Vida (24 page)

“You’re splitting?”

“You said it. The atom didn’t take any longer to split, did it? I’m a persistent woman. Should have left him years ago, I know it. But I loved him!”

“But you could have loved somebody else too.”

“Kids ought to have fathers, if they have to live in this society run by old men. Might as well get used to it … Not that Daniel thinks he’s old. His new girlfriend is twenty-three.”

“Gee. At least Leigh’s is twenty-six … Have you met this Susannah?”

“She’s nice, Vinnie, I think you’d like her.”

“Do you?”

Natalie swallowed. “Oh, you know, she’s okay.”

“You do like her!” She wanted to weep with betrayal. “She must be wonderful if even you like her so much!”

“Aw, come on, she’s nice; that’s all. She’s crazy in love with Leigh, she has some politics. She’s good with the kids—Peezie adores her.”

Stealing the love of her niece. “What does she look like? Describe her. Exactly.”

“She’s not beautiful, but she’s pretty. A little shorter than you, a little heavier. Her hair is reddish brown. She has beautiful skin—peachy. It glows”

“How much heavier?”

“You know something funny, love? She kind of looks like you. I mean like you looked, you know, when Leigh married you. But she isn’t anything like you. She’s a softie”

“Hmp. What does she do? Besides love Leigh like crazy and live in my apartment.”

“She teaches handicapped kids. What they call special needs. When Leigh met her she was working out on the Island and they only saw each other weekends. Then she got a job in the city and they started living together.”

”How serious is this thing? For real. Tell me.”

“Vinnie, he really did wait for you. But it’s not about to pan out for you two … He meets lots of women. He’s a minor celebrity, he’s available. Susannah’s the best one yet. You should have met the actress he was running around with in the winter—no politics, a monstrous sore running ego, and manipulative.”

“Why
is he serious about her? Why her?” She experienced a moment of guilt in front of Natalie, plotting to expel this unknown young woman from her husband’s life. Not exactly female solidarity. Natalie could make Vida feel her deficiencies.

“She’s the physical type that knocks him dead, and probably he thinks he can, you know, hold on to this one. She won’t join the guerrillas in the mountains or even me in the battered women’s shelter.”

“He’ll get bored” She rubbed her eyes, feeling the skin for lines. “It wasn’t so good with Leigh this time. He never came West and I couldn’t get East, so a lot of time went by … Sam sounded great on the phone. I’d like to see him.”

“I thought about bringing him along, but taking him to a women’s health conference seemed a little much. He’s five feet nine already, and his voice is changing. I’m scared he’s going to be seven feet tall. And he eats and eats. One of the reasons I’ve been slow to leave Daniel is ‘cause I can’t afford to feed Sam on my own. He eats so much I get hostile sometimes. I feel like I’m shoveling it into a furnace.”

“But he sounded
together,
such a person already.”

“He is. So’s Peezie. My gazelle, my antelope. Fanon’s a little slower coming along.”

“Well, he’s younger.”

“Not just. Slower. Whinier. More dependent. Got spoiled, maybe. He could shape up.” Natalie sighed, picking sand out of the corner of her eye, one of her nervous quirks when she was upset, along with turning her ring round and round, the ring that had finally disappeared. “Peezie and Sam, they were Movement babies. Frankie grew up out on the Island. It’s supposed to be better for kids, but I don’t know … “

“What’s happening with Daniel? Why are you finally breaking up? Why
M
OW?”

“There’s nothing left, kid. I realized that. Listen, Daniel called from the city to say he wasn’t coming home on a Friday night, and I felt so much relief I was startled. The next day, this storm hit us. The basement was flooded, the power was off, trees were down in the street. I called him at his girlfriend’s—Katy—and told him not to try to drive. Somehow, going through the weekend without him was a treat. I realized I don’t like living with him. Slowly it’s come to that. I just don’t like it.”

“But you’ve lived together so many years” Vida said doubtfully. “Won’t you have trouble getting used to being alone?”

