Baby Love by Joyce Maynard

Author:Joyce Maynard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781453261347
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2012-04-28T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

CARLA GETS HOME BEFORE Greg. The first thing she sees is a dead fish lying on the doorstep. The door open. Her teapot lying on the floor. Contraceptive cream smeared on the window. “Fuck you sucker.” She screams.

Ann stops at the Grand Union for some honey yogurt and more popcorn. She knows what she will do tonight.

Then she goes home. Turns on the TV set, heats some oil in a pan, melts the butter. By the time the popcorn has popped she will have finished two cups of yogurt. She will save the other one for after, to help her throw up.

She goes to the pantry for the popping corn, reaches up to the top shelf for a bowl. There is a rustling, a little high-pitched cheeping sound and then a frantic fluttering overhead. For a second she thinks there must have been birds nesting here. But it’s bats. At least a dozen.

“Let’s talk some more about Loretta,” says Dr. Poster. “About what you said last week. How she was just asking for it.”

Wayne stretches his arms and folds them behind his head, as if he’s lying on a beach someplace. This is a trick, of course, designed to get his guard down. Dr. Poster is trying to look as if he agrees that Loretta deserved what happened to her, so Wayne will admit that he did in fact make those teeth marks on her buttocks. But he knows that Dr. Poster could never understand a woman like Loretta, or what it means to have something such as he and Loretta had. Dr. Poster probably makes love to his wife for three minutes every Saturday night. Weekdays they talk about how their stocks are doing and whose turn it is to pick up the kids. Comment on what nice tender steak this is.

Loretta understood. She knew she belonged to him. She knew she wasn’t supposed to talk to anybody else, wasn’t supposed to leave their apartment. She was supposed to wait there for him, on her mattress with her cunt ready. Thinking about how it was going to be. That was the deal. He made it worth her while, when he came to her. She was the one who broke the rules.

First she wanted to go to the supermarket. Said he never bought the right kind of oranges. Said he never took advantage of the sales. Didn’t like the clothes he bought for her. Said I don’t use sanitary napkins, I use Tampax.

Then she wanted a TV. Said how am I supposed to know what’s going on in the world? You didn’t even tell me Nixon resigned.

What does a person need to know that sort of stuff for, he would like to know. What is more important than the kind of love they had?

Then she wanted that baby. There was not supposed to be any baby. He brought her those pills every day. Even kept track of her cycle on the calendar.

She tricked him. Didn’t even tell him. Didn’t she know, when you have something like they had, she wouldn’t have to tell him.

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