Sex and Death in the American Novel (21 page)

“Just like Eric and me.”

“And what does he get out of it?”

“Not sure…I'll ask him the next time I see him. Maybe he still feels guilty for leading me on when we were teenagers.”

“Is that how you think of it?” Jasper had turned in his seat and faced me. He took up the entire space in this small car.

“No, never did. I know he was figuring things out.”

Jasper looked like he wanted to ask something else but I didn't want to get into the topic of my best friend.

“Girls?” I asked trying to sound casual.

“In the group? There have been a few, they don't stay long though. Not sure why. What? Oh, you mean…” He rolled his eyes. “All the time. I try for at least four a week.” He affected the same casual tone.

I didn't respond, knowing he was trying to get a rise out of me and desperately wanting him to announce the joke at the same time. What was it my beloved Marco said about jealousy? That fucking shit is inevitable, no matter how regrettable.

“Vivi?”

I scowled, making a big show of being upset, until his face changed to an expression of worry. “As long as they are hookers, and you're only getting blowjobs. Agreed?”

The next twenty minutes became a competition of who could say the most creative and exciting way to cheat, lie and get away with screwing around.

When we arrived at the campus, he directed me as I drove through the brick buildings, stopping every so often for him to point something out. “I took my first class in this building…Spent too many nights over there,” he said when we drove through town and passed an ancient-looking pub a block away from the campus.

We grabbed lunch and then settled on one of the sloping lawns to sit and watch the clouds. He propped himself up on one elbow, the full length of him stretching down the gentle grade in his white t-shirt and faded jeans.

I watched the way his eyes moved over the grass, my outstretched legs, back to the clouds. “What was it like for you?”

“What was what like for me?” he said.

“Losing your parents…going through college, this time that is supposed to be so carefree and knowing there is no one at home waiting for you…”

I turned from my position on my stomach, rolled over and watched his hair rustle and flip over in the wind. He reached up to run his fingers through the thick wisps. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. “Hard. Tried not to dwell on it.”

I waited a beat. Then another. He didn't turn to look at me, only continued to watch the clouds.

I feared how the words would sound in the real world, but I had to say them. “You don't trust me with this, do you?”

He finally turned his head and met my eyes.

“I was alone. After my dad, I was alone. Yes. Totally alone. I didn't know what else to do but move on.”

“To make them proud of you?” Lame. Cliché.

“Yup.” He ran his finger over my neckline. “I'm not alone anymore, so it doesn't matter now.” He held my eyes for way too long then rolled onto
his belly and picked at the grass. His shoulder was warm and solid when it rested against mine.

“My dad disinherited me, and then on the day he died he told me to leave the room so he could talk to my brother.” The words got hard to push from my throat. “I missed his last breath.”

Jasper became still beside me, moved closer to me, but didn't speak.

“I don't judge you, Vivi.”

I placed my hand over his and pulled it to my chest while I spoke. With his flesh held securely inside my own, it felt like I could keep him safe and close. “I do.”

More grass picking until he said, “Trust you…I do. I was thinking about something else before.”

The emerald lawns of the campus and the heavy clouds with their sharp outlines made me imagine fiberglass against the pale sky. Alice in Wonderland couldn't have felt this out of her element, though I bravely pushed on. There was nowhere else I would have rather been.

I ran my fingers through the cool lengths of his hair, propped myself on my elbows. He turned and surveyed me with eyes so true they matched the color of the blades of grass beside his head.

I lay back and pulled his hand over my stomach, taking his big hand in both of mine and played with his fingers.

“I lost my virginity here.”

“You mean like right here on this lawn? Good for you. We should go streaking before we leave,” I teased.

He flipped over. His face didn't change though.

“What? Everyone loses it sometime. You were probably a bit late, but I won't judge you for that if you won't judge me for, you know…the football team, the drag queen, that stint as a stripper…oh, and that regrettable donkey during spring break.”

He pushed my head back gently. “His name was Alejandro.”

Jasper didn't meet my eyes, just studied the blades of grass in his hand.

“What else?”

