A Home At The End Of The World Part 15

Mother, you didn't need to be so jealous of Dad's love for me. You're winning in the end. You're a good-looking attorney untroubled by l.u.s.ts. Dad and I are fading, and we don't know what to do with ourselves . .

I ran my fingers through my hair. Then I went to Bobby and Jonathan's room, and stood in the doorway. Bobby was bent over a dresser drawer, looking for a pair of socks. His a.s.s was larger than the ideal, but shapely. If the word "Rubensesque" applied to men, it would be perfect for Bobby. His flesh was ample but proportionate, like those old pink-and-white beauties cavorting in dusky glades. There was something maidenly about his reticence, though he wasn't feminine in the least. He might have been a stag. A precise tiny-hoofed creature, shy but not delicate.

I said, "Why don't you wear the black gabardine shirt tonight?"

He jumped at the sound of my voice. There was something erotic about surprising him. I felt it like a zipper pulled in my stomach. I was a hunter and he a stout, unsuspecting buck.

"Um, okay," he said.

I went to the closet and took out the shirt. "This is one of my favorites," I said. "We should try and get you another like this."

"Uh-huh."

I held the shirt up to his bare torso. "Beautiful," I said.

Again, the color rose to his face. It wasn't working. Nothing s.e.xual entered the room. I was too motherly in my concern for his appearance. We hadn't worked out a subtext.

Some things couldn't be willed. I'd spent a good deal of time learning even that small lesson.

"Maybe we'll go out for a drink first," I said. "We don't want to get there too early." I laid the shirt on Jonathan's futon. It was black and crisp against the white batting, a snapshot of s.e.xless male beauty. I went to my own room to start putting my face together for another night on the town.

A month pa.s.sed. Winter came early that year. A week before Thanksgiving, snowflakes big as dimes dropped unexpectedly from the sky and eddied around the streetlights. Shop owners on our block frantically swept new snow from their sidewalks as if it was their own youthful mistakes caught up with them. When Bobby came home from work I was sitting on the living-room sofa, doing my toenails and drinking a gla.s.s of wine.

"Hey," he said, brushing snow from the shoulders of his coat.

I nodded. I wasn't in a mood for conversation. Winter was back, sooner than expected.

"This is amazing," he said. "I mean, you don't really think of New York as having, like, this much weather weather . You know?" . You know?"

"Subject to the forces of nature," I said. "Just like anywhere."

I wanted him to choke on his youthful enthusiasm. I was fit company that night only for chain-smoking dowagers or defrocked priests.

"It's really, you know, beautiful beautiful ," he said. "It's so quiet out there. You want to go for a walk in it?" ," he said. "It's so quiet out there. You want to go for a walk in it?"

I offered a look that I hoped summed up my views about frolicking in the snow. But he was rolling now; unstoppable. The weather had him all jacked up. He came and sat on the sofa beside me.

"Watch the nail polish," I said.

"I like that color."

"Bile green. It's what I'm into this season."

"You want to go to a movie later?" he said.

"Nope. I'm getting drunk and wallowing in self-pity tonight."

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know. Don't ask me a question like that right now, unless you really want to hear the answer."

"I do," he said. "I do want to."

"Forget it. It's just wintertime, I don't take well to it. I'll be my old fun-loving self in another six months or so."

"Poor Clare," he said. I defeated the urge to brush nail polish onto his face.

"It's f.u.c.king winter a full month ahead of schedule," I said, "and my ex is coming to town in a couple of weeks. Too much in one month."

"You mean your ex-husband?"

"Yep. His troupe is touring again, they're going to be at the Brooklyn Academy."

"Will you see him?"

"He'll probably call. He always does when he comes to New York. He has this idea that we didn't abuse each other enough when we were married."

"You never talk about him," he said. "I sometimes, you know, forget you were married."

"I've been trying to forget it myself."

"Um, where did you meet him?" he asked.

"You want a real laugh? At Woodstock. Yes, the concert. Seven years of torment born from a weekend of peace and love."

"You were at Woodstock?"

"Mm-hm. I'd dropped out of four different colleges and taken up with a group of people who traveled around New England buying old clothes to sell in New York. We heard about a free concert just a little ways from where we were combing people's attics for Hawaiian shirts. This isn't something I tell just anybody."

"You were really there? You went to the concert?"

"Makes me seem like a relic, doesn't it? It's like having been around before there were cars."

"What was it like?"

"Muddy," I said. "You've never seen so much mud. I felt like a pig. I was attracted to Denny because he had a big bar of Lifebuoy soap down at the pond. After we'd washed up together he said, 'You want to get out of here and get a hamburger in town?' And I said yes, absolutely. I'd gotten tired of the used-clothes people. I mean, they thought of themselves as some sort of mystics, but they were paying widows five dollars for old rugs and furs they'd sell for two hundred in town."

