by Marge Piercy
“Mrs. Landsman shipped me out here to get me out of her sight and you off her conscience. Now she’s out of the loop. It’s up to us whether we can get along okay or not.” Mary spoke with a hearty false confidence. “I’ve restocked the kitchen and cleaned it and the bathroom. I’ve started on the laundry. Three kids sure make a mountain of clothes. I’d forgotten.”
“I think Robin needs socks. Could you check her drawers after the laundry’s put away?”
“Let’s make a list of the kids’ sizes—I mean as of this hour. I know how fast Abel’s growing. I think he’s got taller since I arrived.” Five days ago. No one but Robin was more than tolerating her.
Debbie sighed. “Isn’t he just shooting up? I can’t remember exactly how tall his father was.…”
“Debbie …” Mrs. Rodgers had told her to call her by her first name. Mary had not resisted. Here her strategy was not to hold back but to press in to every available entrance and crack and vulnerable place. “Wouldn’t you like me to wash your hair for you? I could bring a basin of water in. We’d probably get the sheets wet, but we could change them.”
“I can make it to the bathroom, if I can sit while you do it.”
Debbie softened while Mary washed her light hair. “My mother used to do that,” she confided. “I remember she’d sing while she washed my hair, old pop songs. Tunes from South Pacific. She never could sing on key. Neither can I. Only Leila can. Don’t you think she has a pretty voice?”
“I don’t know her well.”
“You don’t like her all that much, do you?”
Mary pondered her answer. She was always having to figure out what was the best possible truth or lie to tell. Finally she said, “Not particularly. I hope you aren’t insulted.” She knew perfectly well that the sisters were not chummy. No more than Cindy and Jaime were. She had heard them sound off on each other too many times. Jaime thought Cindy opportunistic, calling her a weasel. Cindy thought Jaime a loser. Well, wasn’t that what Mary herself was?
“I’m nothing like my sister. Why should I be insulted?”
“You’re a much warmer person,” Mary said, rinsing Debbie’s hair gently. “You have such fine pretty hair and skin. Your coloring is like my daughter Cindy’s.”
“Do you have a picture of her?”
“Just one with me. I lost all my old pictures in a fire.”
“That’s so sad.”
“I’ll ask Cindy to send me some new ones when I write to her next.”
Debbie never asked her why she didn’t live with her daughter, because Debbie didn’t want her family supervising her. Debbie hadn’t heard from Red’s family since he had left her, not one word, and she was annoyed with her own mother because of something from last Thanksgiving, Mary didn’t know what. She would try to find out. Maybe Babs next door who also had to be won over, knew. She was the most important outsider. Mary sized her up. They could make friends around the horses. Fortunately, Mary was great with animals. The horses already nickered when they saw her and Min came trotting over to the gate. They had to be exercised. Min was grey with a white blaze.
With much trepidation, Mary got herself up on Min the next morning and went riding with Babs, full of apologies for her bad seat. But it began to come back to her. She and Cindy had ridden often, before Cindy got too adolescent to be willing to be seen with her mother. Here she must ride. It was something she could share with Debbie. Debbie loved her horses. She missed them. Mary was so sore after her first ride she wanted to weep, but she kept her mouth shut. Her muscles would stretch. Complaining was a luxury she could not afford, being on probation.
Mary began observing the horses carefully and then reporting to Debbie. They gossiped about the horses as if they were people, and indeed, Mary thought Min and her colt Sika were far nicer than most of the people she had been dealing with in recent years. They had a good relationship with each other too, a nice mother-daughter affection, although Min would snap at Sika’s flank if she thought Sika was too frisky.
It was beautiful here. She remembered all her days cleaning houses with nothing to look forward to but a cafeteria supper and then a night in Logan or somebody’s unheated garage. If she couldn’t stay on with Debbie, she did not want to return East. She’d go into San Diego or L.A. and try life on the streets. True, she didn’t know anyone, but what did she have to go back to?
