Rough Strife by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Author:Lynne Sharon Schwartz [Schwartz, Lynne Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-8753-8
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-10-14T22:49:00+00:00

AFTERWARDS SHE LIKED TO say that she had known the moment it happened. It felt different, she told Ivan, like a pin pricking a balloon, but without the shattering noise, without the quick collapse. “Oh, come on,” he said. “That’s impossible.”

But she had dealt for so long with infinitesimal precise abstractions, and she did know how it happened. The baby was conceived one late-September night, Indian summer. All day the sun had glowed hot and low in the sky, settling an amber torpor on people and things, and the night was the same, only now a dark hot heaviness sank slowly down. The scent of the still-blooming honeysuckle rose to their bedroom window. Just as she was bending over to kiss him, heavy and quivering with heat like the night, he teased her about something—could she spare the time from her latest paper on link groups?—and she punched him lightly on the shoulder. In response Ivan stretched out on her back like a blanket, smothering her, while she struggled beneath, writhing to escape. It was a wordless, sweaty struggle, punctuated with wild laughter, shrieks and gasping breaths. She tried biting but he evaded her, and she tried scratching the fists that held her down, but she couldn’t reach. All her desire was transformed into physical effort, yet he was still too strong for her. She refused to say she gave up and he wouldn’t loosen his grip, so they lay locked and panting in a static embrace.

“You win,” she said at last. As he rolled off she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.

“Aha!” Ivan shouted, ready to begin again, but she distracted him. Once the wrestling was at an end she found pleasure tinged with resentment. And later, when they were covered with sweat, dripping on each other, she said, “You don’t play fair.”

“I don’t play fair! Look who’s talking.”

“It isn’t fair that you should always win.”

Ivan laughed gloatingly and curled up in her arms. She smiled in the dark.

That was the night the baby was conceived, not in high passion but rough strife.

When she phoned him at work after seeing the doctor, he was incredulous. He came home beaming foolishly, and when they wanted to make love, he asked, “Do you think it’s all right to do this?”

“Oh, Ivan, honestly. It’s microscopic.”

He was in one of his whimsical moods and made terrible jokes that she laughed at with easy indulgence. He said he was going to pay the baby a visit and asked if she had any messages she wanted delivered. He unlocked from her embrace, moved down her body and said he was going to have a look for himself. Clowning, he put his ear between her legs to listen. Finally he stopped his antics as she clasped her arms around him and whispered, “Ivan, you are really too silly.” He became unusually gentle. Tamed, and she didn’t like it, hoped he wouldn’t continue that way for months. “Ivan,” she explained patiently, “you know, it really is all right.

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