Away: A Novel by Amy Bloom

Author:Amy Bloom [Bloom, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family Life, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780812979435
Google: bv6VSlIEQBwC
Amazon: 0812977793
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2007-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

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Amy Bloom

“He needs to be dead drunk,” Gumdrop says on the way to Snooky’s suite, pinching Lillian’s hip, to make her listen. Snooky waits on the bed like a sultan, his arms behind his head, and says, What’ll it be, girls? This here is Sadie Hawkins Day, which means nothing to Lillian, but Gumdrop smiles like an imp. She steps out of her dress and Lillian does the same, and Snooky notices Lillian’s plain patchy underwear right away. It’s plainer than plain next to Snooky’s silk boxers, which are red-striped like a barber’s pole and they are shameful next to Gumdrop’s finery, but Snooky says immediately that he doesn’t mind. He says kindly as they get ready for bed that he suspects she’s saving her money for more important things than fancy drawers, and when Gumdrop is out of the room making her personal arrangements, Snooky hands Lillian seventy-five cents.

A little extra, he says, for your savings account. Lillian knows he’s as bad as Gumdrop says; he’s worse. He’s a pimp and a thief, stealing from a hardworking woman, stealing from family, but he is a hard man to dislike.

Gumdrop comes back and takes Lillian by the hand and says to her, quietly, Turn over on your stomach. Lillian does, thinking, Oh God, let this not be the biggest mistake of my life, although that’s not so easy to catalog anymore, and when Gumdrop spanks her once, sharply, Lillian cries out in an unfeigned and completely satisfying way and Snooky laughs in anticipation. Gumdrop’s little brown hand on Lillian’s round pink ass is a wonderful thing to contemplate, and he is filled with love for his cousin and with affection for Lillian, whom he can already picture in three different and equally terrific positions.

Lillian sits up and opens her mouth to object to the spanking, to even the idea of spanking, and Gumdrop pinches her hard beneath the sheet and winks hugely at her cousin. Shy, Gumdrop says, as if she has tried and tried with this girl but will get nowhere without Snooky’s persuasive presence. And Snooky prefers it that way, prefers Away

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that Lillian come to it on her own. He’s not the kind of man who has to brutalize his girls for sex; they call him Brown Sugar, they call him Sugar Bear and Sweet Man, and he likes that, he likes that he never pays for it and he never hits for it.

Let’s all relax a little bit, Gumdrop says, like she’s had a sudden and bright idea. Lillian, she says, why don’t you bring over that bottle of brandy and we’ll have ourselves a little party. She pours half-capfuls for herself and Lillian and mugs of brandy for Snooky, and they play a few drinking games, and Lillian contributes one from Turov where you have to bang the spoon from the tabletop up into an empty cup. She’s very good at it, and Snooky is not, and they all have a good laugh about that and drink more brandy.

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