Sex and Death in the American Novel (20 page)

I couldn't swallow; Jasper's face looked like my brother's had on occasions when he'd talked about musicians or writers he admired, specifically this one sitting not two feet from me. “Sorry,” I croaked, and took a gulp from the ice water near my hand. “Wow. I didn't know you were so familiar with his work.” Was this the right tone? Sounded like the way my mother always listened when someone cornered her and started on about Dad and his latest.

I placed my hand over his. “I know it is hard for you to imagine, but I only read
Taking Ivy Down
, and after they divorced and he left, I made it a point to ignore as much as I could about him. I was curious sometimes, sure, but the times I did check up on him I would just get sad, so I stopped. I am really not the best person for this topic. Don't you have some friends who you sit around and talk about this stuff with?”

His face fell as he watched me for a moment. “I'm sorry, Vivi. I don't know what I was thinking.”

“You know, Tristan would have been the one to have all this out with. He read everything Dad wrote. There was even one at the end he kept bugging me to read.”

“Yeah?” Jasper recovered slightly, fiddling with his napkin. “Which one?”

“
Staccato
,” I said. “I finally lied and said that I had read it.”

Jasper shook his head slowly. I came closer, placed my hand on the inside of his forearm. Anxiety churned in my lower half. I knew I'd disappointed him and couldn't see any way to fix it. Bringing things back to my brother at least made it clear that I understood the urge to connect with someone over their work, or any work.

“Sorry…” I began.

His eyes were searching as I sat there and shrugged. Then he pulled me to him, and with his forehead on mine, he said softly, “I wish I could have met your brother, anyone like that would have been a friend of mine.”

After I told Jasper that Marco Vassi wrote about his time in Greenwich Village, he took me there to explore. We spent a few hours ambling arm in arm down West 10th Street looking in store windows and occasionally going inside. After that we spent about a half hour inside this wonderful old bookstore, Three Lives & Company.

“Vivi, come look at this,” he called.

I made my way over to where he stood, in front of a line of books that looked familiar. He had a book open in his hand; I recognized the red cover with the green writing on the spine. Jasper's finger pointed to one of the front pages. He looked from me to the page and tilted his head to the row of books my eyes had already found. “They have all of them. Even the ones that are out of print. How cool is that?”

I tried to look like I cared.

“And look at this.” He pushed the book toward me, still pointing. “What?” His brows knit together.

“Actually no. I really couldn't care less.” The venom in my voice even shocked me.

Instead of the disappointment he had shown before, Jasper's face now registered a clear note of irritation, as did his voice. “Why are you so hostile? What's wrong with you? I thought you would be happy to see that people still appreciate your father.”

“You're kidding right? You're never going to get this are you?”

He closed the book he had been holding and crossed his arms. I am not sure why, but this directness stirred something in me that reminded me of my father, always so certain he was right. The urge to lash out was irresistible.

“I am sorry to disrupt your vision of Sebastian Post as some big hero, but to me he was weak and a failure at
everything
. His books bored the living shit out of me. He cheated on my mother. He used her to do half of his work and in return she got alimony, never finished her own novel, and because everyone she knew kept track of what he did, she was constantly reminded that he replaced her with someone younger and dumber.” People around us stopped and stared, then moved on. “Women to him were just…nothing.”

His eyes grew wide then he set his jaw. He put his hand on my arm. I pushed him off before I thought about it and a pang of regret struck me as his face fell. I could have no more stopped my tirade than a shark could stop itself from tearing into a seal. “He didn't care about me. Not after I quit dancing. You want to know something?” Jasper's face had become a study of neutrality. “When he came to Seattle to pontificate, to lecture, to be adored, he couldn't make time for his kids. Neither of us.”

“It couldn't have been that bad.” He tried again, keeping his tone light, reaching out. I stepped back.

“He'd been to Seattle, or San Francisco, or Portland, only oh, like ten times since he left my mom. How many times did he try to see me?”

