Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [104]
“I’m not sure,” Luciente said slowly, uncovering her face. “I believe sometimes Bolivar seeks to recreate the earlier time when Jackrabbit and Bolivar were always together, each other’s core. To me that’s sliding back to a time now past, when growth means going forward. They seem to me to bind each other.”
“Like what you and Diana did?” Jackrabbit arched his brows.
“Maybe I fear that.”
“But Diana and Bolivar have different gifts. The intensity we slip into together lets us keep up our intimacy although weeks pass apart. Our intimacy has always been centered on work. Even at our most intense and coupled, we turn outward and give to the community.”
“True, Luciente,” Sojourner said. “Your binding with Diana kept you from working well. Never did you work together, yet you fed on each other.”
“Bolivar gets nervous too,” Hawk said tentatively. “Bolivar teases Luciente a lot, and it makes per feel silly. That’s how Bolivar pays Luciente back or punishes per or something.”
A gray-haired person with a deeply weathered face next to Bolivar smiled broadly. “It’s true, how not? Bolivar out-maneuvers Luciente. Bolivar’s clever, quick-witted. Luciente’s talkative but not witty. Luciente can’t strike back quick enough to win verbal battles. Now, Luciente thinks through things politically much more carefully than Bolivar. Everybody in Mouth-of-Mattapoisett knows Luciente was recruited for the reaching-back proj not only for per sending, but because of political soundness. Person can rep us clearly and fairly. But Luciente uses that political weight as a weapon against Bolivar. You smite each other with your different gifts. Isn’t that perverse, no?” The gray-haired person beamed from one to the other.
“Then Bolivar too is afraid,” Parra said. “We go too fast. Let’s ask Bolivar what person fears.”
“If I’m Jackrabbit’s past, how frail. Luciente is the present. The past disappears. Health is Luciente, growth is Luciente—according to Luciente! Yet Jackrabbit and I work well together. What’s backward about that? We love each other differently at twenty-five and nineteen than we did at nineteen and thirteen, but—”
Jackrabbit said to Luciente, “You’ve never stopped loving anybody you loved, you know that. Why can’t you inknow how it is for me? You don’t think you’re stale on Bee because it’s years old.”
Sojourner narrowed her eyes at Bolivar. “Suppose you won this little war? You have Jackrabbit all to yourself. Luciente goes off. Jackrabbit can’t travel with you all the time without giving up per workshop. Jackrabbit just put in for defending and mothering. How can person combine mothering with a wandering life like yours? You’re with us maybe a week out of the month.”
“I never tried to comp Jackrabbit into traveling with me all the time. Only sometimes we’re warmed to work together.”
“But it’s Jackrabbit’s work more than Luciente keeping per here in Mattapoisett, no?” The fat person spoke.
“Fasure.” Bolivar sighed. “Jackrabbit is more bound to place. Always when we traveled together, person would get irritable. Would sleep badly, grow a mean temper, and sling me.”
“Luciente,” Sojourner went on. “Suppose you won your war against Bolivar and whittled per down in the eyes of Jackrabbit. Will you give up Bee and spend all your free time with Jackrabbit? Will you give up the reaching-back proj or your work in the genetics base to work with Jackrabbit, the way Bolivar does?”
“That isn’t what I want!” Luciente said hotly. “Bolivar doesn’t respect me!”
“Do you respect Bolivar?” Parra asked with interest.
“Why … yes.”
“Why?”
“Person is a good artist.”
“Luciente and Bolivar, sit down face to face inside the ring. Look at each other. Then let’s be quiet a few minutes. I’m not sure whether we should continue or just leave you to talk. The source of friction seems to lie in your lack of rapport—no friendship yet constant contact. You must set aside time to speak. To deliver your