Small Changes

by Marge Piercy

  Neu felt the energy in her and seemed worried, mistrustful of it. She could feel him watching her. Most of his comments took the form of whether she was doing enough for Ariane. She tried to use her new energy to come closer to Neil, to capture a new intimacy, but somehow she had not managed to show him what she was trying to do, and he saw her attempts as irrational demands.

  “What do you mean, be more open? Open about what? I’m not withdrawn, I’m thinking about a technical idea.”

  Yet she could not feel him loving her as before. Sometimes when she pushed on him to be closer, more open, they quarreled. Usually then she would cry and they would be reconciled. Neil never wept. She did not think he thought the more of her for crying. Perhaps he took it as a sign she was sorry she had pushed on him.

  Ariane reached out like a vast hot wet fist and clutched her. “Mommy,” said Ariane. She was Mommy. She was the source of warmth and food and comfort, she was a blanket, she was a breast, she was the heart beating. That felt good. She was also hateful Mommy, tyrant Mommy, Mommy the wall to be pounded on. Ariane was a year old. She was lovely with dark brown curly hair and enormous brown eyes, chubby and vigorous and loud. She wanted what she wanted with an instant passion, a compressed willfulness that came down on Miriam like a club. She could not believe she had been that forceful a baby. Ariane wanted with a passion that amazed Miriam. Ariane wanted to grab at a scarf that Dorine was wearing, wanted to clutch a shiny lighter a guest had used and dropped on the coffee table, wanted to touch, to taste, to handle—wanting entirely, with her whole passionate body, violently craving.

  Ariane was good-natured and laughing and rosy. She was also quick to lose her temper. She would pound with her fat fists. She would grow red in the face and scream. How she could scream! Miriam got a headache in five minutes from Ariane’s screaming. Neil would slam out of the room and shut himself in his study, telling her she was spoiling their child. If all else failed Ariane would hold her breath. She would hold her breath until she was blue in fury. See, she said, with her body, I am killing myself to punish you! Hateful Mommy! Hateful Daddy!

  How could such a small body contain such will? “My little tiger,” Miriam crooned, cuddling her. Ariane talked now, some in words and some in sounds. She did not yet walk. She stood from time to time and sat down hard on her behind with a yelp that frightened Neil. She was an active creeper but seemed to have no desire to walk. That worried Neil more than her, for she remembered Sonia reminiscing that she had been close to a year and a half before she walked. He insisted she ask the pediatrician what to do. But when Ariane fell, he rushed to her in a fear that Ariane caught at once, and cried harder.

  Somehow Ariane did not resemble what Miriam had imagined a baby would be. She was cuddly but her character was strong, passionate as the heroine of a grand opera. You came out of me, Miriam brooded over her daughter, but she did not understand how Ariane could be hers and Neil’s. She was healthy and fierce. Whenever Ariane was not sleeping, she could be heard singing to herself, talking, yelling, screaming, burbling, laughing, roaring. Daily she learned new words, and Neil was proud. He loved to show off her new ability to talk and talk before others. Everyone said how bright and darling she was. When she spoke, both of them shut up to listen.

  It was ridiculous to be jealous of her own baby: no one ever before had been so unnatural. She was deeply ashamed. But sometimes she was jealous of the attention Neil paid Ariane in the precious evenings, the precious Sundays. All those hugs and kisses she would have liked. She felt a maidservant to her child, invisible behind the stroller, behind the playpen. She was appalled to find herself so selfish, so weak as to be jealous of Neil’s pride in Ariane. Sometimes, unguarded, she remembered her depression on coming home from the hospital, and guilt laid her flat. Something vital was lacking in her, obviously. She had tried and tried to be a good woman, but something must be missing. All those people who had told her she was not a real woman, flawed, they had known something. She imagined Ariane turning and telling her what a bad mother she was.

