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Show Motherlunge a novel 191 We were still looking at my full hand, amazed, when Dorothy called again from the back of the house, "Girls, work it out!" And Pavia looked up from my fist and smiled, open-mouthed, amazed at me. As the units with X. passed, I did not call Jack. And as hour-by-hour X. was not perishing or even visibly suffering under my exclusive care, I decided this not-calling was appropriate. Pavia's note had said not to; it had said she might be gone for as long as a week. I could wait that long. I worked through the units with my nephew, and as I did so I allowed myself to become interested. To wit: Xavier rolling under the coffee table, wetting its legs with his seeking gums. Xavier's martyred, sanguinal expression as he completed a bowel movement. The strength of his grip on General's tail, and on my finger. In fact I found I liked to put my index fingers in his fists, and rev, rev, rev them like tiny handlebars. Get your motor runnin. Head out on the highway! He seemed to like that song. And how he smiled when I spoke in the funny voice I had just devised-Xavier, my little invention! I found that could make him laugh. My sister had disappeared and my boyfriend had rejected me, and now there was yet a new reason to mourn these developments-a reason I kept shoving away with a mental gesture akin to the famous Name of Love arrest: no one but me would remember Xavier, or me with him, from these six days in the summer of 1994. When I made him |