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She lifts her body and swings it over to straddle him on the bench Then she reaches down and unzips his pants
Hey, he says, pulling away from her kisses Wait We can’t--you’re--
It’s okay, she says, feeling the wetness from his lips on her neck I can’t have babies
She reaches down and takes it in her hand--it’s hot like it’s been cooked all through--and she presses herself down hard on his leg
But, wait, he says again It’s not right I’m twenty-five and you’re--
Hush up, she says Just do it I’m done thinkin Just come on and do it
She covers his mouth with her own and reaches under the taffeta dress and pulls aside her underwear and lifts up and sets herself down on top of hiin to ache on the wooden slats of the bench, but the thing inside her is a living thing and she likes the way her body holds on to it--and she likes to think about what it feels like to hiirl And the word stutters through her head, girl girl girl girl--and she believes it, she knows it to be true--dang if she doesn’t believe it right in her stomach and her toes and her very teeth
THE NEXT day she wakes while the sun is still low in the sky She goes to theand looks out over the s cut in the earth, and the flat painted sky beyond
She opens the connecting door into the next rooled in the sheets and blankets of the bed Both pillows are on the floor, and one hand is resting on the nightstand where it has knocked over the alaron of helplessness, ain’t you, duhts the alarure But when she does, the blankets cooes to the other side of the bed and tries to cover his feet back up, but she can only find a triangle end of the blanket, and it doesn’t see with Finally she drops the blanket altogether and stands looking down at hi we found you this place, du down the stairs she can hearin a chair with a high fan-shaped back, listening to records and knitting soht and early, Mrs Grierson says
I don’t sleep much
You’re a busybody like es the records for her when they get to the end She has never seen a record player before, except in movies, and she likes how delicate the mechanism is The music is joyful and quick and has a lot of different horns, and it sounds like so skirts and sweaters would be dancing to
There is a for, with biscuits and ja around the table, Richard and hisat Te at him She can see it out of the corner of her eye
After breakfast, she takes so hers, and Maisie helps her with the slow bear of ahiood with him and talks to him like he’s a 220-pound baby, and he see to do Mrs Grierson is playing solitaire in the parlor, and Richard is practicing the sa on the piano over and over with no variation that her ear can tell, and James is nowhere to be seen She wonders how people can live this kind of life--trapped inside a house s everywhere showing you where else you could be
So she goes outside and walks around the house and down the driveway and back and up into the woods overlooking the house, and she finds the electric fence and follows it around the periet her feet too ood-sized property, and it takes her half an hour to walk the circurape arbor with a trellis, and a wooden swing hanging fro and kicks herself forward and back a few ti?
Jaainst the tree
Nothin, she says Just tryin out this swing It’s creaky, but it works
That’s not all you’re doing You’ve been around this property twice already thisreconnaissance?
Nah I’m just put on a wonder about how the world can all of a sudden get so s
He nods
What you doin following htI shouldn’t have--I didn’t mean toI think it was a mistake
What do you mean? You mean you ain’t in love with me? You mean you don’t wanna put hs
All right, he says, looking down at his feet I was just trying to clarify I was just being--
You ot noble projections in ain He looks onna h, he says, and there’s a fierce anger in his eyes
Okay, okay I’m just joshin with you You Griersons are a touchy bunch One minute it’s biscuits and e and horror Your faotta ize You talked about ’s he been sick?
About a year now
That’s some sick What’s the matter with him?
The matter with him is that he was born a Grierson This family is a sickness