  She loved Ariane. She never had to be told to hold her, to cuddle her, to caress her. She had never loved anyone so much. Ariane had for her a radiance, always. When she picked Ariane up and held her, words gushed from her. Love rushed from her in silly sweet names: Bundle of Life, Tiger-Tiger Burning Bright, Ketsela, Chickadee-dee-dee, Aryannie-poo. Ariane was what she was working on instead of the anti-missile missile project, and no sane person could deny that Ariane was a better way to spend her time and energy!

  Yet days spent cooing and babbling to Ary-annie-poo-poopoo, cleaning, washing dishes, doing laundry, changing wet pants, saying No-No and mopping up spilled food, left her weary and untouched. Exhausted and mentally starved. When Neil came home she fell on him with teeth and claws, hungry for love, hungry for meaning, starved for intelligence and stimulation and content—ravenous for the world outside.

  Neil felt entitled to rest and pampering. “After all, I pulled us out of financial disaster. I had to tread a careful path, but I brought us through.” The West Coast firm had bought out Logical, name, equipment, staff, and contracts, with a two-for-one exchange on the stock: now Neil had considerable stock in that company worth real money on the exchange, though he was legally bound not to sell any of that stock for two years. But at current prices his stock was suddenly worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars: that silly paper. She felt stunned and way outside. So that was how you made money in software: you sold out an ailing company. That was why Abe and Neil had forced Dick out. In the meantime Neil was extracting himself slowly from the company, would soon be consulting only at a handsome price while teaching at M.I.T.: the sort of setup he had been wanting all along. He complained of the strain of learning the departmental situation at school while managing the politics of withdrawing from Logical. He felt good but overtaxed.

  Often after supper he went into his study and didn’t come out. Sometimes one or more of his graduate students appeared to work with him, closeted there. When he emerged, he wanted her there. “Don’t you want me to succeed now? Ever since I got my degree, I’ve been wanting to get back into a good technical university, but I’ll have to carve out my own niche. It’s a competitive atmosphere, don’t have any illusions about it.” He often seemed to forget she had spent years in that department. “They’re great snobs about people who’ve worked in industry, when there isn’t one who could live in the style they’re accustomed to, if they didn’t do consulting.… Still, it’s a better atmosphere. No more worrying about the bank, about how to pay all those salaries every month. But the adjustment isn’t easy, and I expect help from you. Isn’t this what you want me to do? You were the one who was so down on Logical. Now you complain when I work late. This is an exciting step forward, but it’s monstrously hard. Do you want me to fail?”

  Then everything cleared. She found her face again, her self: Phil came back. Oh, Phil was still Phil, still Philip-sparrow, helpless and in bad shape. He talked out his life in castles of floating words, he was reforming himself and his existence as usual. But he was there: he looked at her, he saw her, he gave her back to herself.

  She was half grateful to Tom Ryan in retrospect for still thinking enough of her to try to upset her. Most of the professors and computer professionals she met looked right through her. Married women were twice invisible. No one heard what she said in arguments. She might say something startling or witty or even rude, but the conversation would go on. This is Mrs. Stone, and hello, Mrs. Stone, what does your husband do?”

  Well, what did she want them to ask? What she did? Change her daughter. This is Mrs. Stone, née Berg, who used to be in the artificial intelligence lab at Project MAC, who used to do research on heuristic programing techniques, who used to be a person: why, she even has a doctorate, moldering in a drawer.

  She kept hovering mentally before that closed study door. It was all right for Neil to do that. It was acceptable for Neil to be selfish about his time and his energies and his d
esires, to withdraw and preserve himself. It was all right for him to emerge demanding love and comfort and amusement. Because he was the breadwinner.

  But by virtue of ceasing to earn, Miriam ceased to be able to be selfish. She could still remember her exacerbated anger with Philip just before that last argument on Pearl Street, because he had dared to wake her in the middle of the night when she had to go to work in the morning. Her time had become valueless. When a person is paid for her time, she thinks it worth something. But Miriam worked all day and was paid nothing but her keep. To think she had dared yell at Philip for abusing her, for getting in the way of her work. How uppity she had been, how wonderfully sure of her own worth in at least that area. Every pay check had validated her pretensions.

