Read Online Babylon and Other Stories by Alix Ohlin - Free Book Online Page B

what Wade would become. In either case they were equivalent; it was a transitive property of men. She could see Wade at forty and at sixty, still intense and thin and profusely hairy, though his hair would turn salt-and-peppery and start sprouting out of his nose; he would still gesture with thin fingers in support of his many points.
    While she painted, Wade would put his hands on her shoulders, or his arms would encircle her from behind. His body temperature was always high, as if to match his mental energy. He was in love with Izabel, he said, and he brought her gifts, including paints, books, cups of coffee. She didn't know when he found the time to paint, but his canvases grew daily, a huge seven-by-ten wall of color. Her paintings looked like watercolors by comparison, little washed-out sagas of women and men. While she painted, he whispered a stream of plans for their future together and memories of their past, to him already richly detailed. Their relationship was like a painting he was building on canvas, blocking it out section by section, adding layers and color; it had its own internal references and symbols, flowers and the angles of wrists, an iconography of past and future, things that stood for love.
    On the phone Iz's mother wanted to know when she was coming home, her voice plaintive and distant. She was preparing a turkey for Thanksgiving, and making a special dressing. In thebackground Iz's father growled about the rising costs of college tuition. Iz imagined the clean, silent house, where all her old toys lay trapped in liquor boxes stored in the basement, Ken and Barbie forever silent and entwined, like Baucus and Philemon, who grew into a tree. Ken and Barbie could never become a tree, except maybe a plastic one, and perhaps this could be another painting in the series:
Ken and Barbie Grow Together into a Fake Potted Plant.
    Iz's mother said, “Your father wants to know if you're taking any accounting classes.”
    “Mom, I'm not taking accounting. I'm taking English, math, history, and Visions of the Erotic in Art. Do you remember me, Izzy, I'm an art major? Does he? Does he even remember who I am?”
    Her mother sighed into the receiver, low and loose, a sound like flatulence: self-flatulating. Her father's voice rumbled darkly in the background. He had been like this all her life, a shadowy, angry figure, rarely present, issuing proxy commands, whose wrath must be avoided at all costs.
    “Your father,” translated her mother, “wants me to tell you that you should take economics or computer science. Otherwise he won't pay for next semester. It's a practical thing, Izzy. It's about your future.”
    Iz said, “Well, since this is my last semester of school, I might as well stay here for Thanksgiving. I guess I'd better get the most of it while I can.”
    Her mother sighed again and said, “Your father and I only want the best for you.”
    In France we do not celebrate Thanksgiving, said Izabel.
Please, what ees sweet potato pie?
Out of loyalty to her and herforeignness—“An exile in your own country,” he said, “but aren't artists always exiles?”—Wade decided to stay on campus, too. The college saved on heating costs over the long weekend and the two of them shuffled morosely around the studio in winter coats, breathing clouds of smoke. Feeling like an orphan, Izabel caught cold and began to sniffle and cough. She did not paint. The canvas around Ken and Barbie was murky and indistinct, featureless and gloomy, like the November weather. This, she decided, was the landscape of the suburbs, so she kept it that way. Wade brought her chicken noodle soup and covered her with blankets on the mattress they kept in the corner.
    Remote with fever, Izabel slept. She slipped into a dream that felt like church, floating under stained-glass lights; men murmured, first a drone and then a hum. Wade was on top of her, a solid, hairy weight, and she couldn't breathe. This was not a dream. She pushed him