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Show Motherlunge a novel 37 "Dorothy ignored us," I said. My face felt suddenly hot. "She did nothing for us." "She didn't get in our way." "She was always too tired to do anything. Everything was too much trouble." "She was always supportive." "She was fucking lame." A little beer bile rose up in my throat. I went to stand by the sink. Pavia closed the cabinet door and turned to look at me. "So what though?" She asked in the same voice she had used with Jack, a maternal tone carrying out over a vast distance like an echo of the original Eve, the blithe, guilty one. "So, what?" "So is-that-Jack's baby?" I suddenly felt my face twist up in ugly pre-cry shapes, my glasses rising askew across the bridge of my nose. "Jesus, Thea. What's wrong with you?" "Pavia," I said, "It needs to be somebody's." Pavia leaned back on the refrigerator, lifting her chin and slowly rolling her parietal bone across the freezer door. "It's not like I had sex with anyone else." She gave a little snort. "You've seen the way I live. I'm completely celibate." "So what happens?" I asked. "Is it-?" I started again- "Are you having it?" "I don't know," Pavia said. "I guess this creature's here to stay." She looked down at her torso with an expression of confused expectation, like someone who had just been served the wrong entree at a restaurant. She put her hand-ringless, the left-on her stomach, wiped it once on her sweater, then looked at me. "I'll have the baby most of |