Small Changes (66 page)

Beth worked up the courage to say, “I thought you were into a slow suicide. Anyhow, if you won’t drive slower, let me out.”

“I am in complete control of this car.” But in a couple of blocks he did abruptly slow down. “Okay. You don’t like me much, do you, Miss Bethie?”

“No. I never thought you were good enough for her.”

“And how do you rate Mr. Clean?”

“Lower,” she said truthfully. “She’s backed into the wringer.”

“He could have married anybody! That’s the trouble, he thinks he did. Man marries one of the finest pieces ever walked the ground, a girl with guts and imagination—most women have imaginations like pencil sharpeners—and what does he care about?
Is supper ready?”
He drove on through Roxbury, but instead of taking her left to her house he turned right and drove up to the top of Fort Hill and parked there, by the old tower.

“I don’t think he’s a bad person, any more than my husband was. He’s probably kinder and more responsible than you are. It’s just what he expects of
WIFE
. He can’t treat her any way than as a high-class domestic servant, because that’s what she is ninety per cent of the time. He feels entitled to her undivided attention whenever he needs it, and when we’re in the way, he hates us.”

“You know, Bethie …” He tapped the wheel. “Sometimes you seem to expect that if you said a nice word to me I might rape you on the spot. Is that it?”

“I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. You use women for … sustenance.…”

“You don’t like me,” he said with melancholy bravado. “You think I’m some sort of gigolo.”

“I think you’re involved with Dorine, so what do you want with me tonight?” The gates of her sympathy were rusted
against him. Her throat felt dry as if to let out an extra word would be dangerous.

“The iron sense of property women … some women … have. See, Dorine’s been correcting me.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m here because I didn’t punch him in the jaw.… Dorine doesn’t want much of me. I have to do it her way or not do it, and I’ll take that but I can’t take it very far. The permanent condition is, she isn’t with me, she’s at work. And I’m still in love with Miriam, always, Dorine knows. It’s a permanent condition like being Irish and talking too much and having my tonsils out. My tonsils won’t grow back and I love Miriam. But I’m telling you, it isn’t given to every man to have a second chance with the woman he wants. I swear I have one. He has her but he’s going to run it into the ground. I fucked up before because I was into that slow suicide scene. But I’m going to take her and that kid, and he can suck his big toe.”

“She won’t leave him. She wants to be a good woman. That’s why she had the baby, to justify her. She wants to be good and she needs to have him love her.”

“He doesn’t love her. He hasn’t idea one about who she is. So she panicked and fell into marriage like you’d jump off a bridge. But she’s coming back to life.”

“Does Miriam know you still … love her?”

“Love, love. Ariane loves banana, mashed up. Neil loves roast lamb, medium rare. Phil loves Miriam. Does she know I go crazy not able to touch her except like a puppy dog, no. She’d feel guilty. She’s always feeling guilty about something. I should have realized at some point the got-to-get-married respectable bit would grab her, she grew up in Flatbush. Should have been watching. I was so stoned all the time I couldn’t tell my ass from a wall plug. You keep your mouth shut too about this.”

“It’s all hot air.” Beth huddled against the door. “I wouldn’t tell her anything to upset her. I want to go home. I have work to do tonight. Go find Dorine!”

“She’d let me, let me come and whimper about Miriam. For that reason I don’t. I go to Dorine to see Dorine. You don’t comprehend that. Never mind.” He started the car. “I think if you ever smiled at me your face would fall off. Jesus, I wonder what Wanda makes of you? If the rest of the troupe is like you, I bet she’s dying of chills and anemia! Well, Miriam always likes pallid girls around who don’t
compete and make her feel like Mama.”

“Do you think she lets you come except for pity? She thinks she’s helping you.”

“She needs me. Life was getting dull. She fell for me the first time because I made things interesting, I turned her on to her body, the world, her own energy!” He had talked himself out of his depression. His voice was silky and amused. “Now I find her right back in Flatbush, stuck, boxed, sinking into daydreams and routine. A second chance, I’m telling you, born again. Once again
she
needs
me.
I’m not fantasizing this time, I’m playing it through step by step.”