“I’m not scared. It isn’t as if I don’t work and don’t have my own friends … It’s been getting worse. Less and less talking. Less sex. More political differences … It’s like a noise that starts off so soft you can’t hardly hear it. Real slow it gets louder until you realize it’s driving you mad. Then it stops. And you know you just don’t want to live with that noise anymore” Natalie shrugged, palms up. “Daniel’s that to me. Awful to say it. Finally there’s no love and just this big growing annoyance.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, sweetie. Sometimes I think I’ll move into the city, into Park Slope in Brooklyn maybe. I got a lot of friends there. But I’m real involved in our shelter … “

“Natty, how’s Ruby? Is she mad at me because I haven’t been able to see her in so long?”

Natalie touched Vida’s cheek. “She never really understands. She wants to see you, a lot. She counts the months … But she never really learns how it is with you. When the birthday present came from Cincinnati, she says, Oh, Vida’s in Cincinnati, when I know you’d never have something mailed from where you are—”

“Did the sweater fit? A friend knitted it” Alice had, in the latter stages of her recuperation.

“That shade of blue is gorgeous on her. It’s a little tight, but she said it’s stretching.”

“I wanted to stop by Chicago, but I couldn’t. I had to go through the Southwest and up through Arkansas. I had work to do. How’s Paul?” Even though Paul and Natalie were not blood relatives, since Paul was Vida’s older brother, they were close enough so that Vida knew Natalie always saw him when she visited Chicago.

“Always a mess!” Natalie shook her head. “This new wife, she’s got the mind of a pencil sharpener. Why did he leave Joy? Our niece Marsha is having a baby. And his own baby boy is darling.”

Dutifully Vida asked about Sharon and Michael Morris, but she hardly listened to the answers as they went to meet Joel. Vida clutched her sister’s arm, holding the package of boots on her far side. She had never been able to care for Daniel and had not seen him since 1970; yet an impending divorce scared her. Things were changing with her unable to influence the course of events, unable to bear witness, give counsel, help, hold, comfort. “Natalie, you’ve been married to that oaf since 1964. What’ll you
do
on your own?”

“Now, now, after you busted up with your
oaf
Kevin, you went years with nobody. This here is the first time since you went … traveling you’re serious about some guy. I won’t be alone. Far from it, with three kids.”

“There isn’t anybody else?”

Natalie shook her head no. “Vinnie, I don’t have time to tie my shoe tight. You think I got time for
romance?”

“What about Suki? Are you sorry you didn’t leave Daniel when she wanted you to?”

Natalie scratched her curls. “I don’t know if I could live with Suki even as long as I stuck it out with Daniel. It was so romantic, sweetie. I needed a romance after all those years, I guess. But she wanted me to give up the world entirely and cleave only unto her.”

“But … if she really loved you?”

“I like the idea of being alone with my kids. I can’t seem to explain it. I know we’ll have money troubles, believe it. But … when Daniel and I first set up housekeeping, it was like playing house. It was such fun. I feel that way about living with my kids—I can’t wait for us to play house. You know?”

“How do the kids feel? What do they know?”

“Everything. I’ve never been good at lying to them … Sam doesn’t get on with his father. He’s too hardheaded. He takes my part. Peezie gets more caught in the middle. It’ll be toughest on Fanon—he’s his father’s favorite. He’s more malleable than the rest of us. Daniel takes him along to Katy. He’s young enough so it doesn’t look as odd. With Sam or Peezie, everybody thinks Katy must be Daniel’s daughter too. It’s embarrassing. So he’s been withdrawing from them.”

Vida blurted out, “There he is.”

“Let me guess … Tall guy with the beard?”

“No! Slouching over by the corduroy pants, looking ticked off”‘

“He’s handsome. Really.”

“Natalie, he can’t help that. That wasn’t why I picked him out. You can call him Terry.” She did not bother with introductions but sailed up to him. “My sister says we’ll go eat upstairs. The restaurant even has booze. We can have a drink for a treat.”

