When she came out of the bathroom, Suzanne was awake and waiting to use it. She noticed neither of them used Beverly’s bathroom. “Mother, I think she died about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Why didn’t you get me up? I should have stayed awake.”
“It happened so gradually, I was sitting beside her, and I didn’t even see it. Her breathing just got shallower and shallower and slower and slower and then I realized it had stopped. I never saw it happen. I just looked at her and realized she wasn’t breathing any longer.”
“It was peaceful like that?”
“I didn’t even see it happen.”
Suzanne went into Beverly’s room and bent over her. She touched Beverly’s face. “She’s getting cold already.” She picked up Mao and carried him off to her room. “We must go to bed, so we can discover the body in the morning. We have to get rid of those bottles.”
“I took them away with me when I left. I left them in a Dumpster on Beacon Hill.”
“Thank you.” Suzanne turned, still holding Mao, and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, sweetheart. I love you.”
Elena wondered for a moment if her mother had guessed what she had done; she doubted it. No one would ever know. Except if she loved someone intensely and she trusted them, maybe she would tell them. But she knew and was proud of herself. She had come through for Beverly, she had come through. She was a better person than she had been, even if most of society would never think so. She was ready to leave home again and plunge back into her life. She had kept her most important promise. She had dared to keep her word to her grandmother. Two small tears ran down her face, and she brushed them away. She gazed back at Grandma lying there, the empty body, and she thought she could feel Beverly thanking her for release, for silence, for the end.
50
Suzanne: A Year Later
Suzanne placed the yahrzeit candle for her mother in the bathtub, for fear of fire. Besides, as she admitted to herself, she found it beautiful to wake in the night and go into the bathroom lit by the small flickering of the candle in its glass. She woke several times that night and lay awake from five on. Today Karla was coming with her daughter Rosella and the twins. Rosella’s husband, Tyrone, couldn’t take off work. They were to arrive from Brooklyn by noon, so that they could all go to the cemetery for the unveiling and be done before sundown, as it was Friday. Elena was going to meet them at the cemetery. Rachel had already arrived and was sleeping in her old room—sleeping far better than her mother, as Suzanne could tell when she checked on her. It was ridiculous to look in on Rachel as if she were a baby, but having her in the house was a precious treat, making it impossible for Suzanne to resist a glimpse of her sleeping daughter lying on her side clutching the pillow to her, as once she had clutched a stuffed rabbit.
Marta drove the van, with Rachel and Karla’s entire family onboard. Suzanne held the squirming Emily on her lap. She was blond like Marta, chubby, avid, curious, and had just begun to talk, more or less. She was still crawling everywhere and in bursts she struggled to get down. She was used to being held by Suzanne, so that was no problem, but all the people excited her. Rachel began making faces at her till she was wildly giggling. “Cool it a little, if you can,” Marta said over her shoulder.
Karla, sitting up front with Marta, turned to beam at the baby. “Such a darling girl! How lucky you are. I was forty when I adopted my first little girl. I wish she could be here today.”
“You know Suwanda can’t be coming east all the time, Mama,” Rosella said, leaning on the back of Suzanne’s seat. “She’s paying off her condo, and San Diego is plenty expensive. She thought the world of Aunt Beverly, so she’d come if she could.”
Suzanne began to wish she had driven her own car, but then she would have had half the relatives in it anyhow. She just wanted to be quiet and find her core, not to lose this odd ritual connection with Beverly. Rachel was looking at her and understood.
“People, I think we should start to get into the mood. We should be thinking about Grandma. This is a memorial for her. To show respect for the dead and to remember her and thus keep her alive in our lives.” It was Rachel’s rabbi voice, fuller, more commanding than her normal speaking voice. Suzanne was just getting used to the change that would come over Rachel when she was being official, when she was on duty. Suzanne was grateful to lapse into silence. “Rosella,” Rachel turned around. “Would you like to hold Emily for a while and give my mother a rest?”
Suzanne thanked Rachel with her eyes and handed Emily to Rosella. The twins set up a clamor, but Suzanne was able to close her eyes and concentrate. A year and a day since Beverly had left them. The pain of that night had never healed. It was still raw within her, but she could not believe Elena and she had done the wrong thing. Beverly would never have acquiesced in continuing. It would have been a long quarrel, not good for any of them. But the raw wound persisted and the guilt. It would never leave her.
A year ago, she had buried her mother. At least the cemetery was not far. She had been back twenty times to the grave. Now came the unveiling of the monument. As they drove in under the metal archway, Suzanne stirred herself to give directions. A car was already there—Elena’s. Suzanne admitted to herself she had expected Elena to be late, but she understood when she saw Jaime and Elena together at the grave site. Jaime was never late. Under his charge, Elena made appointments even with her mother and kept them.
