The Whole World: A Novel - By Emily Winslow Page 0,15
here, and why I pushed Nick away.
Cambridge is, in its way, another small town. But looking back to the start of the universe, and looking ahead to new ways to figure it out, is a wide world to me. Studying expands me, whereas sex had squeezed me to within a little pinpoint.
Jeremy had meant the whole world to me. I never want my world to be that small again.
Nick disappeared two days after I’d been sick in his office. So I continued to not see him, but this not seeing was worse. He really wasn’t there anymore.
CHAPTER 2
I could still taste my vomit and smell Nick’s shampoo. My body was electric with everything he’d stirred up in me. I’d run the whole way from the Sedgwick. I only wanted to get into my room and close the door. And brush my teeth. I desperately wanted to brush my teeth.
She stood in front of my building, framed between two columns. She fit there, in front of the blue door. I’ve always known she grew up here, but that was a long time ago. I hadn’t noticed before that she actually looked English.
“Darling!” she called.
I didn’t move.
“Polly!” She advanced. “Which window is yours? That one?” She pointed to one with a little stained glass suncatcher. “That one?” She pointed to one with a teddy bear looking out. The rest were anonymous from here.
I willed myself not to look at mine, behind its iron juliet balcony. I didn’t want her to know.
“Polly,” she said, the way all mothers say their kids’ names. Exasperated. Proprietary.
The quivering started in my stomach and radiated outward. I didn’t figure it for anger until she tried to hug me and I shoved her away, hard.
She wobbled, and backed up into sitting on the low wall along the drive. She looked up at me, some kind of puppy look, and I said, “I can’t, Mom. I can’t deal with you right now.”
“I’m sorry. I needed to see if you’re all right.”
“I’m all right,” I lied.
“Polly—darling—please …”
What did she mean by that? That I wasn’t all right? That I’d just pushed away a good thing, and didn’t have any control over my feelings or my body? That I was a freak and a coward and broken, and stupid for not realizing it until I had a good guy practically on top of me? Is that what she meant?
“I’m all right,” I repeated. “You could have called—”
“It’s about your father—”
“No!” I shouted. “No, absolutely not.” I started breathing way too hard.
She got smart right then. I think that even a year ago all this would have been a cue to hold me and rock me, or try to anyway. But there’s a difference between a hysterical little kid and a hysterical adult. I stood up straighter, hugging myself across my chest. I said one more “No.”
“All right,” she said, rising, smoothing her skirt. “Not now.”
She held a business card from a Cambridge hotel up to my face. I saw the name, which is what she wanted. She left.
My hands shook. It took me a while to get my key out of my pocket.
I got upstairs to the bathroom and scrubbed minty toothpaste all over the inside of my mouth. I spit.
I wanted to rinse my hands under warm water but the old sinks come with two taps, one very hot and one frigid. I let them both run and rubbed my hands quickly between them, attempting the effect of tepid, but all I got were two simultaneous extremes.
The recognition hit me hard. I numbly sat down on the closed toilet. I bent over in that position they show you on airplanes, the one where you get your head between your knees.
I wanted him so much. He was warm and gentle and the nicest person I’d met in Cambridge. He was a little older than me, which made me feel older. There was this wriggly feeling inside me of things unfinished.
But the cold water rushed just as hard. I had to stop him. I had to. I couldn’t do it again.
The two extremes didn’t cancel each other out. They didn’t add up to indifference. They just kept rushing, burning and frigid, right next to each other.
I got up from the closed toilet seat and turned off the taps.
In my room I meant to undress, but pushing my top shirt button through its little slit reminded me of him, of his hands, pushing that same button. And the next.