Going Down Fast by Marge Piercy Page A

desperate malaise spreading over her face. The next morning she could count on Asher’s voice regular and relentless as dripping water:
    â€œNow let’s try to understand why you did that. You’ll agree, I think, that it was a strange thing to do? A little immature? What did you plan to say when someone asked you where I was?”
    She swallowed her drink and went to get her coat, as Rowley came in with a group. He lagged behind to speak to her. “Where’s Asher? Out there fighting for a cleaner Chicago?”
    She felt silly enough to tell him. Smiling he took her arm. “I’d give you a ride, but I came with Cal. Come on and I’ll walk you home.”
    By the time they had gone the few blocks to the townhouse she and Asher were exorbitantly buying, they had come alive to each other and besides the night was mild with spring after the long craggy winter so that one or the other had suggested walking further. Eventually they had strolled out on the point and sat talking on a rock. She felt feverish: she thought she could feel the blood fizz through her veins, the hair growing in her scalp. She had told herself her joy was a freak of the thaw, but she felt a desolate loss when suddenly she saw the the east was turning gray and sat bolt upright remembering she was married.
    â€œGod, it’s morning,” she had interrupted. “I have to go, now . I have no idea what I’m going to tell Asher.”
    In answer his face went somber, heavy. She thought she had angered him. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. When she drew free the rim of the sky was lighter, and she knew with a fierce pleasurable terror that she wanted him. She was shocked and gratified. Standing she gave him her hand, and he took her home. She did not expect to see him again unless she ran into him with Asher.
    Asher was asleep, and she made her bed on the couch. In the morning when she told him she had gone out for coffee with Rowley, they had one of their bad arguments. She had felt no guilt that morning, only a sense of delight she was hard put not to try to share with Asher. She could not keep from telling him she had been with Rowley not only because truth was her habit but because saying his name was a sharp pleasure. Somehow she expected Asher to understand: a walk with Rowley in the spring was not to be disparaged. As if she had been on vacation, she perceived in herself new readiness to try to fulfill Asher’s ideas of wifehood. She longed for a chance to demonstrate her strengthened patience, promptness and fortitude. She got it.
    Three days later Asher had gathered data on Rowley. He reported it with obvious distaste for the resemblance of this transfer of information to gossip. She listened in squashed fury. She had to question the night and ask if he had been simply on the make. His words and gestures began to haunt her. All of the time like a steady lowpitched hum she found herself thinking of him. She felt raw and sore, she wanted to call him to account, she wanted to justify him. The next time she saw him, by accident in the Loop, she had formed defenses.
    Not, to be sure, sufficient. Her marriage just might have been salvageable had she not seen him at all, but she could not let go feeling alive. Each time she saw him she resolved to give nothing, to take nothing. Each time he met her believing she would break off. That tension had perhaps never died.
    She opened her eyes and watched a gull maneuver and dive over water blue and soft as morning glories. A pity they could not be friends because there was no one like him. She was glad to have come through the pain of breaking and out the other side without resorting to hatred. She was heartily glad.
    The afternoon was turning chilly when Leon found her.
    She walked with him to the car. “How did it go with your mother?”
    â€œOkay, okay.” He scratched his head in annoyance, his voice surly. “Fern gave me a lecture, but she