All My Relations by Christopher McIlroy

potlucks.”
    â€œO.K.” Julia held up her hands. “No questions.”
    â€œYou know what would be lovely?” Julia said. A joint dinner for Philip, Tim, and Linda.
    Philip was noncommittal.
    After a few days Julia mentioned the idea again.
    â€œMy interest is in you,” Philip said.
    â€œBut they are me, Tim is.”
    â€œThat’s an overpopulated armful for me.” Philip smiled.
    â€œDon’t put me in a position where I have to have all these little drawers, ‘Tim,’ ‘Philip’… Please.”
    â€œI like my drawer.”
    Though she hadn’t disbelieved him, the tangible evidence ofPhilip’s literary accomplishments stunned Julia. She turned over in her hands the hard-paper quarterlies with their austere cover designs, to read his name on the contributors’ lists. The most recent was ten years old.
    She borrowed them. Rhymed but metrically unpredictable, his poems, even the youngest, were predominantly elegaic. One conjured a circus from its abandoned grounds, overgrown with thorns. In another two friends discoursed ironically on love amid the fleshpile of a public beach.
    Always a reader, Julia now studied literature systematically, analyzing texts in a notebook, to prepare for talks with Philip. For his birthday she composed a poem.
    â€œPoetry isn’t your forte,” he said, adding hurriedly, “but you are definitely in this poem. The sentiment is quite affecting.”
    When a rancher friend presented her with veal steaks, Julia again proposed the family dinner.
    â€œOur balance is delicate,” Philip said. “Let’s not tip it.”
    â€œI wasn’t aware,” she said. “I thought we were quite robust. Tim and Linda keep asking to meet you.”
    Philip was adamant. “You haven’t made Tim sound like the greatest company.”
    â€œHow can you care for me and not want to know him?” Tightening vocal chords made Julia’s voice strident. “You can’t squirm away from them indefinitely. It’s absurd.”
    â€œWhy not? I’ll credit them with going cheerfully about their business, content without stalking me.”
    Citing a need for “heart gossip,” Linda brought lunch. So eager was she that Julia confessed, yes, she and Philip were “intimate.”
    â€œAll right!” Linda pumped her fist.
    Frankly, Julia said, the intervals between dinners were lengthening. Weekends, especially, were canceled. “A person doesn’tneed sex. For nine years I did without. I didn’t join a nunnery or the Communist Party. I wasn’t bulemic. Flying penises didn’t flock the skies.”
    Linda rolled onto her back, feet kicking. “You didn’t grow a beard. You didn’t put ice cubes in your undies.”
    â€œHow come I feel like I’m going nuts?” She’d awaken fighting to breathe, as if steel bound her chest. The cough, when it came, was a relief.
    â€œI never know when Tim’s going to show up either, two days, a week, three in the morning.”
    â€œHow do you stand it?”
    â€œHere’s me,” Linda said, semicrouching. “I can go this way, that.” She pivoted left, right. “I never see Tim again, I’m sad, I’ll live. Meanwhile I have a helluva lot of fun. Take it day by day. Tim zips me off to a ballgame, or picnicking in the mountains. One night we made masks and grass skirts from newspaper and called the house ‘Hawaiian Zone.’ And then …” Linda whistled, drumming her fingers.
    â€œGood for you. I don’t see that side of Tim.”
    â€œI should hope not.” Linda laughed.
    â€œMy idea of heaven,” Julia said, “is two people giving recklessly to each other, world without end. Amen.”
    â€œWhy do I always initiate our lovemaking now?” Julia asked Philip.
    â€œYou’re the one who holds back sometimes. So I let you