"You were there," he said in a tone of hushed amazement. "You went."

"And my life has been one disappointment after another ever since. Bobby, people make way too much of it. It was a concert. It was dirty and crowded. I left before it was half over, and I married a perfect a.s.shole three months later."

I finished brushing green polish onto my big toe. Then I looked over at Bobby, and saw the change. His eyes were bright and a little damp. He sat with his neck craned forward avidly, watching me.

I thought I recognized the expression. It was the way men had sometimes looked at me when I was younger; when I was pretty and exotic instead of just colorful. It was simple, straightforward desire. Right there, on the face of a man not yet thirty.

We didn't sleep together that night. It took us another week. But from that night on, the possibility of s.e.x edged its way onto relations that had been merely cordial and benign. We'd been friends and now we were something else. We bristled a little, grew shyer together. When we ran out of things to say, we seemed to notice the silence.

Still, he wouldn't have initiated anything. He was too uncertain. He was too accustomed to our pattern of sister-instructing-younger-brother. I had never met anyone so unmarked by the world. Men in the Middle Ages might have been like this: intricately considerate, terrified of touching a woman's sleeve. If it was going to happen, I'd have to take charge of it myself.

I did it on a Tuesday night. I hadn't timed it to my cycle. I wasn't as calculating as that. I liked Bobby too much. My attraction to his person was easier to act on than my more complicated interest in his genes. That, I figured, could come later.

We'd been to see Providence Providence at the St. Marks, which nearly changed my mind about the whole enterprise. Bobby had talked during the movie. He'd asked me if the wolfman was real. He'd wanted to know if Elaine Stritch was Dirk Bogarde's mother or his girlfriend. at the St. Marks, which nearly changed my mind about the whole enterprise. Bobby had talked during the movie. He'd asked me if the wolfman was real. He'd wanted to know if Elaine Stritch was Dirk Bogarde's mother or his girlfriend.

I answered his questions, thinking, Oh, Jonathan. Why aren't you straight?

But once we were outside again, walking home, I regained my interest. Bobby was half child, an innocent. He couldn't really be blamed for what he lacked. New York presented no shortage of people to go to movies with. Other qualities were harder to find.

When we got home I put an old Stones tape on. I lit up a joint, and asked Bobby if he'd care to dance. Jonathan was out with his boyfriend that night.

"Dance?" Bobby said. I pa.s.sed him the joint. He toked on it, standing in the middle of the living room in jeans and a black T-shirt and a cowboy belt with a steer-head buckle. This was a difficult seduction to accomplish straight-faced. It was hard not to feel like a floozy, in eyeliner and a girdle, playing a scratchy record to try and coax a farm boy out of his overalls.

"Bobby," I said, "I'm going to ask you a direct question. Do you mind?"

"No. I don't mind." He pa.s.sed the joint back to me.

"Answer truthfully, now. What do you like about me?"

"Huh?"

"Don't make me repeat the question. It's too embarra.s.sing."

"What do I like about you?"

"Are you, well, interested in me?"

"Um, sure. Sure I am." I returned the joint and he took a long, deep hit.

"Bobby, have you ever slept with a woman?"

"Oh. Well, no. Actually, I haven't."

"Do you ever think you might like to?"

He didn't speak. He didn't move. The stones sang "Ruby Tuesday." I said, "Come here. Put that marijuana down now and just dance with me a little, all right?"

Obediently, he took one more hit and put the joint in an ashtray. I opened my arms to him. He walked in. I tried not to feel like a spider; a ravenous old creature who preys on the reluctant flesh of not-quite-bright young men. I skated over the feeling as best I could.

We swayed in a loose circle. He was a fine dancer, which helped. He wasn't awkward or uncertain; his body didn't appeal to mine to show him the rhythm or the next move. Dancing, a little stoned, in one another's arms, we were neither relaxed nor excited. As we danced we could have been a brother and sister practicing for romances of the future but also attracted to one another, attracted and guilt-ridden and slightly mournful over the hopelessness of this ordinary but charged and subtly dangerous contact. Brother and sister, practicing.

He smelled clean and woody, like fresh pencil shavings. His back was solid as an opera singer's. He said, "When you went to the concert, did you stay long enough to see Hendrix?"

"Hmm?"

"At Woodstock. Did you see Jimi Hendrix?"

"Sure I saw Jimi. We got to be very good friends. You come here with me, now. I can tell there's not going to be any smooth or sophisticated way to do this."

I stopped dancing and led him to my bedroom. He didn't quite partic.i.p.ate but didn't resist either. I left the light off. I closed the door and said, "Are you nervous?"

"Uh-huh."

