All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki

Author:Ruth Ozeki
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

In the clarity of the day, as I bundled up Poo to take him next door, the anticipation of the night before turned leaden. Cass was no help. She had on a frilly apron over her sweatshirt and would barely meet my eye as she lifted the baby from my arms. She didn’t approve, and I felt a temptation to linger, to ask her for a cup of coffee and a word of absolution. I wanted to explain to her, carefully, all that I was thinking and feeling, and maybe it would take the better part of the afternoon, but that was all right, too. My date with Elliot felt like a sentence, compared to the safety and the comfort of Cassie’s bright, sunny kitchen. But she blocked the door. It was the first day of planting, she told me. Will had left early for the fields, and she was busy. She’d be feeding the workers lunch today, as well as covering the office.

“Gosh, Cass,” I said, “I didn’t realize . . .” But just as I was reaching out my arms to take Poo back, the phone rang and she pulled a cordless handset from her apron pocket and withdrew into the house with my baby.

I sat for a while in the Pontiac, smoking a cigarette and trying to rekindle some excitement, but the feeling eluded me. I headed into town. I hadn’t been able to think of a restaurant, so he suggested meeting at his motel. Already things were different. For one thing I could now drive myself to get fucked.

I looked for his car in the lot, a baby blue Beetle, but of course it wasn’t there.

I knocked, and for a moment I panicked, almost turning to go, but it was too late. Mr. Rhodes opened the door. I couldn’t look at him. Instead I looked past him into the room.

Things were different.

There were sheets on the bed. There was no soup on the stove. The windows were curtained, not clouded with steam.

He reached for my hands. Speechless, I allowed him that. He shook his head and held on to my fingertips. “You haven’t changed,” he said.

Glancing up at him then, I felt young and suddenly reckless. I took a step forward and placed my hand on his cheek. He closed his eyes, mute now, turning his mouth into my palm. The naked arch of his neck bent to my gaze, and I felt my confusion abate beneath a wave of tenderness and power. His breath, warm against my palm, made my skin tingle all over, and then I remembered—This is what it feels like to be fourteen and thrilling at the edge of sex when it is still brand new, testing the waters where his desire laps your shore, sticking in a toe, and not understanding the swiftness of the current—

Enough. This is enough. Stop here—

But the pull of the past was stronger than I was. It caught me up. He slipped a DO NOT DISTURB sign around the doorknob.

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