Short Century (20 page)

“Always playing the protective older brother. What happened to waging war on Christendom by sleeping around?”

“I'm sorry, I just…”

“Shh, we're about to get to the part where Gable pretends to be a gangster and threatens to kill that guy's kids.” She reached under her blanket, pulled out a bowl, and produced two carrots, one of which she tossed to me. “The carrot scene is coming up soon,” she said.

I thought about sitting on the arm of the chair where she sat, but I sat on the sofa across from her instead. She laughed at something Gable said and I twirled the carrot in my fingers. During some commercials, I tried to come up with an explanation about Jacob, but Emily seemed to have forgotten it. She was looking at me in a way that I couldn't read. Maybe she was thinking the same thing I was, maybe she wanted to have sex with me, too. But that was unlikely.

On screen, Colbert, lying on a makeshift hay-bed, said that she did not need Gable's character and that she could “get along.”

“I hate this scene,” Emily said.

When Gable didn't answer, Colbert looked up with her baroquely wide eyes and, discovering that he was gone, began to scream.

“Peter! Peter!” Colbert screamed.

“Peter! Peter!” Emily mimicked. “She's such a whiny bitch. Why did they have to make her such a whiny bitch?”

I brought the carrot to my mouth, intending to take a bite.

“Wait!” Emily said. “You have to wait until we get to the scene. What's wrong with you?”

I lowered the carrot.

Gable and Colbert were walking by the side of the road, then stopped and rested against a fence.

“Okay, here we go,” Emily said. She placed her carrot between her teeth and bit it precisely as Gable did. I watched her nose as she chewed. If she hadn't been my sister, we would have fallen in love at first sight. She picked up a carrot and threw it at me.

“You messed up again! You didn't bite in time! You're such an amateur.”

I smiled and took a bite. The carrot tasted faintly of cotton from the blanket, but I didn't complain. Colbert was refusing to eat the carrot Gable offered her because it was raw.

“She's such a pampered whore,” Emily said.

“I know.”

“Or a goddamned whore, as you might say.”

“Shh,” I said. “This is it.”

“Are you okay?” Emily said, and looked at me sympathetically for a longish time to give me an opportunity to speak, but I couldn't think of anything to say. “There's something weird about you tonight,” she said. “It's like you're nervous or something.”

“I'm fine. Let's watch the scene.”

She twisted her face a little and concentrated on the television. Gable was boasting of his hitchhiking prowess, demonstrating various ways he used his thumb to stop cars. Then each way fails to stop a car. This made Gable look silly, and such was his faint, instantly discarded comeuppance. Gable had what men in these movies always had, an arrogance that was empty but charming, and therefore not empty. I was struck by how unfair it was that I didn't have this arrogance.

This was where Emily usually stood up, but this time she did not stand up. She glanced at me and then bent toward the television.

Colbert said: “I'll stop a car and I won't use my thumb.”

Emily wasn't getting up. I wanted to remind her to hike her skirt up like she always did, but I was too embarrassed. Colbert hiked her skirt over her knee and the scene was over.

“You didn't do the skirt thing,” I said.

“Let's get on a plane and move to
REDACTED
,” she said.

“What?”

“We can just go.”

“And do what?” I asked. “They're in the middle of a civil war.”

“Maybe we can help,” she said.

“How?”

“Arthur, I'm really afraid you might kill yourself. I'm really afraid.”

“I don't want to talk about this,” I said, and stood to leave.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Let's watch the rest of the movie.” She looked genuinely remorseful, which made me feel bad. I sat down and tried to concentrate on the movie. I looked at Emily's feet, her ankles.

“You have better legs than Claudette Colbert,” I said.

Emily looked at me quizzically.

“I thought of it because you usually do the thing with your skirt when she does,” I said. “You've got world-class legs.”

She looked both confused and flattered. “Thank you.”

“World-class legs.”

Emily looked at me, and as she did, her mood darkened. She started to say something but just grumbled to herself. She put the bowl of carrots on the coffee table and stood up.

“I'm going to bed,” she said.

“Did I say something?”

“No, I'm just tired.”

She gathered the blanket around her torso and walked out of the room. I tried to think of something to say but could not.

f

The next day, Emily
suggested we take a trip into town. She probably wanted to talk about my strange behavior. I was lucky she was even willing to talk to me at all; I had gone much too far with innuendo while watching the movie. We walked in silence past the shops and through a small park by the water. We often walked in silence, but when we did Emily was usually looking around, swinging her arms, the way children did.

“It's nice to go for a walk,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Arthur, do you think I'm going to become boring?”

“What?”

“I don't know. Forget it. I don't know why I said it. I mean, not giving me Jacob's message.” Still walking, she hugged her breasts and looked away from me.

“I told you I was sorry about that.”

“No, no, it's okay. And it was nice of you to pretend you were just being a protective older brother. I know Jacob is as boring as Brad. He's boring in the same way that Brad is. James Hickham is boring, too. I know you're afraid I'm becoming like that. But that doesn't mean you can make decisions for me.”

I was perplexed. “Emily, I'm not sure…”

“You don't have the right to make decisions for me.”

“Of course I don't.”

“I'm not going to become like that. I'm not going to become boring, even though you think I am.”

“Emily, I don't think that at all.” I let out a sort of sigh-laugh.

She stopped walking. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She stepped in front of me and turned to face me. “I know you think I'm a child, but I want you to listen to me, all right?”

“Emily, I don't think you're in any danger of becoming boring.”

She grabbed my arms. “No, just listen to me. I'm very smart. I know you very well. I usually know what you're thinking, and I always know what you're thinking about me.”

She paused. Maybe she did suspect, and this was her roundabout way of finding out for certain. But maybe she suspected and she felt the same way. Maybe we were about to make love.

