Read Online Any Minute I Can Split by Judith Rossner - Free Book Online Page B

attached to people?” David asked.
    She stared at him, not having the vaguest idea of how to answer, not even sure what the question was. It was almost like a straight request for lessons, yet that couldn’t really be it. How could you not get attached to people? She got attached to everyone, even people she disliked. She liked David and De Witt and Baby Butterscotch and she loathed Mira, yet already in some unbearable way she was attached to Mira just as much as to the others. A part of the same jig-saw puzzle.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “It’s just something that happens. I’m extremely attached to Roger, even if we haven’t made love in half a year and even if I’m mad at him. Even being mad at people . . . probably youwouldn’t get mad at people if you had no attachment to them.”
    â€œIs he attached to you?” David asked.
    There it was again. She smiled. “I guess so. I don’t know. I’m not sure.” Why did her sense of irony seldom enter directly into her speech when she was with David? Because it was such a superficial part of her that she knew it wouldn’t even register through his armor? He waited. “I guess we’ll know by whether he shows up here. De Witt is sending him a telegram for me, with the address on it.”
    â€œWhat did you say in the telegram?”
    Unwillingly (although at first she wasn’t sure why) she told him. “I just said I was at this farm with some other people, some girls and boys and some married people, and I had the twins.”
    â€œSo if he comes,” David said slowly, “you won’t really know why. Whether he’s curious, or he feels like meeting the other people . . . or he’s attached to you.”
    She took a deep breath. “David, tell me about yourself.”
    â€œThere’s nothing to tell.”
    â€œHow old are you?”
    â€œNineteen.”
    â€œWhere do you live?” she asked.
    â€œHere,” he said.
    â€œWhere did you grow up?” she asked.
    â€œIn the suburbs,” he said (with a flickering smile).
    â€œWhich one?” she asked.
    â€œWhat difference does it make?” he said.
    â€œNone, really,” she admitted. “It’s only that you’re a very mysterious person to me. I’m trying to sort of solve the mystery by finding out something specific about you.”
    â€œThere’s nothing to find out,” David said. “That’s the thing. My father kept talking about being a dropout but there was nothing ever there for me to drop out of. Nothing. Ever.”
    For one moment she hoped violently, physically, fearfullythat Roger would drop everything the moment he got her telegram and come up to be with her. Then Rosemary awakened and needed to be fed and she reminded herself that De Witt would be coming back before long, and then a minute later Rue, too, awakened, and her mind was filled with their needs.
    D E WITT and Mira returned in late afternoon, when the sun was already down—so early, a warning of even shorter days ahead. They had split Margaret’s shopping between them; everything De Witt had gotten for her was perfect and everything Mira had gotten was slightly wrong or worse, right down to the children’s kimonos, which she’d gotten fewer of than Margaret had requested because she was sure they could dig up some old ones around the farm from the other kids, and which she’d bought in six-month size instead of three-month because she’d realized upon seeing the size of the latter that they wouldn’t do for more than a month or so and she’d been certain Margaret wouldn’t want to throw away her hard-earned money on things the girls would outgrow so soon. I am rich, Margaret wanted to say, and furthermore, you skinny witch, I am supported by my husband’s parents, and furthermore I spent my childhood in clothes from the cousins always