Free Vida by Marge Piercy

Kevin did not always know what Kevin would do, although after he had done it he would slap together a set of reasons. Because of his charisma, because of his temper, because of his brute strength, few people challenged his reasons; she had been one of the few to do so, wrenching herself slowly free of him, a Siamese twin slowly sawing through the bridge of bone and gristle night after night. Let me live my life, she thought, and never see him again, never face him across a room, a courtroom, a field, a ditch. We would kill each other.
    Yet she shuddered when she thought of him still after so many years, and the mud of shame filled her throat. Wrong, somehow all wrong. A compulsion gone rotten. She was able to make doing the wash last until nine thirty, when the laundromat began to fill up. Then she loaded her pack again; discarded the newspaper, tearing up the relevant page, and set out at a brisk walk. She wanted to locate a good phone: one in a real booth, not likely to be tapped, not too conspicuous and in working order. She called the operator with a question about collect calls just to be sure the phone worked.
    At five to ten she moved into the booth to make sure she had it at ten. Pretending to be talking to someone, she located the numbers for Natalie, translating the letter code in her head into digits. She never dared carry anything resembling an address book, but used scraps of paper with apparent notes on them. At ten on her watch she dialed the first of the numbers. It rang and rang. Six, seven times. She had to hang up. It was dangerous to let pay phones ring too long, because somebody would pick them up out of curiosity or annoyance, and it did not do to call attention that a particular pay phone would ring at certain intervals. She dialed the second number. Natalie had to be there. Again it rang, rang. On the sixth ring she hung up.
    Checked her watch. Could she be fast? She would wait five minutes and try again. Natalie could be late. With kids anything could happen. Natalie’s car wouldn’t start. She got caught in every red light. Again Vida mimicked making a call until it was five after and she could try the numbers again. This time for a change of luck she dialed them in the reverse older: first the second, which again rang and rang. Then the first. She let it continue this time. Ah, an answer.
    “Hey, who’re you trying to call?” a male voice asked.
    “Jimmy, is that Jimmy? Is Mom home?” Vida said quickly.
    “You got the wrong number. This here’s a drugstore, lady.” He hung up.
    So much for that today. Damn it, she was half tempted, but only half, to call Natalie’s house. Where was she? Was something wrong? Had Natalie forgotten? No, not possible. Now Vida had to kill a day until tomorrow. She thought about taking the Long Island Rail Road into the city and descending on Hank, but she didn’t want to. She felt nervous about him, a tingle of apprehension. That videotape in the drugstore; Kevin caught. No, she didn’t want to go into the city to wait, but she had to see Natalie. She was missing Natalie all through. She wasn’t scheduled to call into the Network until tomorrow, so they’d be of no help sheltering her overnight.
    She wandered the pleasant old streets disconsolately, her fatigue sloshing in her limbs. Up since 4:30 after maybe three hours’ sleep, she was hungry, she was tired, she didn’t relish hanging around all day with a pack on her back. She also didn’t want to go sit in a restaurant and start pissing away the money Leigh had given her. A hairdresser’s, a boutique, a thrift shop, a news dealer’s, a health-food store. She paused. Health-food stores were useful for getting off the streets. She could usually chat with people working there, who wanted her to try their favorite diet or supplement. At least, she could lay her pack down and stand for a while reading a book on nutrition or a good herbal.
    Alice and Eva and she had studied herbs and passed on what they