  But Phil restored her continuity. He spoke to her individual mind. He remembered how she had been. They could go on anecdotally for hours. Phil said they had gone soft. “Jail made a gossip out of me and housework has done it to you.” But for all that, they continued with vigor.

  California had broken something in Phil. Perhaps he would mend, perhaps he could not. In bits and pieces he told her, not once but again and again. If talking about their mutual past was sociable and comforting, talking about his recent past terrified him. His face would tighten, the color would leak from his voice. His eyes would go blind and he would lick his lips. The Philip who had come back to her was not the man she had left. He was beautiful to her as Ariane was beautiful—both radiant creatures whose every gesture charmed her—but he was not the same expansive prince of fantasies.

  He had really gotten into smack in Berkeley, really strung out. He had been busted, he had kicked in jail cold turkey where he had no choice, and he had served his time. He had come out at last, but with something missing.

  He treated himself with a new wariness, as if he had discovered he was made of glass. He did not even drop acid or mescaline. He smoked grass and he drank wine and beer. He would touch nothing else. He was afraid. “It’s in me. My old man was an alcoholic. Maybe it’s all genetic. A piece is missing, a chemical piece. Dorine says that could be it.”

  “She said it was theoretically possible.”

  “I have the feeling that if I touch smack again I’ll go right back where I was. I want it. I want to be there. That’s the truth.”

  “If only you’d eat. You’re so skinny. All bones. You were never this thin before. It isn’t healthy.”

  “Fasting is good for you. It cleans you out. Every time I think I’m getting sick, I go on a three-day fast and take vitamin C and fluids and I don’t get sick. It feels beautiful inside.”

  Miriam found Phil’s new health regimen silly. She fed Phil as much as she could, but he remained skinny. He said he needed loving, not so much bread and butter.

  “Dorine loves you. What more do you want?”

  “You know what more. A lot more. Dorine likes me. And you, do you get all the loving you want?”

  “I have to go down to the market and get meat for supper. You want to come along or stay here with Ariane?”

  Phil was a source of strength and excitement, but he had the uncanny ability to put his finger on her sores. Not enough loving. Maybe no woman at home ever felt she was loved enough. Loving for a living, for a profession. The central terror of her life was that Neil would stop loving her. Every time she heard neighborhood gossip about husbands who up and left their wives, she wondered. Laverne always passed on those stories. Their loving was not what it had been. Neil got angry if she said that. “After all, we both have other things to do beside sit around and moon at each other.” But she felt … not so cherished. They made love less often. They made love less often than she wanted to. A week, ten days, two weeks would pass. From jokes that Laverne made, she knew that her problem was hardly unique. Everything she read on the subject suggested that if he was losing sexual interest in her it was her fault. She was not actively seductive enough. It was true she had let herself gain weight, but she had lost most of it. She tried to find time to exercise and sometimes succeeded. Oftener she got to dance with Phil to the phonograph, and that was a good workout. Her problems felt dull to her, housewives’ problems. They were jokes that comedians told on television and cartoons depicted in magazines.

  But Phil had snapped her out of her lethargy. She was finding her way out of the magic circle of inaction. One night she even sat up and finished the red dress she’d started when she was pregnant with Ariane and spending afternoons with Sally. She was thin enough for it to fit her: another small benchmark.

  She put on the new/old dress that had sat upstairs in pins for fourteen months and greeted Neil in it. He seemed pleased to see her prepared so formally to greet him, although he pretended to be suspicious. “Sure there isn’t some little thing you want?” Indeed, the evening went as it was supposed to. He did not work, they listened to music together sitting on the couch, sipping sherry. They discussed Ariane and his department. From her days as a student, she passed on some stories and observations edited because she did not want him telling her she was picking at people again. He showed her the rough draft of a paper he was writing, and she worked out some examples and changed the structure around. The pencil jumped across the paper. For such a long time she had done nothing technically. He was excited by one of her examples and said she had really been a help.

