Writers & Lovers - Lily King Page 0,78

wider fancy stairs. The presidents watch me go. My chest feels like an old swollen piece of fruit about to split open with wet rot. I hear the little girls’ small voices. I want little girls. I haven’t gone back for the follow-up appointment Dr. Gynecologist suggested. Now I won’t have health insurance anymore. I don’t want to be infertile. I also don’t want to be pregnant. Fitzgerald said that the sign of genius is being able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. But what if you hold two contradictory fears? Are you still some kind of a genius?

I unplug the phone when I get home so Oscar can’t call me and Harry can’t call me and Muriel can’t call me after Harry calls her. I can’t stay inside. I can’t stay still. But I’m scared to leave. I don’t want to walk down the driveway and out to the street. I’m scared I won’t come back. I’m scared I’ll burst or dissolve or veer straight into traffic. I’m scared of men at this time of night when I’m on foot, not on my bike. I’m scared of men in cars and men in doorways, men in groups and men alone. They are menacing. Men-acing. Men-dacious. Men-tal. I’m outside now. I’m circling the big tree. You hate men, Paco said once. Do I? I don’t like working for them. Marcus and Gory. Gabriel at Salvatore’s was an exception. My French teacher in eighth grade rubbed my neck during a makeup test, swaying hard against the back of my plastic chair. I actually thought he had an itch. And when I asked Mr. Tuck at the airport in Madrid why he hadn’t told someone about my father he said, I liked your dad but you know what happens to the messenger. I hate male cowardice and the way they always have each other’s backs. They have no control. They justify everything their dicks make them do. And they get away with it. Nearly every time. My father peered through a hole at girls, possibly at me, in our locker room. And when he got caught, he got a party and a cake.

I circle the yard. It’s noisy. The ground is covered with dry leaves. The tree is nearly bare. Adam doesn’t rake. He doesn’t garden. The raised beds are thick with dying weeds. My mother was in her yard every weekend. It was the only time I ever saw her in jeans. High-waisted ones, showing off her bum. She had a nice bum. It was high and pert, even into her fifties. I didn’t get that bum. All her neighbors had crushes on her, but she was done with men. They’d come by with cuttings and compost in the spring, bulbs in the fall. They’d linger, ask about her goliath tomatoes or her trumpet vines. ‘I think my husband was half in love with her,’ more than a few women told me at her funeral. But they were not threatened. They loved her, too. They told me stories about how she cared for them during a hip replacement, a car accident, a son’s suicide. How she slept on their couches and cooked meals and ran errands. How she fought the town on pesticides on school property and wrote letters to the editor about gay rights and racial justice. I kick through the leaves. Someone reminded me of her recently. I feel the memory, just out of reach, sweet, as if memory has flavors, a woman about her age. I can’t remember. My mother was a real person. I am not a real person. She had convictions and took action. She had purpose and belief. She helped others. I help no one. She helped found that donation organization. I couldn’t even write one thank-you letter for a refrigerator. All I want is to write fiction. I am a drain on the system, dragging around my debts and dreams. It’s all I’ve wanted. And now I’m not even able to do that. I haven’t been able to go near my book since I spoke to Jennifer Lin.

The crunching of leaves wakes up the dog, and he barks from the mudroom window. I crouch beside the tree trunk and stay still though everything inside me is churning. The ground beneath the leaves is warm, but the air is cold. Something flashes in front of me. It’s my breath. I can see my breath. It’s been a long time