she lay down again. The whole commerce between men and women was too complicated and exhausting, composed of boxes and blind alleys and dead ends. She should have gone from the community center back to the house with the rest of her troupe and had a nice warm celebration. They would have been drinking warm glögg and rehashing the performance and dancing together and eating gingerbread that Sally made. She should have been with them, her tribe and her children, but instead she had been pursuing the cold ghost of a fantasy. Though she woke again twice in the night, no one walked through the dark toward her.

  27

  Like a Great Door Closing Suddenly

  Miriam felt alive again. She felt as if she had been sleepwalking in twilight and now she had burst through a filmy but stifling barrier into full light. For the first time in a couple of years she had no trouble losing weight. She even had less difficulty sleeping, although the easy sleep she had known seemed gone forever. The inability to sleep during late pregnancy had melted into the early months with Ariane, when she had had to stumble out of bed for the 2 A.M. feeding and the 6 A.M. feeding. She woke at boards creaking, voices in the street, branches scraping the siding, slight sounds that never reached Neil beside her. Her nerves had been retrained. Even asleep she felt responsible and strained to hear her child.