The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [33]
“Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about?” Kathryn asked quietly.
“Are you mad?”
“Mad?”
Kathryn shook her head, dazed. She slowly closed her mouth.
She didn’t know which she was more surprised by — Mattie’s admission or the ease with which she had made it.
“When?” Kathryn asked.
“Last year.”
“Last year?”
Kathryn was stunned. This had happened a year ago, and she hadn’t known?
“Remember Tommy?” Mattie asked.
Kathryn blinked. Tommy Arsenault, as she recalled, was a cute, brown-haired boy with a sullen attitude.
“You were only fourteen,” Kathryn said incredulously. “Barely fourteen,” Mattie said, as if it were a badge of honor to have had sex so young, nearly thirteen.
“But why?” Kathryn asked, already knowing the question was ridiculous.
“You’re upset, I can tell.”
“No. No. I’m not upset. I’m just . . . I’m just surprised, I guess.”
“I just wanted to try it,” Mattie said.
Kathryn felt light-headed. The view was bothering her. She shut her eyes. Mattie had gotten her period late, just last December, and to Kathryn’s knowledge, she had had only three of them since. She may not even have been sexually mature when it happened.
“Once?” Kathryn asked, unable to suppress a note of hope. Mattie hesitated, as though frequency were a subject too intimate to discuss with one’s mother.
“No, a few times.”
Kathryn was silent.
“It’s fine, Mom. I’m fine about it. I didn’t love him or anything. But I wanted to find out what it was like, and I did.”
“Did it hurt?”
“At first. But then I liked it.”
“And you were careful?”
“Of course, Mom. What do you think, I’m going to take chances?”
As if the sex itself weren’t chance enough.
“I don’t know what to think.”
Mattie tied her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. “What about Jason?” Kathryn asked, referring to her current boyfriend. Of all of Mattie’s friends, Jason, a tall blond boy who was addicted to basketball, was the only one who had been brave enough to call yesterday to see if Mattie was all right.
“No, we don’t. He’s kind of religious? He says he can’t. Which is fine with me. I’m not putting any pressure on him or anything.”
“Good,” Kathryn managed to say.
For all of Mattie’s girlhood, Kathryn had imagined this moment, had hoped, as mothers do, that her daughter would discover sex in combination with love. What dialogue had she written in her mind for the event? Certainly not this.
Mattie gave her a hug.
“Poor Mom,” she said.
Her tone was mocking but affectionate.
“Did you know,” Kathryn asked, “that in the 1700s in Norway, any woman who was discovered to have had premarital sex was beheaded, her head put on a pike, and her body buried at the site of the beheading?”
Mattie looked at her mother the way Kathryn imagined she might do if Kathryn had just had a stroke.
“Mom?”
“Just a bit of historical detail,” Kathryn said. “I’m glad you told me.”
“I wanted to before, but I thought . . .”
Mattie bit her lip hard.
“Well, I thought you’d be upset, and I know you’d probably have to tell Daddy.”
Her voice quavered at the mention of her father.
“You’re sure you’re not mad?” Mattie asked again.
“Mad? No. Mad has nothing to do with it. It’s just that . . . it’s an important part of life, Mattie. It does mean something. It is special. I do believe this.”
Kathryn could hear the platitudes. Was sex special? Did it mean something? Or was it just a natural act, performed billions of times a day all over the world in a dizzying number of ways, some of them monstrous? She didn’t know what she thought on the subject, and she wondered how often it was that parents were trapped into pronouncing sentiments they did not actually believe.
“I know that now,” Mattie said. “I just had to get it out of the way.”
She took Kathryn’s hand. Mattie’s fingers were freezing. “Just think about the penguins,” Kathryn said lamely.
Mattie laughed.
“Mom, you’re weird.”
“We knew that.”
They stood up.
“Mattie, listen.”
Kathryn turned to her daughter. She wanted to tell Mattie about the rumors now, about the terrible