“I’m hungry” he said. “I thought you maybe ate”

“Without you? Never.”

Stiffly, looking straight ahead, the three rode up in the elevator. Not until they were all seated at a minute table did Natalie start. “Do you know where you’re going next? Don’t tell me, just say if you have someplace you have to get to.”

“I’m staying East” Vida said. “My scene in L.A. is done”

Joel only made a noise in his throat, looking at his hands.

“Sometimes Vinnie does tasks for me,” Natalie said cautiously, looking hard at him, trying to get him to look back. “For women who need help.”

He looked at her then with his vivid hard green stare.

“If you ever get to have babies, they’ll be gorgeous” Natalie said in one of those spontaneous blundering comments she was famous for. “I just mean, you’re both so good-looking,” she added limply.

For the first time Joel smiled. The waitress appeared.

“Eat as much as you want,” Natalie said. “It’s on me.”

“Really?” He took her at her word and ordered two sandwiches, a soup and a gin-and-tonic. “If she says to trust you, I’ll trust you. What do you want us to do?”

“I have a battered woman married to a cop. He’s pistol-whipped her and thrown his son across the room. He’s dangerous, he’s armed and he uses the police force to track her. So it’s dangerous.”

“Quite” Vida smiled. “An interesting problem” She was showing off a little to Joel, but excitement did course through her. Something useful to do after all. “What does she want?”

“To cross the border from New York to Vermont. Right now she’s well hidden, but she can’t hole up in a dinky apartment with two kids forever. The sooner she’s out, the better.”

“Is she serious?”

“Vinnie, by the time they get to a battered women’s shelter, they’re all serious. It’s a big step. For her it was declaring war.”

“How do you know he hasn’t tailed her?” Joel leaned forward.

The drinks came. Vida put hers aside to wait for the food. Again, she could not afford to be drunk. Joel sipped his. She must discuss that with him later. Natalie continued when she could: “When he found her in the shelter, he came in with a drawn gun. The next day the city started harassing us. We’re quasi-legal. A building inspector appeared and they shut us down. We’re still fighting it, but we got everybody into storage in private homes … We got her in Long Beach, in a house that a woman who’s given us a fair amount of money rents out. If he knew where she was, he’d barge in. What would he be waiting for? The longer he waits, the more chance she has to get away.”

After the food came they worked out strategy, with Natalie drawing them maps on scraps of paper. Where the borrowed car would be waiting. Where to take the woman and her children. What she could be told. Route. “Soon as possible,” Natalie insisted.

Joel propped his head on one hand. “Tomorrow?”

Natalie laughed. “Too soon. I’ll fly back tomorrow. I can get her ready by Wednesday … She’ll give you two hundred—one hundred when you pick her up, one hundred when you deliver her in Vermont.”

“Two hundred?” Joel drawled. “Dandy.” Vida, attuned to him, felt the temperature soar. Of course, he did not have a sister and husband to supplement what he could scrounge, beg, borrow, steal, work off the books for. Fake Social Security cards were possible but risky. When she had been Joan Wagner in Philadelphia, she had had one and had taken a straight secretarial job, during the period when Leigh had been spending half time with her and their marriage had been real again. Then the Feds had closed in and she had to drop that identity and run. She still resented the paycheck she had never received, the week before and three days of the last week she had worked, a total of $180 the government had stolen from her. When was the last time Joel had had two hundred in his pocket? She still had $124 and change from what Leigh had given her.

She remembered the early fugitive days when half the police in the country seemed to have nothing to do but search for them, when a massive posse of FBI agents pursued them. No time for false I.D., no time for laying down new lives, no time for anything but running, never sleeping in the same place two nights straight. People had hidden them; people had run them through the night from hidey-hole to hidey-hole—the kids, the middle-aged factory workers and teachers, the Old Lefties and pacifists and Quakers: many she had never seen again; some, like Laura, still there to help.