Vida (65 page)

“Perry, don’t you ever imagine it? I mean, then we wouldn’t have to face the problems of what to do politically now, with things all scattered. We’d have the same problems as other people.”

”We’d be giving up, Eva. Letting them win.”

“Maybe they win if we stay like this. What would we be giving up? We have to invent things to do now.”

She felt frightened. Cold. “You wouldn’t do that. Would you?”

Eva patted her shoulder tenderly. “Never. Don’t sound so scared. I’m just talking … You’re my family. We’re all so close I couldn’t bear just the thought of cutting myself off, the way Alice did. Only it makes me feel bad when they talk about her as a traitor … “

In the dark Eva lay against her, silky and long and resilient and soft, but Vida could not bring herself to seduce her. She did not feel as if she had the right. Feeling the gentle rise and fall of Eva’s breast against her side made her smell something sweet, the bush growing outside their old house that she had never identified. All trees and bushes were alien, as if she had found herself on another planet. She did not know the names of the trees along the sidewalk or the names of the weeds in the cracked earth of the yard. At the foot of the hill an old house was surrounded by a stucco fence covered with a vine bursting into huge purple flowers that rustled between her fingers when she touched the petals like the silk of a dress. Ruby, she always thought. Mama. In the rainy season the roof leaked in their bedroom, into a metal pan. Plunk, plonk. On warm nights the voices that floated like perfume from the next house were Spanish. For weeks at a time she would dream every night of Natalie or Ruby and wake up feeling entirely in exile. In the long hot dry days she imagined herself mummifying, like a dead mouse Eva had found once when all of them—Bill, Alice, Eva and herself—had been out in the desert rehearsing an action.

Eva thought living in the East was all Hardscrabble Hill. Vida fell asleep plotting how she would persuade Eva to love Vermont and persuade Joel to love Eva and Eva to love Joel and they would live together—yes, whether they liked it or not they would like it. She would make it all come out.

She got up before Eva, who like Joel was slow to rouse in the mornings. Eva woke in stages, the alarm set and ringing, the alarm reset, the alarm ringing again, the underwear half on and the body prone on the bed again with the long braids hanging off the edges swinging slowly like a pendulum. Joel was already at the table reading a morning paper that Roger, who had stood the night shift with Lark, had brought in. Lark was still with him—unusual, as they did not often hang together—and everybody seemed subdued. They had begun scouting the utility office.

”Good morning” she said heartily. “We’re off to New York to bring back a barrel of money”

“In tens and twenties,” Lark said automatically. “Make sure they’re not sequential. Look at the newspaper.”

“They’ve caught somebody?”

“Alice and Bill got sentenced.”

She guessed, “Seven years? Ten?”

Joel handed her the paper and everyone watched her read. At first she could scarcely concentrate with those staring faces hanging there glum and watchful. The story was datelined from Los Angeles.

Two anti-war activists who spent the last six years fleeing charges stemming from a draft board demonstration were sentenced in Federal Court here yesterday.

Jean Diamond and Arthur Edward Baker, members of the self-styled Popcorn Conspiracy that attacked draft boards in Los Angeles in 1971 and 1972 turned themselves in at the office of the District Attorney on November 28. Diamond and Baker were arraigned yesterday in Federal District Court. They pleaded guilty to charges of creating a nuisance and obstructing governmental business and were given sentences of six and eight months to run concurrently.

Miss Diamond, a 30-year-old blonde who has been living in Los Angeles under the name of Alice Cork says that she and Baker plan to be married after they have served their sentences. She gave wanting a family as the major reason for their joint decision to end their six-year flight from justice.

Baker, 29, is a native of Austin. Texas. He hopes to return to social work school.

“Six and eight months to run concurrently” She put the paper down quickly, as if it had grown weighty. “They’ll be out by the summer … I don’t believe it. What does it mean?”

“Trying to drive a wedge in.” Roger banged his pipe in the saucer that served him as ashtray. “Separate those of us who don’t face heavy time. They’re giving extra-light sentences to the smaller fish to isolate us”

Joel raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He was mostly not looking at her this morning, which worried her. Was he thinking of turning himself in? Or did he think she thought he was thinking that?

