Penguin Book of Women's Experience: From Girlhood to Maturity by Gloria Norris

Author:Gloria Norris [Norris, Gloria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780140257557
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Desire

LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ

Wasn’t it miraculous, that she could feel this way after so long? Desire, she meant, and its fulfillment. Ivan lay collapsed on her, slipping out in a protracted slowness. She made no effort to keep him. In a moment she would open her eyes to the bedroom ceiling, an off-white marked by grainy, old imperfections of the surface. She would repossess identity, a structure chiseled by circumstance. Till then she would yield to this larger existence: the breadth of oceans, the reach of continents! A dupe, of course, yet what a fine geographical extravaganza, sponsored by Ivan. Caroline smiled.

He moved, and left her. They lay side by side for a while, till Ivan sat up and announced, “I have to go jogging.”

Caroline sighed. “I suppose it’s only fair that you should exercise other parts as well. Legs.”

“It’s heart and lungs, actually.”

“I see. So you’ll have taken care of the reproductive, circulatory and respiratory systems. Very thorough. Then you can come home and eat, for the digestive.”

“Come on,” he pleaded, and aimed a feinting blow at her jaw. She stretched flat so he could climb over her to get out of bed, and observed his body vaulting through space.

“I should be back in a half hour or so,” he said, “I’ll ring. Will you hear me?” How discreet he was, this lover. Decoded, the question meant, was she going to get up or go back to sleep? Ivan felt that too much of life’s precious time was spent in sleep. He rang because he claimed the weight and jingle of keys would disturb the delicate euphoria of his jogging.

“I’ll hear you. I’ll be out of the shower by the time you’re back.”

Just the other day she had found some lines about love quoted in the morning paper. “ ‘Love,’ ” she had read to Ivan, who stood soberly before the glass pane of the china closet, holding his tie, “ ‘Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.’ ” She paused. “Is that what we have? Habituation?”

“We’re still in the young category,” Ivan said with a smile, his eyes, not his head, veering in her direction. A pleasant leer. Good. She didn’t care for the writer’s attitude anyway. She leered back and bit into her bread and cheese with a youthful appetite. Ivan flipped the long end of the royal blue tie over the short, pulled it up from under, and negotiated the knot with pained jerking motions of the neck, as though his head, dark and pensive, were striving to escape from captivity. He hated business clothes and maintained he would be most happy living in a loincloth, but he was going to meet with the sources of money. He was in a position of power at the Metropolitan Museum, where at last his particular virtues had found their niche: impeccable taste, a learned eye, and a brilliant, apparently artless diplomacy in regard to the sources of money.

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