OCR Text |
Show Motherlunge a novel 73 Eli took my face in his hands, stroked my earlobes with his thumbs. "Defer to the plant professional," he said. A second, a minute, a whole year passed. "You're a kind of rose,^ he said at last, and kissed me carefully, again. We took a commuter train out to the suburbs and brought home a three-foot Christmas tree, holding it on our laps like smug parents of a well-behaved toddler. We put the tree in the townhouse, in the front room next to the TV, and Eli stayed and helped decorate it. We made paper chains out of the glossy pages of Pavia's company's annual report from the previous year, and Joseph used the kitchen shears to cut a star out of a beer can. Dorothy sat on the couch, occasionally offering suggestions for ornament symmetry that we all ignored. Everyone but Pavia got more or less drunk, and Eli stayed overnight for the first time. In my room, having sex in silence and full overhead light, we wound together as in a time-lapse nature film, Technicolor and surprising, two comic botanicals weaving upward so at last my tears of choked-back laughter ran down into my hair. "My mom really likes you," I told Eli later that night in my room, sitting up and tightly grabbing the toes of one of his feet. I began to try to crack them each in turn. "Ouch," he said. "Jesus." He smiled. "Is it the Virgo thing?" "No. She just likes you." "Doesn't she like everyone though?" "Well, yeah." Eli wrenched his toes free and threw both legs around my waist in a leg lock. "That's a cool way to be." |