Small Changes (11 page)

Jackson said, “It’s easier for him, having the same name as his brothers. And his new father, oh, he can do a lot for him.” He slammed the wallet and shoved it in his pocket. “You kind of look like him, freckles and coloring. Who the hell knows what he looks like now?” He sprawled back, glaring at nothing.

Slowly Beth returned to her side of the table. The splatter of Dorine’s shower came through the closed door. She felt a sore sympathy with him that she was too timid to offer, but also a sense of wrong … as if the picture were a license, a degree in suffering. “You used that on me to say you know more about pain than I do.… Okay! … But you don’t know me.… I mean …” Words so flat. Tempest of emotion and thought churned through her and issued in words like a handful of gravel.

“Whereas you know yourself through and through.” He grinned bleakly.

“But I can try to live the way … according to rules I believe in. To live … right.”

“Child, life isn’t played that way. Matter of fact it isn’t played at all. It’s endured. Your cool is all on the surface. Scratch you and you get mad as a tiger kitten.”

She dropped her gaze, convinced he could see in her what she most wanted to hide, her attraction. Her eyes stung. She feared for a moment that she would cry. She took a deep breath, placed her palms together under the table, pushed tight and relaxed, then slowly forced herself to meet his gaze again. He had been looking at her with an open brooding sadness that he instantly ironed from his face. It was just her luck that she probably did remind him of his son Jerry: turning what had perhaps become a convenient role—that pose of absolute detachment, the man with the ancient
wound, the total bachelor—into something more real again. Well, let him rest with his honorable wounds. She could not grapple with him.

When she was working with Dorine and Lennie in their room, choosing drawings to mat, Dorine told Lennie what she’d heard in the kitchen. “Did you know he’d been married and divorced?”

“Christ, no.” Lennie rubbed his kinky beard. “If he isn’t close-mouthed. Now how come he told you?”

Friday night Tom went to a party which he told her would be a great bore: which she had come to learn meant that his wife would be there. It was also true that she would find the party not so much dull as an attack on her nervous system. She had not figured out how to cope with the smoking that made her sinuses swell, the drinking, the talking that had no purpose, the looking each other over in that blatant sexual window-shopping that made her want to hide in a closet. No, he was better off going alone.

Saturday morning when he picked her up he took her to Brookline first, to three empty sunny rooms he had rented in a yellow brick apartment house on School Street. “Now isn’t this an improvement? The toilet actually flushes, the windows open and shut in a normal manner, and there is even a lock on the door. Pretty nice kitchen, good stove, what do you think of it?”

“It looks fine.”

He seemed disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm. “Well, I hope you like it. After all, you’ll be the one spending your time in it, ha-ha.”

A chill settled on her. “I’m not much of a cook.”

“Practice makes perfect. Besides, we won’t spend all our time in the kitchen.” Hand on her elbow he walked her to the bedroom door. “Cross ventilation. Could be attractive, once we get it fixed up. The landlord’s going to paint it next week. Says I can move in by Friday. I told him paint all the walls white. But I can still change it. I’m meeting him at three. What do you think?”

“Paint them whatever you like best.”

“Thought you might have a preference. Look, Bethie.” He locked the door, pocketing the key with satisfaction, and they started down the carpeted stair. “No reason for you to
live in that rathole. I mean, if you want to keep up a separate address for your family, cool, but it’s a waste of rent. There’s plenty of room for both of us here. All this coming and going and
getting
you and bringing you back is a drag. Like dating and other horrors. I couldn’t ask you to move into that menagerie—like moving into the Park Street subway station—but this is more like it, isn’t it?”

“Tom, I like to live alone. I was already married once.”

“Well, who says we have to go through that nonsense? You know what I think about the ring game.”

“But I don’t want to live with somebody either. It’s easier to cut out then, but that’s the only improvement I can see.”

“It’s a whole different scene, Beth. It’s being together because we want to, not because some guy in a black dress says it’s okay to do it in bed.” They got into his VW. “Got to meet the landlord at three. You really want to go to that freak show in the streets?”

