Read Online Sourland by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online Page B

from where they lay, so chopped by wind you could not have said in which direction it flowed. Her eyeballs shifted upward, a death had come over her brain. She saw only a portion of her lover’s face, the glisten of oily sweat on his forehead. Only a portion of the ceiling where shimmering water reflected, live-seeming as microorganisms. How ragged her breath was, short and frayed like cloth that has been ripped! As if she’d been drowning, the man had saved her. No one had brought her to such a place before. He had brought her there as if by chance, negligently. The knowledge was crushing to her.
    She heard moans, whimpers. She heard a woman’s choked sobs. He laughed at her, there was little tenderness in him.
    Still he observed her, curiously. As a pilot might observe the ground far below, at a distance at which everything is in miniature, inconsequential. At such a distance there are no individuals. No cries can be heard. She could not bear it, this distance. She reached for him, he gripped her wrists and brought her arms down, spread outright beside her head, so she was helpless. He moved into her, she began to shout, guttural cries that scraped like gravel against her throat. She was a sinewy snake, everyinch of her flesh quivering, her skin a damp scaly glisten. He’d pulled a pillow free of the tangle of bedclothes, it must have been caprice, he must have miscalculated, he lowered the pillow over her sweaty face, her anguished eyes and opened mouth, he was pumping hard between her spread thighs as if there was a fascination in him, what he might do to her, the woman, what was emerging between them in this place. Desperately she pulled at his hands, his wrists that were too thick for her fingers to close about, there were hairs on the backs of his hands, wiry hairs on his wrists, she was blinded by the pillow, she was frantic to breathe. Now her body, in which her soul was mute, dazed, swollen tight against her skin like a balloon blown nearly to bursting, began to struggle for its life. The man held her fixed, she was impaled upon him, a great sinewy snake helpless beneath him, the heavy pillow seemed to enclose her head, she was being suffocated. Tendons stood out in her neck, her arteries swelled. She lost consciousness, in a moment she was gone.
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    Like companions they lay side by side. Like companions who are strangers, thrown together in the same wreck. For a long time she could not move. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, she could not see. Sensation had obliterated her, in the aftermath of sensation there was nothing. Her heartbeat, that had madly accelerated, was slowed now, almost imperceptible. A match had flared into flame, the flame had touched her, exploded inside her, now the flame was extinguished, her body was numbed, she could barely lift her head. The soles of her bare feet seemed to burn as if she’d been walking on hot sand. She spoke to the man, she was helpless not to speak, hearing with a kind of pitying astonishment the hopeless words in a voice barely audible I love you. It was something of a plea, an argument, yet there was no one with whom to argue, the man seemed not to hear as if sparing her.
    She lay as if beneath the surface of shallow water. Sun played upon the water, that was warm, unthreatening. She could not drown in this water, it would protect her. She was drifting into a stuporous sleep.Mommy? Mom- my ? the little girl was looking for her, though Mommy stood before her, squatted before her, the little girl stared through her, the little boy, the boy whose name she’d forgotten for the moment, he was looking for her, anxious Mommy where are you?—she’d become a wraith, they could not see her. Someone touched her as if accidentally, in his abrupt way the man was rising from the bed, walking away. He was barefoot, he moved with a negligent ease, no more self-conscious than if he were alone in the hotel room. Weakly she spoke to him, he did not seem to