The way he bit his lip and turned to look so deeply into my eyes, I knew what I said next mattered to him more than anything he could have ever said to me about my writing.

“Was he any good?”

After a moment when he saw that I was serious, he smiled. “Yes. But well, I have no real point of reference. He was the only man I've ever been with.” He took my hand. “He wasn't as good as you though. No one is as good as you.”

I buried my head in his hair, breathed deeply of his scent. “You've been holding on to this for a long time, haven't you?”

He nodded his head and I kissed his smooth temple. Then his ear, forcing my tongue inside and he twisted away, coming back to land on top of me. He kissed me for a long time, no doubt this revelation was something he'd been working up to for a while. I remembered how he'd wanted to say something about Eric in the car.

He planted sloppy wet kisses on my neck that made me squirm. He had my arms pinned and his weight on my legs. This was the first time he'd ever used his size against me. In between kisses he said, “I was waiting. Yes. To see…”

On my last day there I was ready to get back to my own space, and he surely was ready to have his back. I sat and waited while he pulled several books down from his shelves in the bedroom and stacked them on the table by the couch. I took one down, a plain white cover with a nice-looking tree behind block letters.

“Galley?”

He nodded.

“How many errors did you catch?”

He made a face. When he saw I was actually waiting for a real answer, he stopped. “I mean to look at them every time, but then somehow the deadline slips by and everything seems to turn out okay…” He gave me a shrug halfway between boyish and at a loss for what else to do.

“You're telling me you don't look at your galleys?”

He sat on the edge of the sofa as he had that first day, watching me.

“Maybe the publishers I work for make more mistakes?”

“Maybe, or maybe I'm just lazy,” he said and got up to grab a book off the shelf. He patted the seat beside where he sat on the couch. “I want to read to you.”

I lay across his lap and stretched my arms out. “This reminds me of the way I used to lay with my parents when I was very small. My mother would stroke my hair as she read, my father would turn every so often, look behind the book, stare down his nose and when he found I was still awake he would continue. I think back now there was a hint of disappointment in his voice.”

Jasper cocked an eyebrow to show his skepticism and opened the heavy book, the fingers of his right hand covering the spine. “This poem is called
The Youthful Truth Seeker
,” he cleared his throat loudly, “by Robert Penn Warren.” He looked around the book, down the bridge of his nose and raised his eyebrows. When I gave him a smile he went back to the page in front of him.

The words came easily enough, in one ear and out the other. That's poetry for me most of the time. To keep myself entertained I peeked around
the side of the heavy book and watched his face as he read, and when he pointed something out that he really liked, his eyebrows twisted up, his facial muscles moved, his nostrils twitched, it was like watching him during sex. He was totally in the moment, present, not distracted by anything else. I wanted to be able to focus like him.

It occurred to me that either while listening to him read, or talk, or sex, my mind hadn't wandered, he'd kept me anchored. How far had I come since meeting him…how much had changed about what I thought was possible to feel and want. I'd started with him thinking what a novelty he was and didn't see him for the amazingly complicated and beautiful person he was.

His clear even voice spoke these lines:

“What was the world I had lived in? Poetry, orgasm, joke:
And the joke the biggest on me, the laughing despair
Of a truth the heart might speak, but never spoke—
Like the twilit whisper of wings with no shadow on air.”

He stopped; maybe he sensed I was staring too intently. He let the book flop over and tipped his head. “I'm not losing you, am I?”

“You should read for the blind,” I said hoping my voice was even.

“I am,” he said, and I stuck my tongue out at him. I blinked back tears and put one hand to his lips, he kissed me firm and held my hand in one of his.

And then the last stanza, when I could barely keep still:

“While fog, star by star, imperially claims the night.
How long till dawn flushes dune-tops, or gilds beach stones?
I stand up. Stand thinking, I'm one poor damn fool, all right.
Then ask, if years later, I'll drive again forth under stars, on
tottering bones.”