The air was clean and piney. She liked the smell of the animals; even the goat wasn’t bad. There was always something to be done with the kids or the house—a leak to get fixed under the sink, a curtain to rehang. The animals always needed attention. There was shopping, laundry, cooking, cleaning, Min and Sika to exercise and curry and feed and water. The chickens, who surprised her with their strong personalities. The goat, who was affectionate as a dog and needed milking. Who’d ever believe this is me, she thought as she milked Nannie. She wished she had been able to keep Kitten and bring her here. Mrs. Landsman would never even let her outside in Cambridge.
If Mary had not been a strong sturdy woman used to a hard day and a harder night, she would never have been able to keep up with the demands. Things had piled up. The house had been dirty and neglected. The laundry stank. The refrigerator was empty but for some spoiled tofu and rotten lettuce, a few open cans and bottles. Eggs of course. They always had eggs and goat’s milk. Debbie kept up with the mending in bed, but she was terribly, terribly bored. TV did not amuse her, she spaced out when she watched it. Debbie played games with Ben and read him stories.
“That’s a neat sleeping bag,” Abel said, when she was airing it. “But it smells burnt.”
“It was in a fire. I was in a fire.”
Abel looked her in the eyes, suddenly interested. “Like a forest fire?”
“No. A house fire. Three people died. I tried to save my friend, but she wouldn’t wake up. I was the only one who escaped.”
He looked at her sideways. “Bullshit. Right?”
“It was in the Boston papers. I could show you a clipping that Mrs. Landsman, your aunt, gave me. My friend died.”
“Let me see.”
“I’ll show you tonight. After supper.”
Had she backed herself into a corner? Abel had been fascinated by the idea of her being in a fire. She kept trying to reach him. How much truth could she tell? When she finished the dishes, Abel put himself in her way. “You were going to show me something about a fire. You said you would.”
Mary went to the room she shared with Robin and found the clipping among her things, all put away neatly in two drawers of a dresser, the other two drawers empty. She passed it to him.
“That was you, who ran away?” Abel frowned, disbelieving.
“The other people were a woman named Beverly Bozeman, as it says. And two street people, Houdini and Mouse. I came to know Beverly Bozeman when I’d pass her on my way to work. She was a bag lady who hung around near the subway entrance. Anyhow, one night she was …” She hesitated and decided at fifteen he could handle a story about rape. “… attacked by a man who stabbed her, raped her and left her for dead. He threw her body in a big Dumpster—you know what I mean?”
“Just because we live in the woods now doesn’t mean I don’t know about cities. I’ve lived in Cincinnati, in Seattle, in L.A. I know about Dumpsters and what happens to women on the streets.”
She doubted that, but she went on, smoothing the edges of her story as she talked. She told about visiting Beverly in the hospital, about being intrigued by her and becoming her friend. Then she described wanting to understand how Beverly actually lived, and deciding to spend a couple of nights with her friend in an abandoned building.
Abel was impressed. “You really did that? Took your sleeping bag and just went into a tough neighborhood and slept in a boarded-up building with all those homeless guys and the bag lady?”
Mary said, “I wanted to see what her life was like. How else would I ever find out? Sometimes you have to take a chance to learn things. It’s like getting on a pla
ne and coming out here, when I didn’t know any of you. You have to take chances on new things sometimes, new people.”
“Weren’t you afraid of those guys? Houdini and Mouse?”
“They were friends of Beverly and very gentle.”
“How come you could go and do something like that?” He squinted at her.
“Well, Abel, my own kids have grown up. I’m at the age where I can take some chances, and it’s nobody else’s business, right?”
“Like when you’re my age, if you make a stupid mistake, it goes in your record and it follows you everyplace. But if you’re an old lady, you can get away with it?”