"Don't be. This is just for fun. This is just because I like you. There's nothing in this world for you to be nervous about." I unb.u.t.toned his shirt, and helped him slide it off his shoulders. His shoulders were damp and ticklish with hair.

"I'm not, you know, in very good shape," he said, though by then I'd seen his bare chest a hundred times.

"I think you're lovely," I said. I took off my blouse and dropped it on the floor. I never wore a bra. I put his hand on my left breast.

"These are below par, to tell you the truth," I said. "You'll be with other women who have a lot more going on here."

"I don't think about other women," he said.

"You're too much, you know that?"

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing. Not a thing. Come on now, get undressed. Old Clare's going to show you a few tricks."

We took the rest of our clothes off quickly, as if the real tenants might get home at any moment and find us using their apartment. When we were naked I took him in my arms again and kissed him, with more concern than pa.s.sion. His breath was hot and a little strong but not foul. It was carnivore's breath.

"Don't be afraid," I said. "This is the most natural thing in the world. You might even like it."

"I do like it," he said. "I think I do."

I guided him to the bed, and had him lie down. I'd never before been so completely in charge. If this was part of the aging process, I didn't mind it. There was something agreeably frightening about running a f.u.c.k.

Bobby lay naked across my bed. His c.o.c.k slumped softly against his thigh-a purplish one, circ.u.mcised, large but not enormous. He had a surprisingly spa.r.s.e little muddle of pubic hair. I could hear the sound of his breathing.

"Everything's okay, sweetheart," I said. "Just relax, I'll take care of everything."

I knelt on the mattress beside him, and ma.s.saged his chest and belly. He looked up at me uncertainly. "Shh," I said. "Don't do anything, don't think about anything. Your big sister's gonna manage fine, just close your eyes."

He closed his eyes. I bent over and flicked at his nipples with my tongue. I'd never done anything like this before. He was so big and inert. My s.e.xual career had generally involved forceful people who wanted me, who went after me with obscure imperatives of their own. I did what I could to feign an older woman's serene competence. As subtly as possible, I checked his c.o.c.k for signs of arousal.

"Clare," he said. "Clare, I don't know if-"

"Shh. Hush. I'll tell you when it's time to speak."

I kissed my way down his stomach, took his limp c.o.c.k in my hand. It was like a rubber toy. I had to stay mindful of its sensitive humanness. I put it in my mouth and worked it around slowly, lapping the underside with my tongue. I took plenty of time. I tickled and stroked with my fingertips, ran my tongue around his s.c.r.o.t.u.m, and nipped gently at his thighs. I forced myself not to hurry. Other men had had wishes, ways they liked things done. Helene had instructed me on every move. No one had ever abandoned himself to my care like this before. I mouthed his c.o.c.k and thought of myself as a wh.o.r.e in a movie. A smart triumphant wh.o.r.e who always puts on a good show. I pulled at his pubic hair with my teeth, licked the violet tip of his c.o.c.k. And finally it began to stiffen.

Then I let myself work harder. I took him into my mouth again and worked him up and down, up and down until my neck started to ache. I played my hands along his rib cage and gently pinched his nipples. I could feel his breathing quicken. I heard him softly moan, a fretful little cry like a dove's. I myself was aroused. Not intensely, but with the ticklish queasiness I remembered as a girl, when I'd first started thinking of large, powerful bodies that wanted control and resisted it.

When I thought he was ready, I got up and straddled him. The look on his face surprised me. He was flushed and panicky, not pleased as I'd expected him to be. Still, I smiled rea.s.suringly. I knew this was no time to lose our momentum. I said, "Ready?" Without waiting for an answer, I worked myself into position and slid his c.o.c.k in.

Something wasn't right. His face was so raw and terrified. Still, I kept up. There was no backing out now. I didn't think of my own pleasure. I rose and fell, rose and fell. I whispered to him, "Sweetheart, you're doing fine. Oh, yes. You're doing wonderfully." It wasn't exactly what I wanted to say. It was what I heard myself saying. I stroked his chest. His face was shiny with sweat. I reached over and smoothed away a bit of hair that had gotten plastered to his forehead.

And suddenly, unexpectedly, he came. I felt the spasm. When he came he let out a wail of such agony. He might have been stabbed in the gut. It was an awful sound; inconsolable. I forgot what I was supposed to be doing and crouched with my knees pressed in against his rib cage, waiting for the wail to stop. There was a span of thick, echoing silence. Then he started weeping, openly and extravagantly as a baby.

I reached over and touched his face. His c.o.c.k was still inside me. I knew we were lost to one another in some permanent, irremediable way. Now he was a mystery. I lay down beside him and told him it was all right. I told him everything was all right. He stroked my hair with heavy, flat-handed swipes. He said, "I never. I never thought I would."