When Beth came in, Wanda seemed to have been waiting for her, for she called her into a room on the ground floor where they often worked. Wanda was wearing a dark red shirt; she seemed in a good mood though a quiet low-key one: banked coals. “Have some glögg. It’s a hot mulled wine drink with spices. Smell. Isn’t that lovely?”

Beth, still cold from huddling in the car while Phil orated to the stars, drank her first cup gratefully and let Wanda pour her a second. “It’s only hot wine. So you’re upset because you think Phil’s trying to hurt your friend? Frankly, I’ve never really seen Phil hurt anyone. A bit parasitic. Lazy. Full of dreams and role playing and bad poetry. But Dorine says he’s changed. You don’t think so?”

“I guess I don’t care.” The wine slid down, hot and spicy, warming her through. “I don’t care if he’s supposed to be changed. I don’t believe it.”

Wanda was resting her hand against her cheek, smiling slightly. Her eyes, deep-set and almost black, rested on Beth affectionately. “Phil used to disappoint women a lot. He charms easily and disappears with ease. Water. He flows away. But he doesn’t do that much damage. I think I’m something of an expert on what kinds of men do the most damage …” She stopped smiling. Her eyes went a little opaque, her gaze fixed past Beth. “Sometimes men do change, Beth, and then your anger is obsolete. People tell me Joe is different. That political defeat and the destruction of the context we all worked in have made him human. Maybe that’s true, though I wouldn’t care to find out close up.”

“It hurt you bad when he left you?”

“Yeah.” Wanda grinned crookedly. “Probably would have hurt more in the long run if he’d stayed.… But I’ll tell you how I felt when people first started telling me he’s changed.
How nowadays he doesn’t stomp over women with his boots on. How he actually listens to other people’s opinions. He doesn’t think any more he’s organizing a woman by fucking her. He doesn’t insist he was born with the right line.… Well, for years I tried to make him more human. But I was furious when people told me that, I was bitter with fury. I was angry at him for daring to improve. He’d hurt me and our sons, and he had no right, no right to try tö be a good person any more.… Do you feel what I’m saying?” Wanda poured more glögg in her cup.

Beth sipped the wine, frowning. “Phil never hurt me.”

“Maybe he sums up things in men that have hurt you.”

“He talks too much. He turns everything into words and makes it change in words, but nothing changes. He blurs things. Miriam is somebody who can do real things; how can she ever have wanted a man who can’t do anything?”

“When she could do things herself, what did she need a man to do them for? Why should women always have to love men who seem to be on top?” Wanda chuckled in her throat. “If I lived with a man again, I think I’d like a nice warm unambitious country boy.… Truthfully, when I go to New York, I always see an old friend of mine. He runs a shop where a lot of movement stuff gets printed. He’s a nice middle-aged fat widower with good politics and a good belly laugh, and I love to be with him.…”

Beth did not particularly relish the idea of Wanda running up to New York to spend time with a fat old printer.

Wanda was saying, “But with Joe, I wanted him to remain the villain. That he should begin to change after leaving me I couldn’t allow. I wanted to have a good conscience in hating him.… But think what I’m saying. That he should go on the same way hurting other women. That if he wasn’t mine, let him do no good to nobody.… I’ve had to learn to control that resentment.” Wanda was smiling again. Her teeth were wide apart and strong-looking. Her eyes were shining with laughter that Beth thought had been melted in them like spices in the wine. “I’m just going on.… You’re looking sleepy.”

“It’s the wine … I think I drank too much.…”

“Come on, stand. Yes.” Wanda pulled her up by the arms. Beth felt herself bouncing loosely to her feet. “Now, over you go!”

Beth found herself on the mat. She lay a minute in surprise.
She did not hurt. “What happened?”

“I threw you and you fell correctly. Beautifully. You didn’t think what to do, so you did it. Now, again.” Wanda pulled Beth to her feet and they turned around each other. Once again Wanda threw her and she found herself on the mat, lying on her back and laughing weakly, in contented silliness. Again and again and again Wanda threw her until she learned to feel the falling, to feel herself doing what she had been taught but had never before done. The glögg sweated out of her. She felt clear.

“Enough. I think you won’t forget.” Quickly, lightly, Wanda leaned forward and kissed her. “Go to bed.”

Beth walked into her room. Sally was sitting on her bed repairing a stuffed monkey that was leaking fluff from the base of its tail. Beth walked in and, spinning around once with a grin of joy, let herself fall. Correctly. Then she lay on the floor and grinned at Sally.

