“I don’t know.”
“Is it perhaps that you felt your father’s emotions had power in the family, power over your mother, your sister, and you, and you were always stepping around his feelings, trying not to upset him. And you’ve felt the same thing in your marriage, perhaps reproduced the same story, and all the while you’ve gotten angrier and angrier?”
Lord, the woman is sharp, I thought. I answered her with a small, meek “Yes.”
* * *
Try at another sex entry:
It started in the library with Kant. Libraries are sexual dream factories. The languor brings it on. The body must adjust its position—a leg crossed, a palm leaned upon, a back stretched—but the body is going nowhere. The reading and the looking up from one’s reading brings it on; the mind leaves the book and meanders onto a thigh or an elbow, real or imagined. The gloom of the stacks brings it on with its suggestion of the hidden. The dry odor of paper and bindings and very possibly the smell of old glue bring it on. It wasn’t difficult Kant: The Critique of Practical Reason, much easier than Pure, but I was twenty, and Practical was quite difficult enough, and he leaned over me to see which book it was. His warm breath, his beard, very close. Professor B. in his white shirt, his shoulder an inch from mine. My whole body stiffened, and I said nothing. Then he was reading in a low voice, but the only word I remember is tutelage . He said it slowly, enunciating each syllable, and I was his. It ended badly, as they say, whoever they are, but his eyes watching me as I undressed— No, your blouse first. Now your skirt. Slowly —his long fingers moving into my pubic hair, then withdrawing, teasing me, smiling, creating desration—these wanton pleasures in the library after it had closed, these I keep safe in memory.
* * *
“George is dead,” my mother said, and pressed her index finger to her mouth for a moment. “They found her this morning on the floor in the bathroom.”
“Poor George,” Regina said. She pursed her lips. “I doubt I’ll get to one hundred and two; it’s really extraordinary when you contemplate it, even for a moment.”
Did people contemplate for a moment?
“Not with my leg,” she continued. “I had never heard of what I have, you know. The doctor told me if I’m not careful, one day it goes right to your brain or your lungs or somewhere and you’re dead, instantly.” Her eyes looked moist. “If I forget the Coumadin, then, well, it’s over.”
“She loved to tell people her age.” Abigail was steadying her hunched self with one hand on the edge of the table. She turned her head in my direction. “Never tired of it. Her oldest daughter’s seventy-nine.” She breathed in. “It seems another one goes every day. Alive one minute. Dead the next.”
Peg examined her hands on the table. They were heavily spotted and lined with great protruding veins. “She’s with her Maker.” Peg had a true warble in her voice, like the throaty sound of a pigeon. “And Alvin,” she added.
“Unless they’ve remade the man in heaven, God save her from Alvin,” Abigail said forcefully. “The most persnickety little tyrant I’ve ever seen. His pens had to lie just so, an inch apart, his collars had to be ironed flat, flat, flat. The bed, Lord, the bed and its corners. George was lucky to be rid of him. Had twenty-seven blessed years without that bald, nasty little despot.”
“Abigail, it’s not right to speak like that about the dead,” Peg said, her voice lilting sweetly.
Abigail was not listening. She was pressing a piece of paper into my hand under the table. I closed my hand around it and tucked into my pocket.
My mother shook her head. “I’ve never thought it was right to turn people into paragons of virtue after their deaths, either.”
I murmured an agreement.
“Nothing wrong with looking on the bright side.” Peg’s voice lifted a whole octave on the
“Is it perhaps that you felt your father’s emotions had power in the family, power over your mother, your sister, and you, and you were always stepping around his feelings, trying not to upset him. And you’ve felt the same thing in your marriage, perhaps reproduced the same story, and all the while you’ve gotten angrier and angrier?”
Lord, the woman is sharp, I thought. I answered her with a small, meek “Yes.”
* * *
Try at another sex entry:
It started in the library with Kant. Libraries are sexual dream factories. The languor brings it on. The body must adjust its position—a leg crossed, a palm leaned upon, a back stretched—but the body is going nowhere. The reading and the looking up from one’s reading brings it on; the mind leaves the book and meanders onto a thigh or an elbow, real or imagined. The gloom of the stacks brings it on with its suggestion of the hidden. The dry odor of paper and bindings and very possibly the smell of old glue bring it on. It wasn’t difficult Kant: The Critique of Practical Reason, much easier than Pure, but I was twenty, and Practical was quite difficult enough, and he leaned over me to see which book it was. His warm breath, his beard, very close. Professor B. in his white shirt, his shoulder an inch from mine. My whole body stiffened, and I said nothing. Then he was reading in a low voice, but the only word I remember is tutelage . He said it slowly, enunciating each syllable, and I was his. It ended badly, as they say, whoever they are, but his eyes watching me as I undressed— No, your blouse first. Now your skirt. Slowly —his long fingers moving into my pubic hair, then withdrawing, teasing me, smiling, creating desration—these wanton pleasures in the library after it had closed, these I keep safe in memory.
* * *
“George is dead,” my mother said, and pressed her index finger to her mouth for a moment. “They found her this morning on the floor in the bathroom.”
“Poor George,” Regina said. She pursed her lips. “I doubt I’ll get to one hundred and two; it’s really extraordinary when you contemplate it, even for a moment.”
Did people contemplate for a moment?
“Not with my leg,” she continued. “I had never heard of what I have, you know. The doctor told me if I’m not careful, one day it goes right to your brain or your lungs or somewhere and you’re dead, instantly.” Her eyes looked moist. “If I forget the Coumadin, then, well, it’s over.”
“She loved to tell people her age.” Abigail was steadying her hunched self with one hand on the edge of the table. She turned her head in my direction. “Never tired of it. Her oldest daughter’s seventy-nine.” She breathed in. “It seems another one goes every day. Alive one minute. Dead the next.”
Peg examined her hands on the table. They were heavily spotted and lined with great protruding veins. “She’s with her Maker.” Peg had a true warble in her voice, like the throaty sound of a pigeon. “And Alvin,” she added.
“Unless they’ve remade the man in heaven, God save her from Alvin,” Abigail said forcefully. “The most persnickety little tyrant I’ve ever seen. His pens had to lie just so, an inch apart, his collars had to be ironed flat, flat, flat. The bed, Lord, the bed and its corners. George was lucky to be rid of him. Had twenty-seven blessed years without that bald, nasty little despot.”
“Abigail, it’s not right to speak like that about the dead,” Peg said, her voice lilting sweetly.
Abigail was not listening. She was pressing a piece of paper into my hand under the table. I closed my hand around it and tucked into my pocket.
My mother shook her head. “I’ve never thought it was right to turn people into paragons of virtue after their deaths, either.”
I murmured an agreement.
“Nothing wrong with looking on the bright side.” Peg’s voice lifted a whole octave on the
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