She felt guilty as she straightened the kitchen. Abel had gone back to the living room to watch a basketball game, but first he had taken out the compost. She had turned her friends into fascinating characters in a TV drama, with herself as the visiting reporter, comfortably ensconced above them, descending at will and reascending to security. She was exploiting her friends as fodder to impress a rebellious kid. As Mrs. Landsman had promised, she had been satisfactorily vague with Debbie about Mary’s situation. All Debbie knew was that Mary had lost her job and her apartment because of having pneumonia, that she had collapsed at Mrs. Landsman’s house. She did not think Debbie would ever press her for details. Here she had left her past behind as she had left the East Coast. It was like a parcel abandoned in a locker. She hoped she hadn’t revealed too much in attempting to impress Abel.
Debbie liked to be praised, taken care of, fussed over. She liked to be told she was still pretty, but even more, she liked to be told she was smart, even that she was wise. Mary would oblige, daily. She watched for clues as to what she should make herself appear to be, so that she could stay. So that they would want to keep her. So they would not throw her back.
If she wasn’t climbing to the top of the mountain, at least she was no longer sliding off. She was clinging with her nails and her teeth.
FIFTY-NINE
Becky
Thursday she stole forty-five minutes to see Sam and fuck him near his house, with the car pulled off onto a beach road. She faked an orgasm for the first time with Sam, because she was too nervous someone might come along, but Sam was pleased anyhow. He clung to her. “The police came. It was a Captain Edelson. They asked me all kinds of questions about you, like had I ever been to the condo. They asked about why I stopped riding home from the theater with Mr. Berg. I said his being my high school teacher made me nervous. I don’t think they believed me.”
“Next time, tell them he hung around so long afterward smooching with his friend that you couldn’t wait that late. It doesn’t matter if they believe you or not, if they can’t prove anything.” She sat up and stared into his hazel eyes. “It’s very important not to volunteer any information. Don’t try to impress them. Don’t make dramas, Sam—”
“You talk to me as if I’m an idiot. Why would I make dramas? You’re the one who is always gabbing to reporters and interviewers. Everybody’s talking about you and the murder. If you hadn’t panicked and quit the theater group, we wouldn’t have a problem seeing each other, if you even care.”
“I explained to you, what my mother said about how it would look. I can join again once everything calms down. They’re not going to go on hounding us. There’ll be another juicy case, and we’ll go on the back burner.”
“Not if you keep stirring it up.”
He was simply jealous because all the attention was on her. “It isn’t as if I enjoy talking to them. I’m trying to manage the news to avoid drawing suspicion to us. I’m doing it for both of us.”
She turned the radio loud as she drove home. If she were a cursing woman, she would have let go a few choice oaths, but her mother had not raised her to have a foul mouth. She was ready to wring Sam’s neck. He was attempting to tell her what to do, the little snot. She was entirely dependent on his judgment, which was almost nonexistent, and his ability to keep silent, which she was beginning to doubt. She had not chosen well. Would Tommy have helped her if she had begged him? But she would have had to split the insurance money with Tommy and he probably would simply have hired someone who could have blackmailed her. Sam had not even thought about money.
When she got home, Captain Edelson was sitting in his car waiting for her. “Stop off some place?”
“I was feeling depressed. I went to the beach and took a little walk. It’s hard to come home to empty rooms … Have you found anything? It’s been well over a month since my husband was killed.”
“We’re working on the case. We’ll figure it out, of that you can be sure.” He followed her upstairs. If Sergeant Beaumont played the know-it-all uncle, Captain Edelson offered no such pseudo-warmth. He looked at her bleakly and talked in a dry monotone. She was weary of these men asking questions and staring at her slyly and snooping around all the time. They deprived her of a life. They haunted her evenings. They had appointed themselves guardians of morality and what people expected, and she was going to sit home and be lonely if they had any say in it. Didn’t they have anything better to do than harass one already-harassed woman?
“We have a statement from Miss Heather Joyce of 148 Seagull Lane. Miss Joyce admits to a relationship with your husband, Terrence, known as Terry Burgess. She claims that your husband intended to divorce you and marry her. She said that he had asked you for a divorce.”
