You’re the ideal man.”
“They hate my guts. They’d like to kill me, and now they’re doing it. Biff, bang. I’m through. Haul away the garbage.”
“George, if you feel this seriously,” my mother said, “I’d waste no time seeing Doc Appleton.”
Whenever my father received the sympathy he sought, he became brusque and antic. “I don’t want to see the bastard. He’ll tell me the truth.”
My mother must have turned away, because it was my grandfather who spoke. “Truth is ev-er a comfort,” he said. “Only the Devil loves lies.” His voice, interposed between the two others, seemed vaster but fainter than theirs, as if he were a giant calling from a distance.
“The Devil and me, Pop,” my father said. “I love lies. I tell ’em all day. I’m paid to tell ’em.”
Footsteps sounded on the uncarpeted kitchen floor. My mother was crossing to the bottom of the stairs, at the corner of the house diagonally opposite my bed. “Peter!” she called. “Are you awake?”
I closed my eyes and relaxed into my warm groove. The blankets my body had heated became soft chains dragging me down; my mouth held a stale ambrosia lulling me to sleep again. The lemon-yellow wallpaper, whose small dark medallions peered out from the pattern with faces like frowning cats, remained printed, negatively in red, on my eyelids. The dream I had been dreaming returned to me. Penny and I had been beside a tree. The top buttons of her blouse were undone, pearl buttons, undone as they had been weeks ago, before Christmas vacation, in the dark Buick on the school parking lot, the heater ticking by our knees. But this was broad day, in a woods of slim trees pierced by light. A blue jay, vivid in every feather, hung in the air motionless, like a hummingbird, but his wings stiffly at his sides, his eye alert like a bead of black glass. When he moved, it was like a stuffed bird being twitched on a string; but he was definitely alive.
“Peter, time to get u-up!”
Her wrist in my lap, I was stroking the inside of her forearm. Stroking and stroking with a patience drawn thinner and thinner. Her silk sleeve was pushed up from the green-veined skin. The rest of the class seemed gathered about us in the woods, watching; though there was no sense of faces. She leaned forward, my Penny, my little dumb, worried Penny. Suddenly, thickly, I loved her. A wonderful honey gathered in my groin. Her flecked green irises were perfect circles with worry; an inner bit of her lower lip, glimmering with moisture,glittered nervously: the aura was like that when, a month ago in that dark car, I found my hand between her warm thighs which were pressed together; it seemed to dawn on her slowly that my hand was there, for a minute passed before she begged, “Don’t,” and when I withdrew my hand, she looked at me like that. Only that was in shadow and this was in brilliant light. The pores of her nose showed. She was unnaturally still; something was going wrong.
The back of my left hand felt hot and moist as it had when it was pulled from between her thighs; sap flowed from my extremities toward the fork of my body. I seemed delicately distended in the midst of several processes. When from downstairs a loud bumble came crashing, signalling that my father was going to look at the kitchen clock, I wanted to cry,
No, wait—
“Hey Cassie, tell the kid it’s seven-seventeen. I left a whole mess of papers to correct, I got to be there at eight. Zimmerman’ll have my neck.”
That was it, yes; and in the dream it didn’t even seem strange. She became the tree. I was leaning my face against the tree trunk, certain it was her. The last thing I dreamed was the bark of the tree: the crusty ridges and in the black cracks between them tiny green flecks of lichen. Her. My Lord, it was her: help me. Give her back to me.
“
Peter!
Are you trying to torment your father?”
“No! I’m up. For Heaven’s sake.”
“Well then
get
up.
Get
up. I mean it,
“They hate my guts. They’d like to kill me, and now they’re doing it. Biff, bang. I’m through. Haul away the garbage.”
“George, if you feel this seriously,” my mother said, “I’d waste no time seeing Doc Appleton.”
Whenever my father received the sympathy he sought, he became brusque and antic. “I don’t want to see the bastard. He’ll tell me the truth.”
My mother must have turned away, because it was my grandfather who spoke. “Truth is ev-er a comfort,” he said. “Only the Devil loves lies.” His voice, interposed between the two others, seemed vaster but fainter than theirs, as if he were a giant calling from a distance.
“The Devil and me, Pop,” my father said. “I love lies. I tell ’em all day. I’m paid to tell ’em.”
Footsteps sounded on the uncarpeted kitchen floor. My mother was crossing to the bottom of the stairs, at the corner of the house diagonally opposite my bed. “Peter!” she called. “Are you awake?”
I closed my eyes and relaxed into my warm groove. The blankets my body had heated became soft chains dragging me down; my mouth held a stale ambrosia lulling me to sleep again. The lemon-yellow wallpaper, whose small dark medallions peered out from the pattern with faces like frowning cats, remained printed, negatively in red, on my eyelids. The dream I had been dreaming returned to me. Penny and I had been beside a tree. The top buttons of her blouse were undone, pearl buttons, undone as they had been weeks ago, before Christmas vacation, in the dark Buick on the school parking lot, the heater ticking by our knees. But this was broad day, in a woods of slim trees pierced by light. A blue jay, vivid in every feather, hung in the air motionless, like a hummingbird, but his wings stiffly at his sides, his eye alert like a bead of black glass. When he moved, it was like a stuffed bird being twitched on a string; but he was definitely alive.
“Peter, time to get u-up!”
Her wrist in my lap, I was stroking the inside of her forearm. Stroking and stroking with a patience drawn thinner and thinner. Her silk sleeve was pushed up from the green-veined skin. The rest of the class seemed gathered about us in the woods, watching; though there was no sense of faces. She leaned forward, my Penny, my little dumb, worried Penny. Suddenly, thickly, I loved her. A wonderful honey gathered in my groin. Her flecked green irises were perfect circles with worry; an inner bit of her lower lip, glimmering with moisture,glittered nervously: the aura was like that when, a month ago in that dark car, I found my hand between her warm thighs which were pressed together; it seemed to dawn on her slowly that my hand was there, for a minute passed before she begged, “Don’t,” and when I withdrew my hand, she looked at me like that. Only that was in shadow and this was in brilliant light. The pores of her nose showed. She was unnaturally still; something was going wrong.
The back of my left hand felt hot and moist as it had when it was pulled from between her thighs; sap flowed from my extremities toward the fork of my body. I seemed delicately distended in the midst of several processes. When from downstairs a loud bumble came crashing, signalling that my father was going to look at the kitchen clock, I wanted to cry,
No, wait—
“Hey Cassie, tell the kid it’s seven-seventeen. I left a whole mess of papers to correct, I got to be there at eight. Zimmerman’ll have my neck.”
That was it, yes; and in the dream it didn’t even seem strange. She became the tree. I was leaning my face against the tree trunk, certain it was her. The last thing I dreamed was the bark of the tree: the crusty ridges and in the black cracks between them tiny green flecks of lichen. Her. My Lord, it was her: help me. Give her back to me.
“
Peter!
Are you trying to torment your father?”
“No! I’m up. For Heaven’s sake.”
“Well then
get
up.
Get
up. I mean it,
Similar Books