  On the couch he sat with his arm around her. They even went up to bed early and made love, although he could not forbear bringing up the matter of the son it was time to be starting, when she went to put in her diaphragm. He did not go on about it and they made love well. Maybe he was right and she did not try hard enough to please him. Still the evening felt … artificial, manipulated. She had pleased him and he had loved her. Working on his paper had felt good. Why wasn’t she taking more of an interest in his courses and his research? But she wanted something of her own to do too.

  Neil and Phil did not like each other. It was best if they did not meet, so it did not become an issue. Phil had to be managed so he didn’t confront Neil, for he enjoyed irritating him. She did not of course see Phil secretly, but she simply did not call Neil’s attention to how often she let Phil come over, how often they went out in the afternoons together. She was a neighborhood scandal but she did not care. Let the women she had used to sit with in the playground with their carriages give her those knowing looks: what they knew were lies and she did not need them any more. All their talk of how to stop thumb sucking and what to do about head banging! She had her poet back.

  “I’m not a poet any more, face it. I wanted to be a poet, but not to write poems, because that was work. The whole way I was using words was sick—to manipulate people and the world. To control. To make my fantasies materialize.”

  “I liked your songs. Except the awful ones about me.”

  “I can’t stand any of them. I don’t want to use my head that way any longer.”

  “Well, what do you want to do?”

  “I’m learning carpentry. I want to work with wood. I want to do simple useful things with my hands and keep my rotten fucked-up head out of it. I don’t trust how I use words.”

  “Forever, you just want to build shelves and cabinets?”

  “Maybe I’ll learn to make furniture. I have an idea for a bed that would be beautiful, Miriam. I just know I don’t want to use my head in that old controlling, conning way any more. Don’t you think I manipulate you less? Don’t you think I’m straighter with you?”

  In a way. There was always an oblique struggle. He wanted her and she could not let him express that directly. She could not let that come out or it would be bad. She would have to reject him. If things did not stand out there between them bald and stark, they could go on and after a while he would forget the old nostalgic wanting. She had to see him. She wanted to feel she was helping him.

  But the struggle could not get too close to the front of her attention. Somewhere in her Phil was still Phil and it was natural to touch him, it had always been natural. Sh
e never let herself think about being in bed with Phil, but her body remembered him. Old sensual memories drifted up along the nerves, murmurs of old good easy and communicative sex, natural and sensual. It was not to be remembered. Occasionally she dreamed of him, vividly. She enjoyed her sexual dreams: no one could make her guilty about what she felt in sleep.

  She must not let them argue openly because she had no reasons except that she was married to Neil and he would not want her to. Neil expected her to be faithful. She had promised to be. That fidelity in that sense was a meaningless concept to her, alien, peculiar, was something she must never let herself be enticed into discussing aloud. She was afraid to argue with Phil, that she might not be able to defend Neil’s position. But if she gave in to Phil and to her fidelity to herself and him, then she would be guilty before Neil. Neil could always make her feel guilty anyhow, and she would lose some essential ground to resist the heaviest of his pressures.

  “I don’t like living with old Jackson any more,” Phil complained, sitting sideways on a chair. “We’re bound in different directions.”

  “What direction is he bound in, except around his own dead center?”

  “Don’t kid yourself. I find the new motivated scholar on the make a bit of a drag. I’m telling you, he’s going to crawl back on his belly into the middle class through the doors of the Ph.D. and rest there, hard-working and moral at last by his own endeavors. The prodigal son. His parents are pleased that he’s teaching and passed his orals.”

  “Why am I not more surprised? He’ll fit in.”

  “Maybe because that ties in with why you took him seriously? Besides, being with him pushes me back into my old way of using words, of dealing with people. Sometimes I find myself responding to his bantering and making some kind of put-down joke about Dorine. I know I don’t feel that way, but I do feel like an asshole if I make a point of not wanting to talk about her like that. I feel like I have to defend the relationship. He has a way of looking ironic and raising one eyebrow.… Or the way he jokes about me not going to Finnegan’s. I keep telling myself, You don’t have to measure up. Fuck it with being a man according to Jackson.”