Suzanne had found it hard to take when Elena had moved in with him, but she had gradually got used to it. At least she liked and trusted Jaime, which was more than she could say for most of Elena’s past choices. He was wearing a suit, a dark suit in which he was radiant. Elena was also in a suit. She had several styles now: her former flash at the restaurant, drab student outfits for her classes, and lately a new conservative wardrobe Jaime must have picked out. She suspected those outfits had to do with Elena’s image of herself as a therapist—and the need to accompany Jaime to various functions.
Elena was standing over the grave talking to Beverly about Mao, when Suzanne came up. Elena had her grandmother’s cat. As always Suzanne was a little dazzled by her own daughter. She and Jaime were a striking and gorgeous couple. Suzanne sighed. Jaime had his law degree and was clerking for a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. That was a year’s gig, and then what? She could not tell if Elena was seriously interested in him, nor could she ask her, nor could she guess from Elena’s attitude. She opened her hands mentally and let the matter drop. Elena and she had a warmer relationship these days, but she could never presume on their new cordiality to pry.
As they all shuffled up to the site where a bit of canvas still hung over the stone she had ordered, Rachel took charge. Suzanne remembered meeting her when she returned from Israel deeply, darkly tanned, leaner and more defined. Her eyes looked bigger and greener against her dark skin. Her hair was cropped short to a halo of curls. That assurance, that hardening Suzanne had noticed from the moment Rachel got off the plane was still with her. The daughter Suzanne had sent off was not the daughter she got back, but one who was at once less and more than she had been.
“Judaism gives us great leeway in what we think happens after death. We are not required to believe in an afterlife or reincarnation or heaven or hell or anything in between. We are required to respect and remember the dead. We are here to share our loss of Beverly, our grandmother, our mother, our sister, our aunt, our friend. When I look at this family, I see a legacy she left us. We are a multicultural, multiracial family, and a monument to the risks she took and the bravery she demonstrated in her civil rights work and in her organizing for those who needed her. She sought justice, and to go on seeking justice is her bequest to all of us. Justice in the courts, justice in our religion, justice on the job, justice in the streets and in the legislatures of our land. Justice for everyone, not just the privileged or the fortunate. That is Beverly’s legacy to us. We have lost someone dear and precious. Ha-makom yenahem otcha v’otach. May the Eternal One comf
ort you and may being in this place together today bring comfort to all of us.” She pulled the cloth from the stone, black marble engraved with Peh Nun, Here Lies, Beverly’s Hebrew name, Batsheva bat Shimone v’Ranit, her English name, Beverly Blume, and her dates in both calendars.
Rachel was reciting the Twenty-third Psalm in Hebrew, printed phonetically on the sheets she had handed out. Then she launched into the El Malay Rachamim, while they more or less joined in. Suzanne still remembered it from the funeral. Compassion. They—she and Elena—had tried to demonstrate compassion to Beverly. She would never rest quite easy in her mind that they had done the right thing, but at least they had done what Beverly had asked of them, however difficult. Rachamim was such a beautiful word, but so hard sometimes to act upon. Compassion, pity. It seemed larger than those English words. There had been no inquest. Beverly’s primary stroke doctor had signed the death certificate after a few perfunctory questions, as Elena and she stood holding hands in the rigor of fear. They had buried Beverly the next day.
Now together they recited the Mourners’ Kaddish, which Suzanne had memorized during the last year. She had managed to get to the nearest acceptable synagogue once a week to say it as it was supposed to be recited, in a minyan, but all other days, she had said it in her bedroom upon rising, and that was the best she could do. Respect and remembrance. That she had given, freely. Her eyes flooded briefly with tears and she snuffled them back.
Rachel had brought a bag of stones so that those who had not thought of it could each have a stone to place on Beverly’s grave. “Here at the bet ha-olam, the permanent place, we place a remembrance on the matzevah to show we have come and paid our respect.” Flowers were never used. A stone lasted. Besides, Beverly had not been a flower sort of person. She had never planted a garden or tended one in her life, and she was not the sort of woman to whom men brought flowers or who would ever buy them for herself. Men had taken her out to dinner and on an occasional trip; had brought her bottles of wine and schnapps; had given her scarves and costume jewelry. And one child. But never flowers.
She only wished, looking over to Jaime and Elena standing with less than an inch between them, that she had Jake with her. She had argued his appeal and he was out while it was decided. Still, he had not completely forgiven her for failing him, as he saw it. He had come out of prison wan and haggard. She had told him the truth about Beverly’s death, and perhaps that made some difference. He was still dealing with what had happened to him. On spring break she would fly out to see him, and then they would resume being lovers or they would not. She tried to avoid thinking about it but did not succeed. She needed him now, but she had not been with him when he needed her. They would begin tentatively and then they would see what had survived between them. She put the stone she had brought with her on the top of the black marble marker. “Good-bye,” she said softly. “Good-bye, Mother.”
