Read Online Seventh Avenue by Norman Bogner - Free Book Online Page A

the policy of the status quo. Rhoda, to her unutterable dismay, had been correct in her surmise: a lover’s troth plighted in the zeal of pre-connubial ecstasy had the same validity as a confession extracted by the police after rubber hose treatment. Her influence decreased proportionately with the degree of intimacy she permitted Jay. But now that she had given herself to him, she was caught in the ineluctable trap she had set: her hunger for him surpassed his for her, and she found herself making time schedules of her family’s daily movements so that she and Jay could be in the house alone. Matinees and matutinal visits allowed them the greatest privacy, but somehow they left her listless and dissatisfied. Her lunch hour, a period of her day that formerly had been neutral, now took on a ritual significance. The mere mention by her boss of: “Lunch, Rho . . . ?” brought her out in a cold sweat, red flushes and a fit of stammering that made the simple “yes” or “no” reply a trial of anguished and tortuous explanation. After a while, she began to wonder if the word lunch itself contained any hidden double entendre that she had not been aware of. As a consequence, she dropped it from her vocabulary and whenever anyone used it in her presence she attempted to find in the tone of voice, the facial expression, a clue to the meaning intended by the inquisitor.
    But despite the surface guilt she displayed, or thought she displayed, over her meetings with Jay, she was without real guilt, and she thought that she had never been happier in her life. Her luminous hazel eyes possessed a warmth and a sun-flecked crystalline brightness that sang with joy, and her body, now that she and Jay had both discovered it, emerged as though from a long period of narcoleptic sleep as a vessel of manifest beauty. It became for her, like Myrna’s clarinet, an instrument capable of exquisite melodies and harmonies. She had always been a big girl, supple, full-breasted, with marvelous heavy hips, strong-limbed and agile, although with a tendency to fat. Her body, almost without her realizing it, even though she was more profoundly conscious of it, took on a new firmness, a tensile thickness. It was as if she were holding a printed page too close to her eyes and excluding peripheral vision, so that she lost sight of the expanding contours of her body.
    On a Saturday morning when she knew the bathroom would not be in continual use, she took a long leisurely bath. She had just stepped out of the bath, reached for a towel when Myrna walked in.
    “Sorry, didn’t know you were still here,” Myrna said, handing Rhoda a towel.
    “You’re home early.”
    “I worked overtime on Wednesday and the boss gave me off the rest of the day. Want to do some shopping, and I thought I’d take Miriam with me, and after we’d go to the park.” She watched Rhoda drying herself. “Like to come? Or are you seeing Jay?”
    “Not till tonight. Saturday’s his busy day.”
    “Why aren’t you working?”
    “I wasn’t feeling well and . . .”
    “Really, what’s the matter?”
    “Don’t know . . . I just feel rotten.”
    “Go to the doctor for a checkup.”
    “Maybe I will.”
    “Hey, just a minute,” Myrna said anxiously, “look at your stomach!” Rhoda peered down at herself. “You’ve got a potbelly.”
    “What are you talking about?” she said fearfully. “I haven’t got my girdle on.”
    “Girdle? He’s . . . Jay! You’re pregnant. He’s knocked you up, the bastard.”
    “What’re you talking about?”
    “Oh, honestly, Rho, do you think I’m an idiot or something? Don’t you think I know what’s been going on?”
    Rhoda tried to ignore her.
    “About a week ago, I called for you at lunchtime at work and they said you’d left already. So I looked for you at The Fountain and then I went home to get a sweater. When I came in I walked by the living room, and there you were . . . with him.”
    “You never said . . .”
    “What