Read Online American Appetites by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online

soul nor possesses a soul,” he said, “one can’t lose his soul. That’s a cheerful proposition.”
    â€œCome to bed,” Glynnis, laughing. “Make love.”
    â€œWhich would prove—?”
    â€œ Dis prove.”
    Though Glynnis hadn’t been serious—the hour was alarmingly late; she and Ian were both very tired, and were, in any case, no longer in the habit of making love with much frequency, and never at such odd, impromptu times—she began to feel, as Ian approached, a warm dark pool of desire, rather blurred, amorphous, both desire and the memory of desire, pulsing in her loins; and felt a moment’s anguish, as at a loss undiscovered until now.
    Ian said practically, as he slipped into bed, cool-limbed, coltish, always taking up more room than Glynnis anticipated, “It’s too late for love.”
    IN HER BATH , Glynnis recalls that night; and other nights, since then, when Ian has behaved not oddly, or even disagreeably, but not as “himself”; even when making love, or attempting love, with her. At such times his thoughts are clearly elsewhere, careening and darting and plunging: elsewhere. Glynnis thinks, He doesn’t love me in the old way. She thinks, hurt, angry, baffled, yet hopeful, Things will be better in a few months. (A political situation is brewing at the Institute: Dr. Kreizer will be retiring in the fall of 1988, and his successor must be named within the next six months. Though Ian has not cared to talk about it, Glynnis knows, from Denis, that Ian is Max’s favored choice to take over the directorship. And Ian does not know, is in an anguish of not knowing, if he wants the honor, and the work, and the responsibility; or if, in fact, he wants to cut back on his professional commitments, with the hope of taking a year off fairly soon and working on an old project of his—political theory? historical theory?—set aside when the McCulloughs moved from Cambridge to Hazelton.)
    Now that Bianca is away at college and Glynnis and Ian are alone together, for the first time in nineteen years, it seems to Glynnis that their relations are more tentative: at times more romantic, yet nervously so, as if something were not quite settled between them. There is relief, certainly, in Bianca’s absence, since the strain between mother and daughter has been, these past two or three years, considerable, yet not the kind of relief Glynnis might have anticipated. If, for instance, she touches Ian, in affection or playfully, he is slow to respond: and then responds as if by rote. In sleep, he no longer responds at all, as if sleep were a counterworld, into which he disappears, and Glynnis cannot follow.
    She thinks, How far he has come since that morning in Ann Arbor. In the cafeteria, stricken by nosebleed.
    Stricken. Helpless.
    He misses Bianca, of course; misses that other, if unpredictable, corner of their triangle. Misses, in Bianca, a part of his youth. (As Glynnis understands she does too; it’s pointless not to acknowledge the fact.) When Glynnis telephoned Bianca at Wesleyan, to tell her about the birthday celebration and to invite her, Bianca had been guarded at first, as if suspecting that Glynnis wanted something from her, or of her; then she became enthusiastic, almost excessively so, as if the idea had been her own. “Of course I want to be included,” she said. “It isn’t every day Daddy has his fif tieth birthday.” During their ten-minute conversation Bianca returned to the subject of Ian’s age several times, as if the fact were a surprise to her; as if, like those countless statistical facts with which her father conjured in his demographic studies, it had to be interpreted in a social and not merely a personal context. “Well, fifty isn’t really old any longer, is it?” Bianca said. Then, “For a man, I mean.”
    You little bitch, Glynnis thought.
    But said, only, laughing,