“It’s bait, I agree. It makes me nervous” she said, clutching her forearms. What kind of sentence was hanging over Eva? She tried to remember.

”Of course, they’d send you and me up for life and throw away the key,” Roger said. “They get us on so many heavy federal raps we’d never see daylight.”

“Of course” She poured herself black coffee. “Well, on to social work school for Bill … I guess we should call him Arthur now. I never knew him as Arthur.”

“Art, he was. I thought I knew him” Roger shook his head. “Who’d have expected him to lose his nerve?”

24

As they drove the old car to New York, she could feel Joel brooding. Was he envying Alice and Bill? She cast about for a way to bring up the subject without seeming to mistrust him. At last he muttered, “So you did spend the night with her?”

“Of course. We agreed.”

“I only suggested it. I mean, if you really wanted to be with her instead of me. You didn’t have to. You can’t say I pushed you.”

That was what he was troubled about. She felt a rush of relief capped with annoyance. “So it was a trap—a cunning trap!”

“What do you mean, a trap? You’re too subtle for me—”

“Bullshit. You manipulate rings around me, Joel.”

“You wanted to be with her and you were. Did you make love?”

She would not admit they hadn’t. She had to keep the space with Eva she had won from him. “What do you think we did?”

“I wondered … Did you enjoy it?”

“Stop it! Stop it or I’ll jump out of the car! I mean it!”

“Sure, and go running back to her. Don’t let me get in the way.”

“How can you act this way? You said you were struggling to overcome your possessiveness. You think jealousy is real—you value it. It doesn’t mean you love me. The me you’re supposed to love has a long-standing relationship with Eva.”

“You want me to pretend I don’t feel what I feel!”

“If you feel in a stupid way, I want you to fight it. Jealousy is a cozy pain for you—just too damn comfortable!”

“It’s not so comfortable! I was hurt.” But his voice was by now more playing at self-pity than embodying it. “Why did you stay the night with her? Why didn’t you do whatever you do and then come to me? I couldn’t sleep.”

“Sweetheart, we were talking. We had a lot of catching up.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Some. I woke and missed you and lay awake a long time.”

”But if you woke, you were sleeping.
I
didn’t sleep at all … What’ll we do about lunch?”

“I packed it—hard-boiled eggs, cheese sandwiches on whole wheat, pickles, Winesaps and a jug of Agnes’ cider, a little hard”

“And the thermos—did you fill it with coffee?”

“Oh, Joel, I’m sorry. I forgot. I left it there”

“Ha. Look in the back seat. I remembered. I made a whole pot and poured it in.”

“Then let’s have some. Want me to drive for a while?” They were at ease again.

They had their second flat tire on the Hutchinson River Parkway. While Joel was changing it, she called Oscar. He offered to call her back and two minutes later did, at the pay phone where she was huddled. She meant to talk him into calling Chicago for her under some pretext and getting word of Ruby. But Oscar had his own news. “Yes, deario, I’m off to the hustings to deliver blows for the good lavender cause,” he said in his nonchalant way. “We’re launching our annual assault on the piggy City Council. But Natalie is out of the can and drooling to behold you. I have a number you’re supposed to call … By the way, squirt, did Natalie have a big romance with a karate instructor, a Nisei woman, a few years ago?”

“Yeah. But it’s been over for a few years too.”

“Some gossip travels slowly. East Norwich is a long ways from the Lower East Side. Hmmm. Natalie, of all people. We’re everywhere, as we keep telling the city fathers. Natalie, the original married lady—”

Natalie would have news of Ruby and Paul’s trouble. She felt calmer, knowing she would find out everything about her family soon. “Natalie’s home now? Back on the Steering Committee of dear old SAW, you guys used her being married and having kids as an excuse not to relate to her. Like that turned her into
your
mother”

“A very cold Touché. Your Leigh is a bore, by the way. He approaches me as if walking up to a large ravening dog, saying Nice, nice doggy and trying to move his feet without coming any nearer.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Joel had the old tire off. “Just so he gives you the check every month. Do you have one for me?”