“I would … really. I’ve never seen a street fair.… Besides, Lennie would feel bad if we didn’t come by.” She felt itchy and uncomfortable. The situation was sticky. Yet the day was so beautiful, so summery, she could not stay worried. On the corner of his street a magnolia was in full bloom. The smelly rank puddle of the Charles, the river that hardly flowed, reflected the sky blue as a country lake from the B.U. bridge, busy with sculls and kayaks and sunfish and sailboats.

He grumbled about parking. “Freaks panhandling, lot of losers like Lennie selling nonsense to each other.” But they did find a place, a car pulling out just as they drove up.

It looked like any other Saturday and she was disappointed till they came around the corner to Garden. At first it just looked like a street full of people milling. She had imagined lights and structures, perhaps rides and games and she did not know what else. Garden Street was closed to traffic and booths and tables had been set up, and ahead she could hear rock music. Men with carts were selling ice cream on a stick and hot dogs and soft drinks and balloons with peace symbols.

“Look, there’s Phil the Failed.” Tom waved. Phil was slouching with his hands in his pockets looking bored while Miriam was chatting with a woman selling loaves of wholegrain bread, spread out in ornamental step pyramids about her as she squatted on a red blanket, wearing what looked
like an old tablecloth. Miriam was in wide elephant pants in a soft blue tie-dye print. The top was cut low in front and in back consisted only of yarn ties. The line of her tanned back was graceful and the soft fabric moved as she moved, flowingly. He hair was plaited in a fat glossy braid.

“If that little string should break, two more loose balloons,” Tom said. “Let’s get a hot dog.”

Beth had a lemon slush: syrup poured over crushed ice. She began to enjoy the fair. Everything was dancing, the flickering trees, the people walking with rangy grace to the jingle of ice-cream bells and the sputter of a motorbike making a slow way through the crowd, the throb of rock music ahead. Green and gold and blue: the sun was hot, a foretaste of summer. All along the sidewalk paintings leaned and hung, rectangles of color claiming as they passed, Look! Look! with the artists sitting on the ground or folding chairs. On occasional tables or spread on the ground as in photographs of native markets, jewelry, pottery, leather belts and sandals, macramé, hand-woven fabrics, elaborate candles of dripped and molded wax were set out.

“Look here, Beth, this part-time thing is silly. We’re both adults, we’ve been through the marriage mill, we know what we want. It’s a great thing to sleep with a woman and wake up with her.”

“But I don’t want to live with anyone. I’ve never before had a door that really shuts and a place only for me. It wasn’t till both Dick and Marie got married that I finally got a room of my own. Even then, I had to share it with Mother’s sewing machine and everybody’s off-season clothes.”

“Hey, please. I don’t have any place to crash, I didn’t eat last night. Give me a quarter?” The girl looked fourteen. Tom ignored her, but Beth fumbled for change in her pocket.

“There’s one every ten feet,” he snorted, and he was right. Hare Krishna chanters passed them, orange and white with their shaved heads glinting, moving like butterflies through the crowd. Their music came back through the thickness of people like a rhythmic echo. Phil was bargaining at the curb with a burly guy in a yellow T-shirt that said
HOT TUNA
and a grotesquely thin girl in a man’s white undershirt and torn bells. A folded bill and a matchbox changed hands. Phil popped the pill and ground the matchbox under his heel. Miriam was down the block where some street musicians
were playing while the next rock group set up their vast system of amps and cables. She was dancing with another woman, big and ruddy and somewhat pregnant, and a young willowy horse-faced boy, all laughing in a round before the musicians, who were playing country style with guitars and a fiddle.

“So we’d have three rooms. That’s two more than you have.” His fingers released her elbow and for once he put his arm around her. They bumped along through the crowd. “You can’t tell how great that place is going to look once it’s fixed up—decent furniture, a few groovy lamps and posters, the walls painted. I’m ready to put some effort in—tired of living like a bum.”

“Have you let Jesus into your heart?” A pale grublike boy with a sweet set smile stretching his face and enormous brown eyes that seemed to see glory or nothing, seized her arm. “Tell me, sister, have you tried Jesus?” Hal passed them with his guitar on his back, carrying what looked like a cage full of pigeons. By the time Tom had disentangled them from the Jesus boy, her pockets were full of smartly printed exhortations about sin and salvation and how Africa and China were going to invade Israel and launch Armageddon as it said in Revelations, and they had come upon Lennie’s green nudes. Sitting on the ground, Dorine saw them and jumped up to wave. Leaving Jackson with Lennie, she came to meet them.