“Never lie to me,” she said. “Never lie to me. Now tell me what you really think of me. Tell me you think I'm going to turn into some garden-variety garden-party hostess.” She couldn't help smiling at her joke, and this made me smile as well.

“Emily, I…”

“Arthur, I'm serious. Tell me you think I'm going to wind up as boring as Mother.”

I wanted to tell her the truth, which was that I didn't think she was going to become boring—I wasn't sure that my mother was boring. But Emily wouldn't accept any answer. She turned around, hugging her breasts, and started walking. “You were really patronizing last night. World-class legs. Do you think you can liberate me with dumb compliments like that?”

“I don't know what I think.”

“Did you ever think,” she said, “that maybe becoming boring is better than whatever is happening to you? Maybe it's better than feeling sorry for yourself all the time and always talking about revolution when you're obviously never going to do anything about it. Maybe it's better to be like Mom. Well, not like Mom, but like Dad.”

She stuck out her jaw, as though by performing this action she might convince herself that I was wrong and our father was right. We walked in silence through a vast patch of lawn toward a pond.

“Arthur, that was a horrible thing to say,” she said. “I'm so sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“It's all right. Maybe you're right.”

“No. It was a horrible thing to say. I mean, I think it's true that you spend too much time feeling sorry for yourself. But you're going through a hard time. It's better to feel a little too sorry for yourself than to bottle everything up and go to the Chappine Hotel once a year.”

I hoped she wouldn't start talking about suicide again. “I see your point,” I said, inanely.

“But still, I mean, you could try to be happier. Or at least less sad.”

I took her hand and I felt a jolt of love. “I will.”

She let go of my hand and looked out at the pond.

“The ducks are so cute,” she said.

It occurred to me that I might kiss her now, this moment.

She turned back to face me. “So you're going to be all right, but I'm going to become boring.”

“Emily, I…”

“And why aren't you worried about me committing suicide? He was my grandfather, too.” She turned and took a few steps away from me. I caught up to her and put my hand on her elbow.

“Emily, I…”

“Sorry,” she said. “I'm not going to commit suicide. I don't have enough control over myself for that.” She looked down and twirled her fingers. “I'm just going to become boring.”

“I don't think you're going to become boring.”

“No, if that's what's going to happen, that's what's going to happen. I'll make the best of it and be the best hostess of my generation. Glamorous party after glamorous party until I die.”

“What about free will?”

She tossed her hair and smiled. “What about it?”

“You can do what you want. You're not bound by God or fate or your family.”

“Aren't you supposed to be a Marxist? Aren't I bound by historical inevitability? And by material conditions? Isn't it my fate to oppress the worker?”

“No. You can choose to rise up and overthrow the oppress…”

She cocked her head. “Actually, it's sort of my duty to oppress the worker, at least according to Marx. Your duty, too. Or at least our fate. Marx says that our roles are fated by material conditions, doesn't he? The capitalist must oppress the worker, so that the worker will rise up and overthrow the oppressor. So that all that is solid will melt into air. I like that phrase, by the way.”

She was grinning when she finished.

“You certainly like arguing with me, don't you?” I said.

She opened her mouth, still grinning, and clucked her tongue. “It's not really much of an argument. It's more me annihilating everything you say, and then yawning at the ease of it all.”

She did a mock yawn. I responded by making a face of mock anger, though I wasn't sure I wasn't actually angry. I grabbed her and hoisted her over my shoulder. She shrieked.

“Put me down! Put me down!” She laughed and batted my shoulders. We stumbled around and she pulled on my neck, trying to pull me down. I fell to my knees on the grass and put her down gently. When I released her she dusted her knees and then she grabbed my torso and we started wrestling. She pressed her thighs against mine in an effort to pin me. My nose was in her hair and I felt her breasts against my chest. Her feet were wrapped around my lower back and her thighs were pushing against my cock. I wondered if she could feel it. I grabbed her hands and tried to pull them behind her back. She resisted so I pulled her hands over her head and then behind her back. She started bucking her thighs against me, trying to get loose.

“I have you pinned with my feet,” she said.

“I have you pinned with my hands.” My lips were an inch or two from hers.

She bucked her thighs a little. “Holy shit,” she said, laughing.

“What?”

“You have a hard-on.” Still laughing, she took her feet off my back and shifted her thighs so they weren't touching my cock. I let go of her hands and she rolled out from under me.

“I don't have a hard-on,” I said. “Don't be ridiculous.”

She laughed. “Look at it.”

I didn't have to; I could feel it.

“Um,” I said.

Suddenly she stopped laughing; she raised her head and looked around. She saw that no one was there and she started laughing again. She fell back onto the grass.
“I just gave my brother an erection!” she shouted.

“Shh,” I said, even though no one could hear. “Emily, I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry about it, it's just friction.” This struck her as funny, too, so she laughed harder. She put her hands on her abdomen. “I don't think my ribs are going to be okay. It's just too funny.”

Eventually she stopped laughing and looked at me. “Oh, come on, it's okay. Nobody saw. And it really is just friction.”

“I know. But I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.” She made a sweep with her arm. “It's a beautiful day, don't waste it being sorry.”

“You're right. It's a beautiful day.”

“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” she said in a mock-deep voice. We both laughed, and then lay in silence for a few minutes.

If I let this moment go by, I would be proving Rothstein's point and repressing my sexual urges. I had to kiss her right now.

But we
were
outside.

“That would be one way to make sure you don't lead a boring life,” I said. I was careful to sound like I was joking.

“Yeah. No quiet desperation if you have sex with your brother.”

“Nope.”

She sat up and hugged her ankles. “Well, too bad for me. I have a date with Brad tonight. He wants to get back together and I think I'm probably going to give in. There's nothing you can do about what I'm going to become.”