“That’s absolute invention. No, he never asked me for a divorce. That’s the bimbo Terry’s brother Chris fixed him up with for the golfing weekend I couldn’t go on. Terry confessed to me. But far from saying he wanted to marry her, he said he never wanted to see her again. He said he was ashamed of getting involved with her.”
“She claimed he definitely told her he was asking for a divorce.”
“Captain, I’m not responsible for what my husband may have said to a woman he was spending a weekend with. He may have said that. He may have said he was single, for all I know. But that isn’t what he said to me, his wife. To me, he said he was sorry. In fact, he cried.”
“According to your brother-in-law Chris, Terrence was planning to change the beneficiary on his considerable life insurance policy. It amounted to two hundred thousand dollars, now payable to you. Chris said your husband planned to change the beneficiary to his mother.”
“Captain, you don’t understand. Chris sold insurance, or at least he tried to. Everybody in the Burgess family is insured for everything under the sun. I think they even have a policy on me. They did it to help Chris out. I don’t know who the beneficiary on Terry’s policy is. I thought it might be his parents, because we owe them money from buying the condo. A while ago, Terry said we should have insurance to cover if we were both out of work, so his parents wouldn’t lose their shirt if we couldn’t keep up payments on the condo. I think we had some sort of mortgage insurance. I was making the payments on the condo, but we weren’t able to pay back his parents, you understand? We felt bad about that. But Chris is the one who knows about all that, because he wrote policies on every one of us.”
“You claim you didn’t know about the insurance policy on your husband with you as beneficiary?”
“Everybody in their family had insurance on everybody else. I never paid attention. You have to understand, my brother-in-law didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. I wouldn’t have voluntarily taken out a policy on a dog with him. He caused trouble all the time in my marriage—or rather he tried to.”
“You’re suggesting that your brother-in-law is lying to us.”
“Captain, I don’t know what he’s been saying. Chris and Terry always had a competition going between them. They were very concerned with each other, not always in a good or healthy way. I did think Terry had fixed the insurance so that it would pay off his parents.”
“What do you mean by unhealthy? Drugs?”
“Terry never took drugs in his life.”
“Are you prepared to swear to that?”
“He never did drugs. Ever!”
“That was before I knew him. I have trouble imagining Terry ever doing something illegal.”
“You claim that your husband told you about Heather Joyce and expressed regret. Did he promise never to see her again?”
“He swore it to me.”
“Can anyone corroborate your story?”
“Well, I told Helen Coreggio downstairs about the golf weekend. It wasn’t the sort of thing I would spread across the countryside. If I’d told my family, I was afraid one of my brothers might have come and given Terry a very hard time. I felt he was genuinely sorry and wouldn’t do it again. I also felt it was my own fault, because I’d gotten so involved in that theater group.”
“That’s the one with your boyfriend, Sam Solomon, in it?”
“He isn’t my boyfriend. He’s just a kid.”
“A kid you were very nice to.”
“I was nice to everybody in the group. Why wouldn’t I be? I liked them. I liked being in plays. I resent what you’re saying. Ask Helen Coreggio if anything funny was going on. She was almost always with me when I was with him.”
“Except when you drove him home.”
“Do you think Dick Berg was having an affair with him? He drove Sam Solomon home oftener than I did. Sometimes Helen drove me home.”
“Your neighbor, Holly Reicher, recognized a photo of Sam as someone she saw around here.”
“He brought me the script for Dracula, and Helen and Sam and I read it together, trying to figure out what parts to try out for.”
“How often was he here?”
“I think he was only in the building once, and we were mostly in Helen’s place.”
“Mostly? What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t remember, because it wasn’t important. He’s just a nice kid. Helen liked him too. Oh, it’s possible he had a crash on me, but that was the extent of it. He was certainly too shy to make a pest of himself.”
