Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides [196]
I didn’t respond. Responding would only confirm the facts of what had happened, whereas I wanted to cast them in doubt. After a while Jerome set the coffee mug down and turned onto his side. He wriggled over toward me and rested his head against my shoulder. He lay there breathing. Then, with closed eyes, he moved his head and tunneled under the pillow with me. He started to nuzzle me. He brought his hair across the skin of my neck and after that came the sensitive organs. His eyelashes made butterfly kisses on my chin. His nose snuffled in the hollow of my throat. And then his lips arrived, avid, clumsy. I wanted him off me. At the same time I asked myself if I had brushed my teeth. Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.
For a minute it was tolerable. But soon the duck coat rode up and Jerome’s urgency was pressing itself upon me. He was trying to reach up under my shirt again. I didn’t have a bra on. After my shower I had gone without it, flushing away the Kleenex. I was done with them. Jerome’s hands moved higher. I didn’t care. I let him feel me up. For what it was worth. But if I was hoping to disappoint him, it didn’t work. He stroked and squeezed while his lower half swished like a crocodile’s tail. And then he said an unironic thing. Fervently he whispered, “I’m really into you.”
His lips closed, seeking mine. His tongue entered. The first penetration that augured the next. But not now, not this time.
“Stop,” I said.
“What?”
“Stop.”
“Why stop?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because I don’t like you like that.”
He sat up. Like the guy in the old vaudeville skit, the guy in the folding cot that won’t stay folded, Jerome flipped straight up, wide awake. Then he jumped off the bed.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I said.
“Who says I’m mad?” said Jerome, and left.
The rest of the day went slowly. I stayed in my room until I saw Jerome leave the house, carrying his movie camera. I guessed that I was no longer in the cast. The Object’s parents returned from their morning tennis foursome. Mrs. Object came up the stairs to the master bathroom. From my window I saw Mr. Object climb into the backyard hammock with a book. I waited for the shower to turn on and then came down the back stairs and out the kitchen door. I walked down to the bay, feeling melancholy.
The cedar swamp lay on one side of the house. On the other was a dirt and gravel road that led through an open field, treeless, with high yellow grass. The absence of trees was noticeable, and poking around out there I came upon a historical marker, nearly overgrown. It marked the site of a fort or a massacre, I don’t remember which. Moss encroached upon the raised letters and I didn’t read the whole plaque. I stood there for a while thinking about the first settlers and how they had killed one another over beaver and fox pelts. I put my foot on the plaque, kicking off the moss with my sneaker, until I got tired of that. It was almost noon by now. The bay was bright blue. Over the rise I could sense the city of Petoskey, the smoke of stoves and chimneys down there. The grass got marshy near the water. I climbed up on the breakwall and walked back and forth, keeping my balance. I held my arms out and pranced, Olga Korbut style. But my heart wasn’t in it. And I was way too tall to be Olga Korbut. Sometime later the whir of an outboard engine reached me. I shaded my eyes with my hand to look out over the shimmering water. A speedboat was shooting past. At the wheel was Rex Reese. Bare-chested, drinking a beer and wearing sunglasses, he gunned the throttle, towing a water-skier. It was the Object, of course, in her shamrock bikini. She looked almost naked against the expanse of water, only those two little