My Last Innocent Year(41)

My palms were damp. I felt dizzy. My shirt was open, and for the first time since we’d been together, I felt naked, exposed. All this time I had been telling him stories, had he been ferreting them away to use later, as a test of my loyalty? What had started out as a game had become an order because implicit in what he was saying was a threat: do this now, promise me this now, or we cannot continue. Didn’t he know I would do anything, promise him anything? I just wanted him to stop talking and kiss me.

“Are we clear, Isabel?”

“Yes,” I said. “We’re clear.”

“Good. Now, stand there and tell me what you want.”

“I want…”

“Louder.”

“I want you to kiss me.”

“Where?”

I pointed to the side of my neck.

“Say it.”

“My neck. On my neck.”

“What else?”

“Your tongue. I want your tongue…”

“Where?”

“Here.” I lifted my hair and pointed to the patch of skin behind my ear.

He nodded. “Keep going.”

“I want your hands here.” I slipped off my shirt, cupped my breasts in my hands.

He lay back on the sofa and exhaled. “That’s right. What else?”

I stood there, concentrating on the feel of the wooden floor beneath my feet. I pressed against it so I wouldn’t float away. Words poured out of me, a string of sounds that became sentences, sentences that became a story, one I’d always been writing but didn’t know it until I started telling it to him. By the time I was finished, I was on my knees, crawling across the floor, my body a live wire, an electric-blue flame. Connelly was a gentle lover. He did everything I asked and nothing more. He talked to me, made sure I was okay, that I liked what he was doing; before he came, he asked if he could. When it was over, he kissed me tenderly across my damp brow, along the shelf of my collarbone, on the tip of every finger. Then he helped me dress and walked me downstairs. “Hurry home,” he told me. “Do not pass Go.”

The room was empty when I got back. I crawled into bed but couldn’t sleep. My mind was reeling with thoughts about desire and control—and consent.

Consensual. The word had been rattling around in my head ever since Dean Hansen used it to describe what had happened with Zev. He told me the two of you had a consensual encounter. I didn’t disagree with him—what Zev and I had done seemed consensual while it was happening, not wanted perhaps, but not done against my will. But now, comparing that night to what I had just done with Connelly, I realized the two acts were worlds apart, linked only by their most basic biological similarities. I hadn’t known what I wanted then because I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted Connelly.



* * *



THIS IS THE time I go back to, those five or six weeks when everything was easy between us. Drowsy afternoons on Connelly’s sofa, the smell of him in my hair and on my skin, underneath my fingernails. I go back to March, that season of transition, when the world stops being one thing and starts being another. Outside, the world was waking up into spring, but we kept the shades drawn to block out the light.

It was snowing the day I walked into Joanna Maxwell’s office and asked if Professor Connelly could be my thesis adviser now that Professor Fisher had officially taken a leave of absence. Igraine was asleep on a sofa, clutching a tattered blanket to her cheek. She made a soft purring sound as she slept.

“Professor Connelly?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said. I was sure.





13





MY mother got sick when I was thirteen. It was a familiar story: a lump that led to a series of tests, surgery, chemo, more surgery, a period of remission, and finally a slow, agonizing march toward the end. As my mother descended into illness, slowly at first and then all at once, I started growing. As her body wasted away, mine burst into sickening bloom.

My mother must have noticed I kept wearing the same pair of jeans and oversized hoodie, so one day she sent me shopping with my grandmother. It was the opposite of a shopping spree, Yetta, dour and thin-lipped, swathed in a haze of menthol cigarette smoke, leading me through the aisles of Century 21. I was ashamed of everything, of my grandmother and my body, of poverty and illness and the meagerness of everything. We left with only a few things that day—a pair of jeans, a couple of bras, three Tshirts, and a sweater—even though I needed and wanted much, much more.

Later that year, while my mother was in the hospital, I spent the night at a friend’s house. When she left the room to get some snacks, I saw her closet door was open. She had so many clothes—blouses, skirts, dresses, cardigans. I ran my hand over the soft fabrics and then, without thinking, grabbed a sweater off a hanger and shoved it in my bag. When I got home the next day, I tried it on in front of the mirror. It was nicer than anything I owned, a beautiful dusty rose wool blended with cashmere, the neckline delicate and flattering. I didn’t know clothing could be so nice. She never noticed the missing sweater, so the next time I was at her house, I took a pair of jeans and a peasant skirt.

After that, I started taking things whenever I had the chance. Clothing mostly, but also earrings, handbags, makeup. Sometimes I wore the stolen item to school, right in front of the person I’d taken it from. I’d see their eyes narrow when they saw it, but no one ever confronted me. I was a good thief but also an unlikely one.