Rabbit, Run - John Updike [64]
you didn’t even need to take off your clothes, just a little rubbing through the cloth, your mouths tasting of the onion on the hamburgers you’d just had at the diner and the car heater ticking as it cooled, through all the cloth, everything, off they’d go. They couldn’t have felt much it must have been just the idea of you. All their ideas. Sometimes just French kissing not that she ever really got with that, sloppy tongues and nobody can breathe, but all of a sudden you knew from the way their lips went hard and opened and then eased shut and away that it was over. That there was no more push for you and you better back off if you wanted to keep your dress dry. That made you dirty. You, their stickum. They couldn’t forgive her that. Her forgiving them. She didn’t blame them though that was their mothers making them write her name on the lavatory walls. Allie told her about that, kindly. But she had some sweet things with Allie; once after school with the sun still up they drove along a country road and up an old lane and stopped in a leafy place where they could see Mt. Judge, the town against the mountain both, dim in the distance, and he put his head in her lap, her sweater rolled up and her bra undone, and it was like a baby gently, her bees (who called them her bees? not Allie) firmer and rounder then, more sensitive; his waiting wet mouth so happy and blind and the birds making their warm noises overhead in the sunshine. Allie blabbed. He had to blab. She forgave him but it made her wiser. She began the older ones; the mistake if there was one but why not? Why not? was the question and still held; wondering if there was a mistake makes her tired just thinking, lying there wet from swimming and seeing red through her eyelids, trying to move back through all that red wondering if she was wrong. She was wise. With them being young did for being pretty, and them being older it wasn’t such a rush. Boy some bastards you think never, like their little contribution’s the greatest thing the world’s ever going to see if it ever gets here.
But this one. What a nut. He had though that mildness. At least he saw you as being there. Boy that first night when he said that so sort of proudly “Hey” she didn’t mind so much going under in fact it felt like she should. She forgave them all then, his face all their faces gathered into a scared blur and it felt like she was falling under to something better than she was. But then after all it turns out he’s not that different, hanging on you all depressed and lovey and then sick of you or less just bored really when it’s done. It’s getting quicker, and quicker, more like a habit, he really hurries now when senses or she tells him she’s lost it. Then she can just lie there and in a way listen and it’s soothing; but then she can’t go to sleep afterward. Some nights he tries to bring her up but she’s just so sleepy and so heavy down there it’s nothing; sometimes she just wants to push him off and shake him and shout, I can’t, you dope, don’t you know you’re a father! But no. She mustn’t tell him. Saying a word would make it final; it’s just been one period and the next is coming up in a day maybe she’ll have it and then she won’t have anything. As much of a mess as it is she doesn’t know how happy that would make her really. At least this way she’s doing something, sending those candy bars down. God she isn’t even sure she doesn’t want it because he wants it from the way he acts, with his damn no stripper just a nice clean piece. She isn’t even sure she didn’t just deliberately bring it on by falling asleep under his arm just to show the smug bastard. For the thing about him he didn’t mind her getting up when he was asleep and crawling into the lousy bathroom just so long as he didn’t have to watch anything or do anything. That was the thing about him, he just lived in his skin and didn’t give a thought to the consequences of anything. Tell him about the candy bars and feeling sleepy he’ll probably get scared and off he’ll go, him and his good clean piece and his cute little God and his cute