Storm Tide by Marge Piercy, Ira Wood Page A

opera and rock duking it out in the ears of everyone. Two teenagers were having a fierce argument. Someone had started a fire that was smoking badly. No one was tending it.
    She found Natasha in the kitchen trying to make lunch, near tears because she had burnt the tomato soup.
    Judith put down her bag on a kitchen chair and took over. She tried to send Natasha off to amuse herself, but the girl begged to stay. “I want to help. I have to learn how to do all this!”
    “Won’t you go with your mother?”
    “To that stupid place where people walk slowly like zombies and sit on the ground with stuck-up smiles? No thank you. I’d rather be with Daddy. Besides, I’m hoping he gets married again real soon.”
    Gordon had come quietly into the kitchen. She could feel him behind them. She realized she had begun to be aware of him physically. She did not want to turn, but finally she had to.
    He was propped against the doorjamb, amused. “You’re making orderout of chaos. A rare talent. Everyone here seems to have the opposite knack.”
    “Is that why Fern gave up?”
    “Let’s talk about that another time.” He was wearing a tee and shorts. His body was lean and tightly muscled, a much harder body than his son had. As if he could read her thoughts, she felt her face heat. She turned back to the stove.
    It was twilight. A group of them had decided to stroll on the beach. She started off walking with a young woman whose thesis advisor Gordon had been. They talked about the Reagan administration. Gordon appeared at her elbow. Gradually she found herself walking with him instead. He was full of questions. They sat on the beach as the last lavender light drained from the sky, the waves whooshing in over the pebbles to their bare feet.
    “So, where do you come from, Miss Judith, lawyer? Not New York or Boston. You have no obvious accent.”
    “I grew up in Brooklyn.”
    “So much for my ear. Where in Brooklyn?”
    “The corner of Bedford-Stuyvesant that touches Flatbush Avenue and Prospect Park. I am the illegitimate child of a doctor whose name I bear and a mother who was born in Prague, married and divorced in Turkey—I think—and may have had a son there I know nothing about. She met my father in Mexico.”
    “Why didn’t he marry your mother?”
    “He was married already. To a very middle-class lady. He had two daughters, both older than me.”
    She did not know when she decided to tell the truth. She did not know why. Perhaps she felt it did not matter or perhaps she felt it mattered very much. She found herself compelled. His attention was like a drug that loosened her mouth. Suddenly she wanted to be who she was. She had developed a proficiency for obfuscating her past; but now she just wanted to speak of herself. She decided to take that enormous chance for the first time in her life. Her husband, Mark, had known less about her after a year of marriage than this man knew right now.
    They spent the evening talking, until the breeze grew cool and she was chilled. Walking back to the compound, he put his arm around her. He led her to a room she assumed was his. She resisted the pressure of his arm and stood flatfooted in the hall. “I don’t have casual sex,” she said, planting her feet. “It doesn’t appeal to me.”
    “Who says this is casual?”
    “I’ve only been with two men, and one of them I was married to.”
    He frowned, tilting on the balls of his feet, regarding her. “I must say, I’m disappointed. A lack of curiosity I didn’t expect in you.”
    She turned away. “There are other things to be curious about.”
    He stepped back. “You’re too young for me. Of course.”
    “I’m not too young for you!” she snapped. “I’m more mature and more capable than either of your wives I’ve seen so far.”
    He began to laugh helplessly, sliding down the doorjamb. She gave him a hand and drew him to his feet. He opened the door to his bedroom and bowed her in. She went.
    What she had