She waited until Rachel stood alone again and then she went up to her younger daughter and kissed her on the mouth. “Thank you.”
Rachel looked mildly surprised. “You liked the little service? I wanted to keep it simple.”
“I want to thank you for putting it together for me, what I never saw before. That I’m actually doing the same thing my mother was, in a different context. Justice. Thank you, Rachel. That was healing.”
Rachel took her hand. “That’s good to hear. This year, I do more and more services, but sometimes I feel like a fraud. I’m pretending to be a rabbi, ’cause I’m still a student and I know how much I don’t know yet. But you make me feel as if I’m real.”
“Oh, you’re real, sweetheart.” Suzanne looked at her family straggling toward the van and the car. “We’re all real and we try.”
“A sixteenth-century rabbi said that keeping the precepts of our parents is more important than saying Kaddish for them.”
Suzanne smiled for the first time that day. “I don’t care what some sixteenth-century rabbi said, Rachel. I care what you say. And you’ve given me some meaning in this. A sense of continuity with her. I can promise her, we will remember.” She took Rachel’s hand and pulled her along to catch up with Elena, whose arm she took, so that they left together, her between her daughters as Karla walked with her own little family. Away they went slowly from the place where she had left what remained of her mother, except for memories and the quest for justice. Maxine’s appeal was going forward even as she wasted away in Framingham Prison, and Jake was free at last. Suzanne would win that appeal. The trial transcript revealed that the judge had been wildly biased. She would go on teaching and seeking justice, no matter how flawed and partial. Justice in the world, but for each other in intimacy, mercy and as much kindness as she could muster.
About the Author
MARGE PIERCY is renowned as both a poet and novelist. Her fiction includes City of Darkness, City of Light; The Longings of Women; He, She and It; Woman on the Edge of Time; and Gone to Soldiers. She is the author of fifteen books of poetry, including The Art of Blessing the Day and Early Grrrl. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband, Ira Wood, the novelist and publisher of Leapfrog Press. Visit the author at www.margepiercy.com.
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PRAISE FOR
Three Women
“Piercy keeps the plot humming with issues of motherhood, Judaism, generational tensions, sexuality, and independence. Her pacing is confident and she interweaves the three narrative threads with aplomb.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Every new novel by Marge Piercy is a cause for celebration.”
—ALICE HOFFMAN,
NEW YORK TIMES-BESTSELLING AUTHOR
“Marge Piercy holds up a mirror to modern life…. Three Women is a passionately told story, an uninhibited and combustible mix of politics, protest, and pain, a searing treatise on the tenuous situation of women, and if you look deeper—and rest assured, this book will force you to—it’s all that and more.”
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“In Three Women, Piercy reveals the feel and grit of contemporary family life with all the sweep, intensity, and high drama that are her trademarks. I expect that all three of these bold, fascinating women will remain with me for a long time.”
—ALIX KATES SHULMAN, AUTHOR OF
A Good Enough Daughter: A Memoir
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—METRO TIMES (Detroit)
“A lovely and unforgettable novel, filled with wisdom and deep complexities of love between three women in the same family. It will break your heart…fascinating, painful, rich in texture and personality, and very exciting. Piercy has written dozens of wonderful books throughout a distinguished career but this is surely one of her very best.”
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The Milagro Beanfield War AND The Sterile Cuckoo
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A Season in Hell: A Memoir
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The Hidden Life of Dogs
Also by Marge Piercy
POETRY
Early Grrrl
The Art of Blessing the Day
What Are Big Girls Made Of?
Mars and Her Children
Available Light
My Mother’s Body
Stone, Paper, Knife
Circles on the Water
The Moon Is Always Female
The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing
Living in the Open
To Be of Use
4-Telling (with Bob Hershon, Emmett Jarrett, Dick Lourie)
Hard Loving
Breaking Camp
FICTION
Storm Tide (with Ira Wood)
City of Darkness, City of Light
The Longings of Women
He, She and It
Summer People
Gone to Soldiers
Fly Away Home
Braided Lives
Vida
The High Cost of Living
Woman on the Edge of Time
Small Changes
Dance the Eagle to Sleep
Going Down Fast
OTHER
The Last White Class: A Play (with Ira Wood)
Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt: Essays
Early Ripening: American Women’s Poetry Now: An Anthology
The Earth Shines Secretly: A Book of Days (with paintings by Nell Blaine)
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