Short Century (22 page)

This was absurd. It wasn't as though I hadn't expected her to have a vagina. I touched her knee to steady myself.

I had always thought that vaginas, with their flaps and folds, looked somehow unfinished. Emily's vagina had come out of my mother's vagina, as had all of her, as had all of me. There was something wonderful about the two of us making love, two halves of a clay sculpture once again becoming whole.

She reached up for my hand. I thrust my cock into her and she groaned or sighed. I moved in and out. Her vagina did not feel all that different from Miranda's. Part of me had hoped that the act itself would feel wrong, perhaps even that the parts would not fit, that there would be a signal from nature that what we were doing was wrong and we would be called to account. But if our bodies noted any kinship, the feeling was one of warmth, of the comfort rather than the shock of recognition, like two old friends who meet after years apart and fairly burst as each tells the other of all that has happened since they were last together. Emily was crying lightly so I thrust more gently. Her eyes were so beautiful. I steadied myself with my right hand on her thigh and stroked her face with my left. I looked at the way she held her hand, curling her fingers into her palm. I had been witness to the entire history of her movement, gesture by gesture I had watched the whole evolution of things she had done with her body, from the flailing infant I could remember dimly to the little girl pressing her nails into a red balloon to see how much pressure she could apply without popping it, to the beautiful woman who curled her fingers into her palm as I penetrated her. Now this history had, in retrospect, a goal. Every step she had ever taken had brought her closer to my bed.

I wasn't entirely sure whether it had been one minute or ten when I felt myself about to ejaculate; I tried to delay it but I ejaculated. I pulled out of her vagina and looked at my condom-covered cock, which, soaked and shrinking, looked like a snake that had died in a swamp in the midst of shedding its skin. I pulled off the condom and as I did so I felt a sharp pain; I must have gotten it caught on a pubic hair. I dropped the condom on the floor, wiped my hands on my thighs, and flopped onto the bed next to her.

“I'm sorry,” I said. I draped my leg over hers and grasped her hand. “I usually last longer.”

“Don't worry about that,” she said, still looking at the ceiling.

What felt like a long time passed in silence. “So,” I said, hoping this would make her laugh. It did not.

“Yeah,” she said.

“This was right, Emily,” I said. “You put it perfectly. We're sexual pioneers.”

“I think you said that.”

“I think you said it.”

“You're right,” she said. “I did say it.”

“Who cares who said it? We did it. We broke the taboo.”

“Could you move your leg? It hurts a little.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” I felt suddenly shy and solicitous.

“No, it's okay.”

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. I'm fine. We—we did something great. I think I'm going to go. I'm going to go.” She stood up, still naked, and put her hand to her mouth, obviously on the verge on vomiting. She picked up her panties, her bra, and her dress. Dressing, she hopped toward the door, looking like a miserable parody of a ballet dancer.

I wanted to tell her not to be ashamed, but the feeling was surrounding me that I had made her do something terrible. She finished dressing and left without saying goodnight.

Why had I done this? I remembered thinking that having sex with my sister would have some sort of political impact, would make the world or at least the two of us freer. This was so stupid it seemed impossible that I had ever thought of it. Surely there must have been some other reason.

There would never again be a moment in my life when I had not fucked my sister.

Now it was clear to me that I had been free until a few moments ago, and that now I was a slave to this event.

What an idiot I was! Tomorrow I would decide that this was wrong and that the truth of my life was elsewhere, and then I would decide that that truth was a lie, and on and on. At the moment of any given evening's revelation, I would wonder at how I could have been so misguided for so long. Life's ceaseless epiphanic zigzag.

f

Emily woke me the
next morning, throwing the curtains open and saying things that I could not distinguish, though the noise prodded at me.

“Jesus, Emily. Isn't it early?”

“It's good to get up early. It makes you feel good the entire day.”

I searched her tone for hostility but I could not detect any. I wanted to see her face, but the sunlight was such that I could not see her clearly.

“How could you fall asleep last night?” she asked.

I tried to think of something to say, something funny and comforting, or at least one of the two.

“Do you know if the Yankees won yesterday?” she asked.

“No.”

“You and I don't talk about baseball. Dad and I talk about baseball a lot, but only when you're not around. One time he told me that I'm manlier than you, which I didn't think was very nice to either of us. Brad doesn't like baseball but he won't admit it for some reason. We go to games but he never pays attention and I have to find subtle ways to tell him what's going on. He told me he loved me last night. He said, ‘Emily, you're the only girl I'll ever love and I hope we get married.' He's a really sweet boy. How should I tell him it's over?”

“Why would you tell him that?”

She turned to the window, and I knew that I had answered terribly—it wasn't just my words but my voice, indecisive, plaintive, and exasperated at once. I also knew that there was likely no answer that would have pleased her. As she paced by the foot of my bed, her arms folded, I grew angry with her and I wanted her out of my room, or at the very least I wanted her not to fold her arms the way she was folding her arms, not to make the faint noise her feet made as she paced the floor.

“So,” she said. “It's the morning. Do you still respect me?”

“Of course.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“I don't know,” I said.

She tapped her feet. Her face was wrinkled and knotted in ways that made it impossible to read. With her toe she poked at my boxers, still crumpled on the floor from the previous night. When she grunted in disgust I thought it was because of the boxers, but in fact it was because of the used condom still lying on the floor.

