Read Online Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell - Free Book Online Page B

sexual pleasure, well, somehow it had always been connected to beauty for me. It was the beauty of Fred’s chest and stomach, the muscularity of his organ and the lean of his thighs—that was what made me yearn for him. Not what made me love him, but what made me want to make love to him. And the idea of Stanley, the idea of his penis as an object to emerge, erect, from the nest of that belly, from behind the zipper of those crumpled trousers—well, I did not relish the thought.
    And she was certainly no Lady Chatterley. I hated to let my mind draw the pictures it was drawing.
    â€œIn the beginning,” she said softly, “in the beginning, it was fine. It was part of what made him Stanley, part of what made us special. Unique. More original than anyone else.”
    Ahead of us, car headlights appeared around a curve and began to bear down the road. We stopped in the grass, waving cheerfully as the white sedan passed us and headed toward the back gates, brake lights winking over the bump before the stone columns.
    â€œBut you would think that after twenty-five years, you would begin to think that he would either settle into our life or leave it, not hang like this. Me or them. There is a never-ending supply of them.”
    â€œThe students.”
    She nodded.
    â€œThat’s terrible,” I said.
    â€œThey are so impressed by Stanley’s mind.” Again, the sour, sarcastic tone.
    I hadn’t pictured such a danger until this moment. I had been so tightly focused on our new friends, on the baby alive inside me, on the newness of all of it—I had assumed, I had simply assumed, that the language of marriage we all spoke was a common one.
    â€œNot Fred,” I said. “Fred wouldn’t.”
    She snorted. It was not a pleasant sound.
    I had never before noticed a creakiness in my hip and thigh, but suddenly I felt pain sear my leg, up into the muscle at my groin. I doubled over. Shirley patted my back.
    â€œI’m not upset,” I told her. “I’m fine, it’s my leg, the baby moved in a funny way. Fred would never.”
    â€œThe devil is a most extraordinary teacher.” I never could equate plump Stanley with the tall blue-suited devil of Shirley’s fiction. I suppose she made her devil thin and blond simply to confuse—
    â€œWhy would you say that?” Yes, I could hear the whiny aggrievedness in my voice, could hear but not control it. “Why would you stay? Why ever would you stay with him?”
    She turned back in the direction of the house, walking with stiff purpose. I kept up with her. The movement helped the pain. And I had never been the sort of woman who storms off confidently in a fit of fear, or fury.
    â€œI keep trying to understand why I would leave,” she said. “Or who I would be, without him. Or what I would want or think or do. Don’t get me wrong, silly Rose, I do know I am most to blame if I stay. I fully understand. But I have no idea who I would be.”
    I took her hand. It lay soft and slightly cold between my own.
    She said, “We were your age when we began. Students at Syracuse. Children, I suppose. And now, after all this time, no matter who he . . . screws . . . no matter who he beds, I don’t have the slightest idea how I could go. Where I could go. I know why, I fully understand why. I just don’t know what life I would make.”
    â€œI’ve always believed in fighting for yourself,” I said.
    She burst out laughing. “You, little Rose? You?”
    At that age, at that time, I felt wise as often as I felt foolish. And every time I was reminded of how little I knew I found it painful and surprising, as if my own frailty had once again crept up to tease me. It doesn’t change. The Me I think of, the Me I know, may never outgrow her teenage self, shy and self-effacing.I can imagine my own daughter will one day seem older than me; she has a sterner