Short Century (23 page)

I was caught up. “I grew up in Manhattan. My parents were jazz musicians. They died of a heroin overdose.”

“Both of them?”

“You're right. Too melodramatic. My father was a jazz musician and he abandoned my mother when I was an infant.”

“He was a saxophone player! Like in
Some Like It Hot
.”

“My mother was a cellist with the New York Philharmonic.”

“They were star-crossed lovers.”

“I grew up privileged,” I said, “but suffocated by my mother's sadness. One day I got on a Greyhound bus and never looked back. That's how I got to Kansas.”

She laughed, and how could I not be in love with her laugh? “That's so good,” she said. “My father died in World War Two.”

“Wait, how old are you?”

“Right. Details. My father died in the Korean War. No, after the war was over, but while he was still in Korea. A supply truck backed over him.”

“Oh, the poor man.”

“My mother became a prostitute in order to feed me.” She touched my chest. “You're right. Too melodramatic. You're sexy when you frown, though.” She kissed me and stroked my cheek.

“Okay,” she said. “My mother was an English professor at a small New England college. I hate New England because…because…because I'm color blind and the autumn foliage mocks the limitations of my sight.”

“That's brilliant!”

“So I decided to move out West—let's move out West, let's not move to Kansas, Kansas is probably boring and farming is probably boring, too. Then we met… How did we meet? How did we meet? Oh, wait. Can girls be color blind? I forget. You know what? This game is a tiny bit boring. Let's figure out the details later. Let's wake up Mom and have breakfast.” She was headed for the door.

“Emily.”

“Don't worry. I'm not going to tell her anything. I'm not stupid.”

As we walked down the stairs, Emily was holding my arm and I was realizing that I had over the last several minutes become not only Emily's lover, but also her boyfriend, virtually her husband. It had been stupid of me to join in her identity fantasy, which a few days earlier might have been a harmless game but was now an urgent discussion of what to do next. Everything I did or said now, short of an outright rejection, which would have been unthinkable, drew us closer together.

When we reached the kitchen, Emily told me to wake up Mom while she started the eggs.

“Do we have to wake her? You know she needs her sleep. Let's just have breakfast.”

“Fine. I'll wake Mom.” She headed down the hallway to our parents' bedroom. As her bare feet hit the wood floor they sent echoes; the acoustics of the house were such that anything that happened in that hallway could be heard throughout the house. I was terrified of what would happen and furious with Emily for refusing to be cautious, but I followed her.

She flung our mother's door open without knocking. “Mother, wake up. We're making eggs.”

Our mother did not stir. “Jesus fuck.” Emily folded her hands and took a deep breath. She looked, or perhaps I only hoped that she looked, like she was trying to get control of herself. She crossed to the window, calmly, and opened the curtains.

“Wake up, Mother,” she said, still sounding calm.

“Emily,” our mother said, sitting up. “What's the matter?”

“Arthur and I are making eggs. We'd like you to join us. I haven't made breakfast for you in a while and Arthur and I thought it would be nice. It will be fun.”

I saw her getting upset and tried to think of something I could say that would allow her to get back to sleep and allow me to get Emily out of the room.

“Please, Mommy,” Emily said, her voice tinged with sarcasm now. “It will be fun.”

I thought sarcasm was a foolish tactic, but it worked. “You're right. It will be fun. Just give me a few minutes to get ready.”

Emily clapped and skipped out of the room, brushing past me and looking very much like a small child. I wondered whether she had actually been being sarcastic at all. I followed her to the kitchen, a few steps behind. She took a carton of eggs from the refrigerator and I took out the frying pan, finding the right cupboard on the third try.

“It's been so long since we've done this,” our mother said as she joined us. She looked delighted. Emily greased the pan and turned on the stove.

“So, Emily, how was your date last night?”

“I had a really great time. I think I'm in love.”

I clutched the edge of the counter.

“That's wonderful. You know that I like Brad.”

“No, a different boy. But I'm going to keep it a secret.”

Our mother scowled.

“Is it some boy you just met?”

Emily laughed. “Not at all.”

“Emily,” I said, “why don't you come over here and help me pick out the eggs?”

“They're eggs,” she said. “They're all the same. Mother, I'm going to keep it a secret for now. I'll tell you who it is after things are a little more settled, all right?”

“I like these the best,” I said, still desperate to distract her and pointing to a few eggs at random. “What do you think, Emily?”

“I want to break them,” Mom said. “Emily, if you're happy, I'm happy.”

“Thank you, Mommy. Thank you.”

Mom took from the carton the eggs I selected, as though my selections meant something. She cracked the eggs against the frying pan; I looked at her dark blue eyes and hated myself. My mother might have been an extraordinary woman for all I knew, or she might have been an entirely ordinary one, or even a barely adequate one, but in any case she was my mother and I had profaned her.

“I'm glad the two of you woke me up,” she said. “We should do this more often.”

I gritted my teeth to keep from sobbing. I took another egg and cracked it swiftly, making a loud noise and causing the yolk to spill over my hand. Emily wiped my hand with a hand towel and leaned into the side of my face not facing my mother.

“Don't fall apart,” she whispered.

“Arthur, is something bothering you?” our mother asked.

“Arthur never knows whether he's making an omelet or just breaking eggs,” Emily said.

As we ate, Emily and our mother talked, Emily seeming cheerful but not distressingly so. My contributions to the conversation were limited to terse replies. When we finished the meal, our mother, uncomplicatedly pleased with breakfast, excused herself to shower.

At Emily's suggestion she and I went for a walk. She led me through the garden and past the empty pedestals. I watched her legs as she walked, I watched her bite her lip as she looked back at me. A life with Emily, it seemed to me, might be wonderful. I touched her shoulder and moved to kiss her, but she put her palm on my chest. After standing on her toes and ostentatiously checking that we couldn't be seen from any of the windows, making us both laugh, she kissed me.