I expected her to start screaming or crying, but with breathtaking composure she took a tissue, picked up the condom, walked to the wastebasket, and dropped it in. Still I was afraid that an explosion was imminent. She turned to me and, smiling at me as though we were about to share a cake meant for someone else, took off her nightgown and was naked. She kneeled onto the bed and crawled toward me. I wanted overpoweringly to be alone, but I did not resist her for fear of hurting her beyond repair. She pulled the blanket from my torso, bunched it between her knees, and took me in her mouth. At first her tongue lapped dully against my cock and I doubted I would get an erection, but something shifted and I became aroused. I reached for her hand, first hitting her arm, then my leg, before finding and grasping her fingers. She moved her fingers around mine until we were holding hands. I squeezed and she squeezed in return, then I squeezed harder and she squeezed harder, until this was a silly, sweet, loving game. I loved her and I would never leave her. It was insane of course but I would never leave her.

“I'm about to come,” I said. I expected her to lift her mouth from my cock, as Miranda did when I was about to come, but Emily did not lift her mouth, and it felt wonderful, perhaps better than anything I had ever felt before. And certainly better than anything I have ever felt since.

“Thank you,” I said. “Emily, thank you.”

She peeked up at me, wearing the blanket as a shawl, and I kissed her. The thought of it was a bit disgusting since she had my semen in her mouth but I kissed her.

“They say boys don't respect girls who use their mouths,” she said.

I kissed her nose, delighted at the words she used. I was a boy and she was a girl.

“I love you so much, Emily. I feel so good right now I can't tell you.”

“Try.”

“I feel so so so sooooooo good right now.”

She squealed and rolled over and over on the bed, entangling herself further in the blanket as she did so. When she stopped she was on top of me. I felt her chest against my stomach. We were man and wife: we were one flesh. We were one flesh and this was how we would enter eternity.

Even if I were wrong, even if it had to end, this was enough, this moment was enough and this moment would never die.

“Your cheeks are red,” I said, trailing my finger along her back.

Giggling, she covered her cheeks with her forearms and her ears with her fists. When our laughter died down, she rested her elbows on my chest.

“Should I break up with Brad?”

“God, yes,” I said, twirling my finger in her hair.

“I can hear your heart beating,” she said. “That's very cool.”

I murmured happy assent.

Slapping my thigh, she threw off the sheets and hopped out of bed. “Let's go tell Mom.”

“Tell Mom what?”

She smiled brightly. “That we're in love.”

I searched for a sign that she was joking, but she was not. “Emily, why don't you sit down and we'll think about this.”

“What is there to think about? I'll tell Mom that we're in love, she'll throw us out of the house, and we'll go off somewhere. Or maybe she'll understand. I was thinking about this last night, that maybe I've underestimated her. Maybe she'll be happy for us.” She picked up her nightgown and threw it on.

I disentangled myself from the sheets and got out of bed; I picked up my boxer shorts and put them on. “I think maybe we should take everything more slowly.”

Her face became wrinkled and knotted again. “Why?”

“Emily. We're brother and sister. Whatever we do is going to be complicat…”

“We're brother and sister,” she said in a horrified whisper, as though this information were new to her. She folded her fingers in a steeple at her mouth. “I had sex with my brother. I had sex with my brother.” Then she was sobbing convulsively. I tried to take her in my arms but she pushed me away. I stroked her hair in a gesture I hoped was absent of sex. Her sobs were quick and ceaseless. I felt a brotherly urge to pummel the person who had treated her so badly.

I needed to get control of myself. If I could steady myself I could steady her.

“Emily, I…” I did not want to say that I loved her. “I care about you more than anything. Everything's going to be okay.”

“We just fucked, Arthur.”

“Emily, please. Emily, we…we made love.”

“Goddamn it. I did not want to do this. You manipulated me, you manipulated me and we…How did this happen?”

“Keep your voice down.” I hugged her tightly to my chest, partially to muffle her voice.

“I'm sick and perverted and a whore. God, I'm so disgusting.”

“Emily. You're none of those things. All of this is my fault. It's all because I'm so stupid—it's because I'm
evil
—and I made you do this.”

Emily picked at her nails and I waited, strangely out of breath, for her to respond.

“You're not stupid, you're not evil,” she said. “I did it, too.”

“It's my fault. You're not old enough and it's my fault.”

“Of course I'm old enough. I'm seventeen years old, I'm not a child.”

“It's my fault.”

“I can make my own decisions. If you say I can't I'm going to be really upset.”

We started laughing at the same moment.

“Wow,” she said. “Wow.” She wiped her eyes with her wrists. We looked at each other and started laughing again. “Do you really think what we did was so wrong?”

“I'm not sure.”

“What about: ‘Ooh, I'm evil, I'm stupid.'” She laughed and entangled her fingers in mine. “I mean, I do love you,” she said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“And maybe we were right last night. I think we were right. So what should we do?” she asked. “Just pretend this never happened? That's probably what we should do.”

I saw that agreeing with her would destroy her.

“No,” I said. “I think we should be together. But we probably shouldn't tell Mom.”

“Yeah.” She trailed a finger along my hand. “Sorry about that.”

“Don't be sorry.” For lack of anything else to do I kissed her neck.

“We could move to California,” she said.

“Do you like the sun that much? Let's go downstairs and have breakfast.”

“How about San Francisco? The weather there is pretty temperate.”

“I didn't like San Francisco that much when I was there last summer.”

She frowned, rather childishly. “You went to San Francisco with Miranda.”

“Maybe we can move to India or Morocco or something. But first let's go downstairs and have some break…”

“
REDACTED
. We can go there, Arthur. We can help those people.”

“Okay. But first let's go downstairs and have breakfast.”

“Those soldiers in
REDACTED
who are killing villagers? We can take guns and kill the soldiers! And then we can make love in the sunset. Or! Maybe we could move to Appalachia and admit that we're brother and sister. Or maybe we could move to Kansas and become farmers. That might be fun. No one around for miles. We could pick up pitchforks like in that painting. We should change our names. Something exotic, like Dietrich. Oh, hey! We could just shorten it to Hunt. Arthur and Emily Hunt. It's sort of exotic in its own way. Who will we be?”