Read Online The Sperm Donor’s Daughter and Other Tales of Modern Family by Kathryn Trueblood - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kathryn Trueblood
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old glass, hand blown, you can tell because they shimmer with rainbows like bubble solution stretched across a frameâcorn syrup mixed with dish soap. His bed is built into the ledge of a bay window. As Nigelâs hands stroked me, I followed the swirls of color in the window and listened to the harbor chimes and the air loud as sails luffing.
When I first came there it was a cloudy afternoon, after a fancy lunch, full of wine. His blue-beret tipped barward and his lips tipped towards me. His bite for mine, we fed each other. What would our love smell like? Calmata olives, tangy and sun-dried? Sea bass wrapped in grape leaves? Rabbit in a cognac cream? But once at his place I turned shy. I could hear voices in the street, syllables pattering like rain in a pot. He uncorked a stubborn bottle and I couldnât watch as he rocked the cork out though I heard the slippery sound. I began my little bit of lying, because I thought that too had to be done. I should go back now . He laughed. Before there is no going back? I like to watch you teeter at the brink. You said you loved slants . Then I laughed. Iâd wanted all my life to feel something inevitable and random at once. A moment to yoke contraries, and here it was. My hands moved across the table like leaves blowing along a road, hands out walking alone. He stroked my fingers and the soft web of skin between them, and he sat at the table not suggesting anything but letting me see his shyness, his ferocity, his need for mercy.
It was getting away from me, this moment we were studying carefully, its predecessors pushing it aside. I had to tell him about my collection of hurt ones, how I learned to be the maiden drawing water from the well, to bring up in my bucket this need to do it like a man . Soon they were all the same: men I overpowered and then tended to and pretended not to know about. What a weight. The tired ballad of bed. And if I made a little associative leap, if I let my eyes change color, let myself rhyme sounds or sucks, well it was all a shock they tried to be up for, to please me, and it wasnât a leap at all, it was my invitation, my lead, and them waiting upon it, until Iâd have given my soul for an unexpected free fall.
Nigel turned my hands over in his lap; he rubbed the hearts of my palms and made my fingers curl. Without his eyes on my face, I never could have said what had been the matter for so long. He whispered into the shade that had crept over the room. The house plants made a lace of leaves on one wall. Someone in the building was baking custard, the resplendent smell of carmelized sugar. The windows were turning blue. You may regret things in your life, but donât ever apologize for it. Not to anyone. You want to play the instrument for every sound it will make, thereâs nothing wrong with that. Youâre easily disappointed; I wonât disappoint you .
I felt that he wouldnât. Later I learned why. He is a man who is fascinated by women, who has submitted himself wholly to this fascination. His knowledge is vast, but unlike most men who want only to know that they are good, he wants to know women, he wants to breathe in their exhalations and live on it. His is the seduction of the willing novice. To each woman, he apprentices himself utterly, does not for a moment apply the likes or dislikes of any woman who has come before her. Because itâs for you, all for you. He makes himself a slave to your desire, and therein lies the attractive strengthâ I make myself a slave to your desire .
On the day I remembered all this, I was wearing a sweater I found in the bottom drawer of the dresser designated mine. Black cashmere with an embroidered name tag sewn in: Constance Delacroix. I laughed when I found it, imagine, a name tag as though she were going to camp. Now I suspect she was a foreigner. When I read her name, I said it aloud, I elongated the second vowel until my voice got husky, elongated it into
When I first came there it was a cloudy afternoon, after a fancy lunch, full of wine. His blue-beret tipped barward and his lips tipped towards me. His bite for mine, we fed each other. What would our love smell like? Calmata olives, tangy and sun-dried? Sea bass wrapped in grape leaves? Rabbit in a cognac cream? But once at his place I turned shy. I could hear voices in the street, syllables pattering like rain in a pot. He uncorked a stubborn bottle and I couldnât watch as he rocked the cork out though I heard the slippery sound. I began my little bit of lying, because I thought that too had to be done. I should go back now . He laughed. Before there is no going back? I like to watch you teeter at the brink. You said you loved slants . Then I laughed. Iâd wanted all my life to feel something inevitable and random at once. A moment to yoke contraries, and here it was. My hands moved across the table like leaves blowing along a road, hands out walking alone. He stroked my fingers and the soft web of skin between them, and he sat at the table not suggesting anything but letting me see his shyness, his ferocity, his need for mercy.
It was getting away from me, this moment we were studying carefully, its predecessors pushing it aside. I had to tell him about my collection of hurt ones, how I learned to be the maiden drawing water from the well, to bring up in my bucket this need to do it like a man . Soon they were all the same: men I overpowered and then tended to and pretended not to know about. What a weight. The tired ballad of bed. And if I made a little associative leap, if I let my eyes change color, let myself rhyme sounds or sucks, well it was all a shock they tried to be up for, to please me, and it wasnât a leap at all, it was my invitation, my lead, and them waiting upon it, until Iâd have given my soul for an unexpected free fall.
Nigel turned my hands over in his lap; he rubbed the hearts of my palms and made my fingers curl. Without his eyes on my face, I never could have said what had been the matter for so long. He whispered into the shade that had crept over the room. The house plants made a lace of leaves on one wall. Someone in the building was baking custard, the resplendent smell of carmelized sugar. The windows were turning blue. You may regret things in your life, but donât ever apologize for it. Not to anyone. You want to play the instrument for every sound it will make, thereâs nothing wrong with that. Youâre easily disappointed; I wonât disappoint you .
I felt that he wouldnât. Later I learned why. He is a man who is fascinated by women, who has submitted himself wholly to this fascination. His knowledge is vast, but unlike most men who want only to know that they are good, he wants to know women, he wants to breathe in their exhalations and live on it. His is the seduction of the willing novice. To each woman, he apprentices himself utterly, does not for a moment apply the likes or dislikes of any woman who has come before her. Because itâs for you, all for you. He makes himself a slave to your desire, and therein lies the attractive strengthâ I make myself a slave to your desire .
On the day I remembered all this, I was wearing a sweater I found in the bottom drawer of the dresser designated mine. Black cashmere with an embroidered name tag sewn in: Constance Delacroix. I laughed when I found it, imagine, a name tag as though she were going to camp. Now I suspect she was a foreigner. When I read her name, I said it aloud, I elongated the second vowel until my voice got husky, elongated it into
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