Read Online Life Among Giants by Bill Roorbach - Free Book Online Page B

blond vase. Upstairs, the model warplanes of younger days turned on their threads over my bed. I put on a church shirt, plain white (bought by the half dozen from the Big Man shop in Bridgeport: collar twenty-two inches, sleeves thirty-eight), tied my church tie around my neck (extra long), patted the dust off my custom blue jeans (waist 38, inseam 46). I reached under a blanket box, pulled out Dabney’s Dancer album, propped the thing between doorknob and molding, gazed lovingly. If you did the math—and I had—Sylphide had been nineteen or twenty when that photo was taken. Th at sprite dashing off into the woods! Barely older than Emily! I opened my pants, pulled at my suddenly leaping penis, special attention to Sylphide’s streaming hair, the small of her back, her rump fantastical in veils of mist. I grew tremulous in seconds. My mother said my name in the hallway—otherwise she would have caught me—said my name and burst into the room as I turned my back on her and the great ballerina and tucked myself in even while ejaculating.
    â€œDog gone it!” Mom said, highest ire.
    â€œAll ready,” I said, semen dripping copiously into my underwear.
    She clacked her tongue. “Oh, David, those pants?”
    Studied calm: “Yep, these.”
    D ESMOND, POINTEDLY NEUTRAL, showed us through the grand High Side foyer and into a large parlor—Madame would be with us shortly—and there my mother and I perched on real Queen Anne chairs (as she’d later declare, naming every stick of furniture, as my father put it). Quick glances at one another, long looks around the room. Th e ceiling was twenty miles above our heads, ornate plaster moldings gilded and polished, a forest-scene fresco up there, gorgeous, lots of fauns and cherubs and satyrs with pan pipes, fairy castle at the center. Th e walls were a startling deep blue, the woodwork all in perfect white, not a single spot or spider web, sparkling windows facing the front lawn I’d mowed heroically, all that rhododendron. At the far other end of the room a very long piano loomed, shiny black. Hanging high on the wall over it was a huge ridiculous oblong canvas, plain pink (Ellsworth Kelly, I’d learn later, not ridiculous at all), and several other paintings as well (Warhol, Kandinsky, Max Ernst, ditto), which were mere samples of Dabney’s famous collection of modern and contemporary art. Just behind us, a patch of unfaded wall paint in the perfect shape of a large painting. Th e rectangular void set my heart to pounding.
    I said, “Katy will kill us.”
    My mother sat up straighter yet. Judicious whisper: “Listen, Bub, all these years? Did Katy ever once invite me to meet these people?”
    I whispered back. “Mom, come on, they had you in for dinner!”
    â€œDinner with Linsey and Kate is what I had! In the kitchen at a card table!”
    â€œDidn’t Dabney say hi?”
    â€œDabney stuck his head in, yes.”
    Famous snub story. I was baiting her. Mom had gone over there in furs and best jewelry.
    She imitated the rocker: “ ‘Yer ol’ lady’s a looker, she is!’ ”
    â€œSo now you’re getting back at Kate.”
    â€œYe gods and little fishes!” Mom said brightly so as to prove my observation had had no effect on her, and no basis in truth.
    Th ere was an actual wet spot on my trousers, now, and it was growing. I’d have to cover it to stand or avoid standing—it’d never dry with us sitting there drinking tea. Th e wave of mortification built into a wave of guilt. I had to bring Katy and Mom together, had to do it soon if Katy were not to be lost to us both down Dad’s warren of rat-holes. Suddenly a solution presented itself. Hardly thinking, I said, “Mom, come up to the football game with me in New Haven. Kate’ll be there. I mean, I invited Katy. Maybe a couple of her friends. And Dad could come, too, wouldn’t that