Shortly after this, a group of astronauts found that all their energy and effort had landed them atop a giant, airless wedge of stone.

f

Many of the days
that followed were days of bliss, days when the world was new, or at least elsewhere. We had sex, waited for me to get hard again, then had sex again. I stroked her hair, nuzzled her breasts, stroked her legs. I nuzzled her nose and her neck and her toes. It felt so good to have a girl in bed beside me; I had missed it so much since Miranda.

I imagined what Emily and I looked like from above. Perhaps there was a God and this was how God saw us. Perhaps God was not omniscient but was in fact a faltering old man, prone to forgetting things about the world he had once created, and among the things he had forgotten was that Emily and I were brother and sister, and when he looked at us he saw two people in love and nothing else. Perhaps there was a God and he
was
omniscient and he loved Emily and me for loving each other.

There were several nights when we stayed up all night, taking a break from sex to watch a late movie. Once she climbed on to the coffee table and we made love.

We would play tennis for four or five hours at a time, well past the point of physical exhaustion for both of us. Neither of us wanted to be the first to suggest that we leave the court; this was the competition more than the games themselves. Eventually we would both stagger off the court at the same time. Then we would go to my room and Emily would say, over and over, that she loved me.

Emily and I had always spent a lot of time together, so our mother suspected nothing. Besides, what we were doing was unthinkable, so she would have no reason to think it. Emily stroked the back of my neck at dinner, with my mother across from us.

In the streets in town, Emily tugged me out of the way of cars that were far down the road. It was not until she started doing this that I realized Miranda had done it as well.

Emily had always wanted to talk to me about everything; now she had little to say but wanted to be around me all the time. I started to think of when we were kids, when she would refuse to leave my room. I wanted to be alone; I had never wanted to be alone the way I wanted to be alone now. One afternoon, as we lay in bed, Emily started stroking my chest with her index finger and her thumb. I wanted to read a book or take a walk or something, but I knew she would get upset if I asked. I ran my hand up and down her back, filled with the sort of boredom that feels as though your mind is being boiled into steam.

“Why did we do this?” she asked.

“For freedom,” I said.

“That's not why I did it,” she said. “Do you think I could still marry Brad? Or Hickham?”

“Hickham?”

“I think he's cute,” she said. “And he's stimulating to talk to.”

“And you're saying you want to marry him?'

“Do you think I'd be able to?”

“Why wouldn't you be able to?”

“Let's just have sex.” She reached for my cock, but I grabbed her wrist and stopped her.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” I asked.

She wriggled her wrist free and pulled the blanket against herself. “You can have sex with me. That's pretty much it.”

f

I was reading one
afternoon when Emily came into my room. I kept reading, hoping she would leave, but she did not, and finally I put the book down and asked her how she was.

Not looking at me, she took a few steps toward the window, then stopped. “Would you like to take a walk in the garden?”

There was nothing at this point that I wanted, other than to be left alone.

“All right.”

I followed her down the stairs, and she devoted a great deal of effort to staying several steps ahead of me.

“So,” I said. “Do you have housing picked out at Wellesley?”

“Yes. You know, the government of
REDACTED
fell yesterday.”

I hadn't heard about this.

“Supposedly these two brothers are going to run it together. They'll probably wind up killing everyone. That's what usually happens when countries get taken over, isn't it?”

“Maybe things will be okay.”

“Let's move there, Arthur. Let's help.”

“At Wellesley. Are you going to have a roommate?”

“Yes.”

We walked for a while in silence; I couldn't tell whether we were walking in silence as siblings or as lovers.

“Did you know,” Emily said, “that they have a new technique for punishing adulterous women in
REDACTED
? They cut out one of their eyes.”

“That's horrible,” I said.

“Do I count as an adulterous woman?” When I stumbled over an answer, she said: “I'm thinking of getting a tattoo. A scarlet ‘I'. What do you think?”

I stopped walking. “Emily.”

“What? What's wrong with a scarlet ‘I'? I, as in me. What did you think it was for?”

I took a couple more steps, then stopped again. “What do you want from me, Emily?”

“What do I want from you? Maybe I want you to marry me.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry for everything that's happened.”

“Never say that again. Never say you're sorry about what's happened. I love you and I want to marry you.”

“No, you don't.”

“I'm sorry. I'm acting like a child. Please forgive me.”

“No, don't be sorry. Look, what's happened has clearly been a mistake. But we can't take it back.”

“I don't think it was a mistake.”

“Emily, you need to…”

“My life is over,” she said.

“Don't be silly. Nobody ever has to know anything about what's happened except for you and me. And we can forget it. Remember what you said the first night? We can forget it ever happened. If we could do that, that would be true freedom.”

“Can you please do me a favor and never use the word ‘freedom' again? I don't want to forget what happened. What is happening. Why do you want to forget it? I love you.”

“No, you don't.”

She slapped me, hard, and it stung enough that I held my hand to my face.

“Look,” I said. “We're both very confused right now. Just give yourself time.”

“Fuck you. I love you. We wouldn't have done this if I didn't love you and want to marry you. That would be absurd.” She hoisted herself onto an empty pedestal. “Put a finger inside me. Right now.”

“Emily, come on.”

“Put a finger inside me or I'm telling Mom and Dad.”

“You obviously don't mean that,” I said.

“I obviously do. Right now, I'm blackmailing you into fingering me. Come on, your fingers have been there before. So has your dick.”

“Emily, please be reasonable.”

“Is that a no? Fine.” She moved to get down. “How do you think Mom will take it? How do you think Dad will take it when I call him? I bet Mom will be angrier at me and Dad will be angrier at you. Maybe they'll send us both to jail.”