“I’m to get it from him at the council meeting. He’s supposed to be covering us. I enjoy collecting from him. It makes him so twitchy. He walked into my office and I said, ‘Behold the married man. You’re gaining girth as well as descendants’ Frankly, he’s getting a pot. He said, ‘Come off it, Oscar. I’ve been married before and it never cramped my style’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘your first wife wasn’t the crampy type’ ‘It’s an open marriage, Oscar’ he said. ‘Oh’ I said, ‘is it open for her as well?’ Because how open can it be for her with a belly to wheel around? ‘It’s open for me’ he said. ‘I’m not about to be boxed by anybody.’”

“That sounds familiar” she said with slow nasty relish. Joel was fitting on the spare. It was lucky Oscar had suggested calling her back, as she would have run out of quarters long ago. “I thought he’d discarded that rhetoric”

“My guess would be he finds the belly oppressive and he’s passing time elsewhere.”

“Already?” She could have bussed Oscar. He knew just the gossip to make her feel on top. “Oscar, I shouldn’t be so tickled, but he hurt my pride”

“He did that before … years before. You came to me pretty sore, chicken—I remember that.”

She was startled at his mentioning their romance, more than a decade in the past and in another life. She had vaguely assumed he must be ashamed of it. “You were very good to me.” Joel was tightening the lugs.

“Leigh wants to see you, by the bye. He suggests a rendezvous.”

“What does he want to see me for?”

“How do I know, squirt? He can’t resist you.”

“We can resist each other just fine. He can shove his little rendez-vousie. How’s your lover? That good-looking young man I saw at the ferry.”

“A schmendrick. He has fantasies he’s a great chef, but of course he expects to cook by divine inspiration.”

“It’s all over, Oscar?”

“Except he comes by and complains. Let me describe an evening chez nous. I’d come home from school, worn out, exhausted by the good fight, wanting to roll over and play. He’d have every pan in the kitchen out and he’d tell me we’re having a fish timbale, an intimate dinner at seven, then we’ll go out to a movie and drop into our favorite bar for a Sambuca and coffee. At nine, the smell of burning crud. After ten, three dry fish croquettes emerge with runny spinach and some desiccated potatoes. I have to clean up. After all, he cooked. No! I had to get rid of him” Oscar laughed cheerfully. “Big blue eyes can’t make up for ten burned pots to clean, and the food was giving me indigestion …. How’s your pretty young man?”

“About five feet away, glaring at me. He’s just changed a tire. I’m still crazy about him.”

“You both have such big green eyes. I’ve never had another lover with green eyes.”

”Are you going to flirt with him all day?” Joel rasped. His hands were covered with grease, and he was scowling. “You can walk.”

“Oscar, I have to get off” She hung up and slid into the driver’s side. “At your service. Actually, Oscar was flirting a little. It’s the telephone. He’d never do so in person for fear I’d take him up.” She glanced at her watch, pulling out into traffic. “I can’t believe how long I talked to him!”

“Neither can I,” Joel said sourly.

“I never gossip on the phone that way anymore. Feels wonderful! Oscar asked after you, as my handsome young man”

“What does Leigh want?”

“Who knows? Who cares?” She realized that she had fallen into a little trap, admitting she had a message from Leigh. “When are you seeing him?”

“I’m not. He can communicate through channels. We better drive over toward the north end of the subway and look for a cheap motel”

The Board had decided to foot the bill for two nights in a motel rather than send them back to Park Slope. They took the Cross County west and found a modest old motel in Yonkers, where they checked in as Mr. and Mrs. Sam Walker. Joel took a shower to wash off the grease, while she went in search of another pay phone. She wanted desperately to see Natalie; she had to set up a meeting with the lawyer; she had nine prescriptions in her pocket to get renewed from Dr. Manolli, the M.D. who helped them. Joel knew she intended to see Natalie and the lawyer, but she could imagine no reason he had to find out about Dr. Manolli, who was a Board secret. All these activities had to be fitted into forty-eight hours to get them on their way back to Vermont by Tuesday afternoon at the outside, so it would be tight.