First I was thinking about how wonderful it was to have someone read to me, especially something I'd never heard before. My family's particular books generally centered around the American West, and with Tristan it was often horror on car rides or around a campfire. The next minute I was sobbing from my stomach, seeing Tristan waiting in line for him with that stupid fucking pile in his hands. All the expectation my brother had, all the hope, and he never would stand on tottering legs. The cruel irony of the situation was too much to wrap my brain around. Here I lay with the very person my brother wanted—needed so badly just to talk to. I hadn't even been able to focus for the entire poem. I was not worthy.

Jasper stopped reading and didn't move. I could feel him looking at me, then I turned toward his chest and sobbed. Finally his hands fell to my head,
my shoulders, stroking, and letting me go. Finally I said, “I'm sorry. You were doing that so beautifully.” I wiped my eyes, running my forearm all the way to my elbow under my eyes and nose, wiping my arm on my jeans.

He pushed me back, holding my shoulders with his hands. “What is it?”

I couldn't tell him, not in the way I'd been thinking anyway—that would push him away from me again, and I was tired of Tristan in the middle. I'd discovered Jasper for myself, on my own, someone my brother wouldn't have even imagined: someone fun, silly, generous, and even in his steely work ethic, more capable of happiness than I ever imagined. Not an idol, not all-knowing, just another person, gifted though he was, just not in ways most of those people like my brother would have ever seen. The last thing I wanted was to bring Tristan's name up again.

I stared for a moment, drying up, unsure how to answer, until I burst into a fresh batch of tears and nasal drippage. He rose and brought me a wad of tissues.

“How pathetic to be crying over something so random.”

He stroked my back and watched me. We both broke into a grin at the same time. He rose and poured a drink, then began to pour me one and I said, “No, I want to keep this. I haven't felt like this in a while, reminds me how I was before, before I thought I knew everything about words, about what was good and bad. About what I liked. That was a nice surprise.” I congratulated myself on what I thought was an exceptionally good cover. Drinking would only make this worse, I knew that from experience.

I went from not understanding what my brother had been searching for, to the tiniest speck of understanding, and it was terrifying. “How hard a person must work to get words to fit into that order, to make those rhythms, just the poetry, and the thought of making the beautiful words reach a person's mind,” I croaked.

He pulled my hair from my shoulders and smoothed it down my back.

“I had not until now really understood what the big fucking deal was. I was busy contriving these outlandish scenarios, but with good stories, and people are out there every day and night trying to create something that will last.”

My face leaked once more, only silently, and I held the feeling close. I was changing.

When he sent me off on the plane that next day, I kissed him long and deep, trying to enjoy the moment because I knew a new moment was coming and he wouldn't be in it. I felt his eyes on me all the way through security. When I boarded the plane, I didn't miss him because I knew I had
a piece of him already with me at home. It sat at the bottom of one of Tristan's boxes. A copy of Jasper's second novel—
Filial
. Now I needed to read this to separate Jasper from the person Tristan worshipped.

I would read him, and this time, pay attention. I resolved to go slow, try and see where the beauty was, see where Jasper put himself into the longer passages, where he reached past his own capabilities, where he tried and failed, or succeeded. I wanted to see if I could feel him there, his thoughts and words, or if the book would read as the other had: dense and inaccessible. I hoped I had changed enough to enjoy this part as I had all other parts of being with this man. I needed this experience—as a reader, as a receptacle, no different than a million others—to be different.

Chapter 10

The ferry ride to my mother's house seemed to be the perfect place to let the events of the past week settle. I remembered my week in New York in tones of reds, yellows and copper. Fall in Seattle meant an endless succession of the same drizzly gloom. The gray-green water reflected the swirling darkness overhead; the early morning light hadn't yet decided how it would be, sunny or dark.

I studied the lights of a processing plant across the water and watched as the looming landmasses approached under a blanket of fog and moss-covered rock, inviting me to disappear into their misty channels. What had I gotten myself in to? I felt like I was flapping free in the breeze of emotion, my life at some sort of crossroads, and I wondered when it would start making sense, if it ever would. I had discovered a weakness I didn't think I had in me, and the feeling threatened to become a larger part of my life.