“How’s it going?” Beth asked her.

“Sort of awful. Jackson took over for a while and we had lunch and walked around. That was okay.”

“Lennie hasn’t sold anything?”

Dorine shook her head. “Don’t ask him. He’s kind of down.”

Jackson had been standing beside Lennie staring into the crowd, and as they approached he started off slowly. She did not think he saw her, though she waved. He was watching something behind them, where the rock group was still setting up and the fiddler playing a hoedown.

“What happened to spring?” Lennie mopped his forehead. For once he had taken off his leather jacket. He looked gaunt and pale. Ever since his beating when he was working as an organizer for the hospital union, his back hurt him and he
stooped. “It’s summer already. I wish the wind would come up.”

The sun laid a metal hand on her head. She could feel her bare arms beginning to freckle. They drifted on in the crowd till Tom stopped ostensibly to watch two exhibitors playing chess. He returned at once to Topic A. “I don’t get it. What are you afraid of? That your parents will find out? You’re a big girl now. What’s the point of this two, three times a week bit, when we can live together?”

“I said I don’t want to.”

“You’re being stubborn. I think we should look at those irrational fears and deal with them.”

“Why do you want me to live there so bad?”

He glared. “What’s the use getting an apartment if you don’t?” As his irritation mounted he began to plow through the crowd again, more quickly. He had let go her waist and his fingers pinched her elbow.

“I have my place without living with anyone. I don’t see the connection.” But she did. Warm body, how do you like the kitchen?

“Jesus!” He snorted and stuffed his hands at the pockets of his pants. They would not fit in, the pants being tailored too tight, and he again gripped her elbow. For five minutes he steered her through the crowd in a bristly silence and she could look around. A woman was handing out leaflets about the air war in Laos, a man was stringing beads without looking at anyone, a big oaf with a movie camera stomped on her toe and did not even turn when she yelped. She tried to imagine herself sitting on a mat selling big coiled pots she had made, like that woman nursing her baby. She had never seen anyone breast-feed a baby outside. She felt excited and confused by the street, smells of grass and vegetables cooking, and the mutter of drug deals going on all around her. Just at the other curb Miriam’s blue print flashed. She was walking alone now, slowly, looking around with a basket rocking on her hip. Behind her a balloon popped and she jumped, swung around, walked on more quickly. About ten feet back and a head taller than anyone in between Jackson strolled, his denim sleeves rolled up. Tracking her? A breeze stirred dust, but the sun beat down without relief. She could feel her arms beginning to burn. They had reached the end of the fair where a first-aid tent was set up. A woman shaking
all over was being led in one step at a time, muttering and shivering.

They turned back. “Look, I’m a grown man. I don’t want to live by myself. I want to live with a woman.”

“Any woman.” She pulled her arm free. “Ring room service for a woman.”

“I didn’t say any woman. I said you. You need speeches?”

“But, Tom, I might as well be any woman. I’m a warm body, I listen to you, I make breakfast. I’m a toaster with a cunt.” It took effort to say that word. All the real sexual words were ugly.

“Oh, I see.” He looked skyward. “I haven’t demonstrated enough interest in your mind.”

“I haven’t asked you to. I like things the way they are. But I will not live with you.”

“If you want me to know you better and treat you differently, isn’t this a fair place to start?”

“I don’t want to live with you! I don’t want to! I don’t want to be closer!”

“I guess you don’t.” His face seemed pinched toward his sharp chin and his eyes squinted. “I guess you’re scared to be a real woman with me, and that’s all there is to it. Well, take it or leave it, because that’s the way it is.”

“You don’t care what I want. You just care what you want!” But she could not work much conviction into her anger. That was, after all, what the small thing between them had been based on. “Tom, try to understand. I just don’t want to live with anyone.”

“I’m tired of this part-time crap. I want a woman, not an adolescent I have to date. Either you live up to it or we call it quits. I mean it, Beth.”