OCR Text |
Show Motherlunge a novel 151 front is her breasts, one bump in back is her ass-she's balanced there like a typesetter's dream, an unusual ampersand come to life. Next: Cassandra and Steig, post-coitally entwined and pleased with themselves, slouching arm and arm across the gallery floor toward Eli. Greetings and hugs-Steig and Cassandra know the Ampersand, too, it seems-and everyone is smiling. Eli now has both hands around his wine glass as if to center himself. I was standing with Pavia and X.; it was one of X.'s first outings. Pavia had him in a little pouch-not the batik sling, but a black affair that pressed him to her chest almost punitively-and she was spearing cheese cubes with a toothpick, one after another, and pushing them into her mouth as in an automated process. I was wearing a black canvas skirt, flat Mary Janes, a rumpled green cardigan with a t-shirt underneath. "Try to look more like a breeder, would you?" I suggested to Pavia. "Maybe get Xavier to cry? Maybe you could nurse him while you stand here eating?" "I could Mommy it up," Pavia agreed vaguely. She looked over at Eli's group. "People would think you're the nanny. The German nanny." The Ampersand laughed in a silvery way-or in a way reminiscent of some other soft metal, aluminum or nickel-and Eli gazed at her with a slack look of appreciation. "She's not his type," Pavia said under her breath. She leaned over the table and palmed a short stack of sesame crackers. "Anyway. Have you actually looked at any of the photos yet? Let's check them out." So my sister and I did a circuit around the gallery, standing in silence before each print with the heightened awareness (mine, not Pavia's) that the young men standing next to us (a) were moving along the gallery's perimeter in the opposite direction from us and |