At this point Jasper had backed up two steps and held his hands up in the air with wide eyes. “Vivi—”

“To top it off, he disinherited me. Okay? The only reason I got
anything
was because of what my brother did to himself.”

“I—”

“Actually that's not exactly true. He did leave me the cabin. And that dumb old typewriter. Who the fuck knows why!”

A soft voice whispered one shelf over. Jasper placed his open palm over his forehead and peered at me from beneath his hand.

“I'm going to go outside for a minute.” Backing away, I glared at a skinny woman wearing a red baseball cap. She gaped at me with an open paperback in her hand. Outside of the store, the air was too thin. The speed and intensity with which my anger shot forth left me shaky and afraid. I couldn't trust myself to behave, not where my father was concerned. Why couldn't he just fade away? Jasper didn't deserve what I'd just done.

He came out a few minutes later with a bag in his hand. His lips twitched as if he didn't know if he should laugh or glower.

I let the silence hang and finally apologized. “Look. My dad…my parents aren't like yours were. Not supportive and encouraging and all that. At least not when I started doing what I wanted. If you could pile up every person who ever disappointed you, who you ever hated, you would still only have a tenth of the shit my father represents for me.”

When I didn't say anything else, he walked over and rested his chin on the top of my head and we stood like that a moment. I wanted to cry, but that would have made everything worse. I swallowed a hard knot in my throat and placed a shaky arm around his waist.

We spent two days driving around New England. I begged to see Maine and he indulged me. We went by Stephen King's old Bangor Mansion. Maine was wonderful; we ate lobster and stayed in a lovely three-story bed and breakfast that I imagined in the deep winter might look like something out of Lovecraft with its iron gates and leaded windows.

Late one night after I thought he had fallen asleep, I stood and went to the bedroom window. I sat in a plush velvet chair with carved cherry arms. Time and the air itself felt ancient in this place. Old things were haunting me, making my present life insufferable. I was happy now; why did the subject of my father have to intrude and screw everything up?

Jasper's voice came from behind me. “What are you thinking about?”

I froze. There was no way out of this. I didn't turn around, only addressed his reflection in the window.

“Please. Is it what happened at the bookstore?”

I stared back, unable to turn and face him, so I studied my face in the reflection, skeletal with wide eyes in the window's reflection.

“Let's talk about this. I've read your father. I've read you. There are similarities you probably can't or won't see. I think you learned a lot from him. Even if he wasn't perfect, I can't believe that the same person who made me feel so incredibly transformed after reading one book could be one hundred percent bad.”

“So you want me to make you feel better about admiring his
writing
?”

“No. This isn't about me.” The rustling of the bedcover. His reflection as he sat against the massive headboard. He leaned forward and I could see in the glass, frosted with cold dew, his long white arms wrapped around his legs, raised underneath the tapestry bedcover. “This is about you and why you're angry and won't talk about it.”

I was so tired. “That stupid inheritance. Do you know how freeing it was when he cut me off? I knew I had to make it on my own. I sometimes wonder if Tristan's problem was that he had things too easy after Dad died and spent too much time on his work, and no time out hustling. He didn't have to publish anymore, so he quit submitting to magazines, and…”

“He didn't have to listen to anyone else, and you think that hurt him?”

“Something like that. Out loud it sounds too simple, but yes…I guess so. It wasn't that much either, not when you consider how famous Dad was. After what my mom and the trophy got, not much left really. Maybe there wasn't much to begin with. Dad had expensive habits.”

“Habits?”

“Women, travel, stupid women, more travel. How should I know? It's not like I got to watch.” In the reflection I looked to him and gave him an apologetic look.

We stared at each other through the window's reflection until I climbed back in to bed. He moved behind me. “I'm sorry you're so unhappy.”

“I'm not. At least I didn't think I was. Lately I have been very happy.”

His hand spread open, the full width of his splayed fingers covered my torso. With gentle pressure he rolled me onto my back. I reached up to trace the line of his ear, pinching his earlobe. He closed his eyes and opened them, the shining orbs barely visible in the dark. Only the slightest sliver of moonlight cut through the draperies to the spot where we lay.

