Going Down Fast by Marge Piercy Page B

gave me some money too.”
    â€œDoes she do that often?”
    â€œNot often enough. Think I’m ashamed? They have more than they know what to do with.” He snorted. “Not that he ever hands any over. Fern does it on the sly.”
    She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the backseat was filled with packages. Frozen sirloin and porterhouse steaks and lambchops they loaded directly into the freezer. The bag Leon toted in with care held a pot of stuffed cabbage. “Put that on, heat it up for supper. Fern’s stuffed cabbage is the greatest.”
    She would make her stuffed cabbage for him. She would not be outdone by anybody’s mother. Out of another bag came two sportshirts with pins still in them, a Scottish sweater with a mothhole, a bottle of good men’s aftershave used perhaps twice, recent issues of Commentary and a pair of ice-skates. Another bag held Chinook salmon, kosher soups, sardines, asparagus, fancy mixed Chinese vegetables, water biscuits and red caviar.
    The kitchen table was hidden by a grove of empty pop bottles, forcing them to eat in the livingroom. “Film’s expensive,” he mumbled as he ate. “Those damn foundations swimming in money, you’d think they’d give a little but they wait till you’ve made it halfway, and then who needs them? Scared of being caught wrong. Fern can’t see my stuff for shit but she tries, anyhow.”
    â€œYou’re closer to her than to your father, right?”
    â€œAt least she’s a human being, or she used to be. Sheldon sounds like a vulture, he acts like a vulture, he thinks like a vulture. He even smells like one. Fern married him for security, and I bet she’s sorry. They stayed married for the children’s sake, my poor ball-less brother Sidney and me.” He had turned up cranky but now he was relaxed. She did not set out to adapt to his moods or shape them, but she could not help taking on a certain amount of protective emotional coloration from a man. He was old to be wrapped up in his family, but perhaps seeing his mother stirred up a swarm of annoyances from the past. He was still talking about his father, a passionate bitterness thickening his voice. “Sheldon’s in love with the dirty work he’s doing for the University—facilitating renewal. Like pulling strings and putting the pressure on where it hurts. He thinks the University is pure and that makes him pure. He’s always been self-righteous, but now he’s impossible, he’s leading a damn holy crusade against the lowdown and the unworthy.”
    â€œTell your father he’s forcing you—and incidentally me—out of our snug homes.”
    Leon laughed: the teeth of a saw catching one by one on his larynx. “That’s the idea, gang. Sheldon believes in the good, the true, and the beautiful. He wants to be where the good people are—only heaven is here and the points are bread and status. He’s prepared to sacrifice for his ideals. Like old Abraham he’s all set to knife his son. Anyhow, he has another.” He got up abruptly. “Let’s get our asses out of here. Let’s wash all this rot down with some beer.”
    She should not have let him talk so long about his family. On her side of the rusty Buick she curled up. Leon was likable once you came to know him: prickly and stubborn but loyal. He always had some project afoot to get a friend something he thought they needed, a job, a woman, away from home, back into school, into analysis. Coming near him she stepped into a palpable field of interest. The converse was an equally strong pull for sympathy, a tugging at the breast she suspected him unaware of. She did not mind that pull for nothing came more cheaply than empathy with a man. He had only to capture her attention.
    â€œWhen Joye and I got married he offered us a thousand bucks if we’d swear to keep a kosher kitchen. Ace, I told him to