about my wretched time in Sunday school. I was so good while all this was leaching into me. I wanted my parents to love me, obviously, which is why I went along, obviously. The thing is that I think I liked Sunday school, being a dunce, and even looked forward to going. I don’t know. I think I was even sort of thrilled when I had confirmation. We were Episcopalians then.”
“So you were a believer for how long?”
“Well, a believer… I don’t know. I went to church, I was in a club called Chi Rho. What I mean is I don’t know how
“So you were an Episcopalian and what happened? Because when I met you there was no sign or real residue of that, at least so far as I can remember.” His cheek was against her temple. He was speaking against her skull. They were bone to bone, almost. If only his love could travel into her mind physically, by pure resonance in some way, straight in, so she would feel it and know it. Her hair was perfect. Her body was heaven to him, the pastures of heaven, perfection.
“It was funny because I think once I was confirmed and had gotten into adolescence it was as though my parents lost interest, almost as though they had done their job by exposing me to Jesus. And I suppose they thought it had taken, I was inoculated to be good, and so that was that and they could go back to not going to church once that seemed to have taken place satisfactorily. It was like what they do to cattle here, for ticks, run them through a spray, or like orthodontia. My parents stopped going, my father first. Then my mother. And then I kept going to church, and then just to Chi Rho, and then I stopped going to that. There was never much discussion around it.”
“Did your family say grace?”
“We did for a while at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. I remember it as feeling awkward.”
He pressed his cheek harder against her. Her breath was empty, neutral, which meant ideal. He was cupping her breasts lightly, protectively, was what he was aiming for. Getting erotic was wrong for this juncture. He asked if her family had tithed.
“Tithed? No of course not. I don’t know. I don’t think Episcopalians tithe. I think Jews do, and Mormons. They did put money in the collection plate, but secretly from me. It was always already in an envelope, so I have no idea how much they gave. Parents are odd. They were odd. They never got in line to shake the minister’s hand on the steps after services. They slid around, somehow, nodding. Of all the events the church gave, we only went to the massive ones, where the crowds were. Don’t get an erection, I beg you. We’re not doing anything tonight. Don’t get an erection and make me feel guilty.”
“I’m trying,” he said.
“Well
Touching her between the legs at times like this was something they liked to call getting away with murder. He was never absolutely sure when she was going to permit it, when they were in casual mode, which was a good thing, no doubt. Take nothing for granted was what it said.
“Even after my religion went away I kept putting Episcopalian on the line that asks for your religion on application forms, like a robot. Then I began putting Protestant. And then I started leaving it blank and to my astonishment discovered that nobody cared if I did. What I really wanted to write was None of your business. But I never did. I’m sure the reason we were Episcopalians was because St. Michael’s was the church closest to us in our neighborhood, walking distance.
“So there went my religion…”
“Your shackles turned to dew,” he said.
She was struck. She swallowed. He felt it. She sat up a little.
“That’s a beautiful line, what is it?”
There was a problem. The line happened to be his own. Let your shackles fade like dew, or as the dew, he couldn’t remember which, came from his delusional period as a would-be poet. What he did not need just now was admiration for his aesthetic ejecta, leading to questions about what else he should be doing with his great talents rather than working for the agency.
She sat up fully. He kissed the nape of her neck.
“What is that from?”
All he remembered about his poem at this point was the struggle to get it right, which he had lost because he hadn’t found the right image for shackles turning to dew and then subsequently rising away like mist, dew in the morning sun, something like that. Fade was wrong.
“I don’t know what it’s from. I don’t know. I’ll try to think…”
“I have to know,” she said. “Can you track it down for me? I’m asking you to.”
“Tasking me. I’ll try.”
“I’m going to remind you,” she said.
Then he understood. It was for Morel, for his use, for his armamentarium, he knew it as clearly as he knew anything. She loved it as an image of liberation and she wanted to bring it as a gift to her mentor, which was what he was becoming, not that she would ever admit that that was why she wanted it.
She said, “Because I would love to pass it on to Davis. For his writing. He’s constantly writing.”
She sank down again, to her former position, drawing his hands back to her breasts. Everything is a wound, he thought. He didn’t know what to do. Everything with her was Morel, not that she could help it. He was afraid. He wanted to know if behind all this declared attraction something worse was moving its slow thighs, something like individual vacations, something middle-class decadent like open marriage, whatever that was. He was afraid of conceptualizing what he was afraid of. Something was coming. He thought, She’s wounding me, I could die… She doesn’t know. His heart was beating rapidly. She should be able to notice that, unless she was dismissing it as sex, which she didn’t want, tonight. Was it because Morel was black? Was Morel using that? Would this be happening if Morel were white? Injustice to blacks had been a preoccupation of Iris’s. Of course suppose the Africans had had the Renaissance first and then gone off to conquer the world, how different would it have been? Every race is as bad as its power permits it to be was his opinion.
“You’re hurting my breasts,” Iris said.
“God I’m so sorry. It was unconscious.” He took his hands off her, but again she caught them and pressed them to her breasts.
Something was coming that he didn’t want to hear and it was coming at the worst moment, because in a way everything was perfect. The color of her skin in the color of the bathwater was perfect. The water in the tub was the exact shade of something… Jasmine tea was what it was. He thought he knew the particular cup of tea, even, and the restaurant they’d been in when it had been served, years ago, before Africa. The scent from the citronella candle burning in the hallway was contributing to the moment… the scent was enough like perfume for her, enough not like perfume, closer to an astringent, for him. Physically nothing was hurting. It was excruciating.
He had to know what was coming. It was, and it didn’t matter why it was coming, it didn’t matter why it was coming, whether it was the issue of their childlessness aggravated again via her sister cleverly devising to get pregnant by an absolute fool, or if it was the first cold wind of menopause beginning to blow, or if it was boredom with him versus the black glamour of the black bastard he had the power to destroy utterly, if he was careful. She prefers a jackass who says contra instead of versus, as if that made any kind of difference: she wants to mate with a larger vocabulary, he thought. But larger vocabulary wasn’t what he meant. He meant gaudier vocabulary, flashier.
Do it, he said to himself. “What do you want?” he asked, his tone strange to his ears, realizing as he spoke that this was clumsy and would only baffle her.
That was the effect. “What do you mean?” she asked. He had succeeded in baffling her.
“Iris, I don’t know what you want, if you want us to have an arrangement… something like an arrangement…” He could barely hear himself.
She sat up and torqued herself violently around in order to look hard into his eyes. She seemed amazed. It seemed genuine.
She had covered her breasts with her hands, reflexively, as though she had suddenly found herself in the presence of a stranger. She was staring at him, shaking her head minutely.
Anyone would want her. She was interesting. Yesterday she had raised the question of why there was a