My lips parted, waiting for something to happen, only he just watched me, turning his head by degrees, as if he could follow the movement of my thoughts or feelings if he looked long enough.

“You're the most intense man…”

He came closer, narrowed his eyes and traced the line of my brow, and then over my nose and to my lips which he pulled open farther, roughly. He took my chin in his hand and kissed it, then my jaw, completely avoiding my lips. He moved lower, so slowly it was impossible to tell how he did it.

This was the closest to meditation I had ever come. It was like he was trying to stop time by being still. Even the branches of the elms stopped scraping against the window outside. For long moments there was only the sound of my own breath, and the blood in my ears. When he finally did make his way to my groin he paused, tipped his head, one more way to examine me. I ran my fingers over his cheekbones, nose, along his jaw. He set to work; kissing, sucking, lapping, breathing in hot gusts against me. He did it so slowly and so lightly I couldn't tell if we were actually touching. The whole world rested on the tip of his tongue. Gradually he increased the pressure, still teasing, until I couldn't hold back any more. He held my ass in his hands, dipping in for one moment with more force, like he really meant to set to work, then he would pull back again. Probing and testing, after every movement he paused, gauging my reaction until I was insane with the most tortured need.

“Please,” I said. “Stop.” I pulled him up to me, and he moved onto his back, pulling me on top of him. He scooted me up to sit on him, kept his eyes on me and allowed me to study the curves of his face. With my fingers I traced a sensory map of the person I was now unafraid to admit I was invested in. What happened to him mattered to me, more maybe even than what happened to myself. A terrifying and liberating feeling. I whispered, “I understand why people compare falling in love to flying.”

“Tell me…” He pushed me back and worked himself inside while I braced myself with my hands on his legs.

The sensation of being invaded and happy at the same time was thrilling. “Every time.”

He moved slowly, matching my rhythm; this was not about getting to the end, this was about just being. Tears welled to my eyes, and I wiped them away. He took my hand and kissed it and pulled me closer to him with one hand, while holding me tight to him with his other hand on the small of my back. “Tell me…”

Exposed, and for once unafraid of the feeling, I said, “You're doing it to me…you've gotten inside me in the deepest way possible.” He paused and I was afraid he was going to stop for good. I began moving again and straightened up. “It happened in my body first, moved to my mind, then to my soul, or maybe it happened all at once. It happened in between my throat, and my heart. There's a fullness there. You did that.” I took his face in both of my hands. “I have never had this kind of peace. It's not your
words or how hard you think about them. There is something inside you that makes me want more.”

Jasper's arms came around my shoulders and pulled me down. “Words are all I've ever had before.”

At breakfast the next morning he kept giving me these outrageously sheepish looks in between pouring coffee, wiping his mouth, and buttering a banana nut muffin.

“I would love to show you the Dartmouth campus. I haven't seen it in years.”

While I drove the rental car, he navigated with the map. On the road he hummed along to the radio, a weird folk station he'd found somewhere along the way. While I wasn't wild about the music, it fit in with the quiet beauty of the landscape, lush green forests of leafy trees, picture-perfect sloping hills, a tamed wilderness. That was the east to me. Everything pretty, manicured, processed. I liked it better where I was from, where some things were still wild. Trees and grizzly bears and imaginations were allowed to soar—grow as tall as they could.

In between his instruction to turn or veer or stop groping him and watch the road, he tried to convince me he wasn't an absolute hermit.

“I talk to you on Tuesdays. When I am in town there is a group of us that get together; that happens every other week, sometimes monthly if people get busy. It was started as a way to review each other's work, but usually devolves into a bullshit session. Most days we sit around somebody's apartment, drink, bitch about editors, marketing departments, critics, whine about who hasn't been nominated for or won some prize. Sometimes people talk about their families…kids, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds efficient.”

“It is. Very.” He grinned. “We do trade manuscripts once in a while over email. That's where the real work happens. The group is invaluable that way.”