“I’m a fallen woman at last! I know how to fall!”

Sally beamed at her and went on sewing the monkey’s tail back on.

26

Mohammed Comes to the Mountain
and Finds It Stone

“Don’t try to make me somebody up there,” Wanda said with quiet anger. “On some higher level. I’m older than you, yes. I have a few things to teach you that you want to learn, though most of it is in you already. But I’m not existing on some easier, calmer level. If I’m older, I’m also more spent. I have less reserves, less to spare. I’m a woman the same as you are, and it isn’t easier for me to fight and to survive and to get things done than it is for you! It makes me angry when you pretend it’s different for me.”

“But you know so much more. You never wonder who you are, I know you don’t!”

“Beth, it’s recently I stopped being only Joe’s woman and mother of my kids. That’s all I was for years, and don’t forget it. Joe, my kids, and radical politics were my life, in that order. I wasn’t on my own list of priorities.”

“But now you do know! You do! I feel you’re pretending. Because I know you’re stronger than me.”

“You mean I’m louder. How do you know I’m stronger, Beth? Because you haven’t seen me break yet?”

“You don’t get this angry at the others …

Wanda shrugged with a tired smile. “Think I ask more than you can give?”

Beth was embarrassed. “It takes me a long time to do what I have to, sometimes. Like learning to fall.”

“Think how much slower I am. You’re twenty-three. I’m thirty-seven. In a year you won’t have any more to learn from me and you’ll be able to take over a great deal of what I do.”

“Me? I couldn’t.… I’d feel paralyzed.”

“You’re learning to move and express and think in motion. I’m telling you, in a year. Oh, don’t look terror-stricken. The group will be functioning by then, everyone will be doing what I do now. I couldn’t stand it if I thought I’d have to hold everything together forever. I need more time for my boys. This way can’t last, I couldn’t sustain it. It wears me. Then I get to feeling sorry for myself and I want to be coddled and cuddled and fussed over. Here you are wanting me to feel like a strong woman from a circus all the time. In many ways you’re stronger than I am, Beth, you just don’t know it yet.”

“I don’t believe that! I’m learning to do things I never imagined I could begin to do. I find working with the group beautiful. I think the theater we’re making is a powerful force, that makes women’s truths visible and moving. But I don’t have the … imagination, the power you have. I learn to do what I’m taught and sometimes I get an idea. That’s all.”

“What has imagination to do with strength? My imagination makes me afraid in the dark. It makes me constantly fantasize ten thousand ways I could lose my boys.”

“Are you afraid in the dark? I mean really.”

Wanda grinned crookedly. “Yes, Beth. Really and truly. Those few evenings I’m here alone, every sound turns into a burglar, a prowler. I never can sleep in a house alone. I
just lie awake seeing the shadows turn into monsters. I’ve been that way ever since I was a child, and I’m still that way.… I remember nights when Joe didn’t come home and I’d lie there seething. Then when I’d finally hear him, I’d pretend to be sleeping. So he wouldn’t be mad.”

“Oh, you remind me of Miriam. She makes such a fuss about things she does badly. Like she used to make a big thing of not being able to cook. But it’s all nonsense, because when she decided she wanted to, she could. She acts out her clumsiness to disarm people, so they won’t hate her for all the things she does well. You’re playing that game. You’re saying, ‘Forgive me for being creative, see, I’m scared of the dark and being alone.’ ”

“I’m saying, ‘Because I do something well, don’t expect me to do everything well.’ Don’t think I’m not scared. Believe me, I find all this hard. I’m still lonely and somewhere inside it’s cold.”

“You have your kids, you have all of us and the troupe.”

“By my age, you don’t take much for granted because it’s here today. I have fewer options, Beth. It’d be hard for me to get a job. I have no place to go back to. Every choice I’ve made to fight for change has cut off a few more choices and escapes.”

After Wanda left, Beth felt she had failed her. Had been lacking in response. She sat on at the table with her chin dug into her chest. It was so much easier for her to respond to Women than to another woman. She did not know whether she was more afraid she could not respond to Wanda or that she could. She did not even know how to tell if Wanda wanted her to open up as a friend or as a lover, or if there was a difference.