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Show Motherlunge a novel 192 laugh! When he learned to reach for me! When he was perfect, a baby, unhurt, temporary. I reminded myself that someday Xavier would be a teenager. His feet would smell and he would likely have pimples on his back; a few coarse, pale whiskers might poke from his shiny chin. By then he would know that I am neither interesting, nor funny, nor physically appealing. Nor would I find him so at that stage, perhaps. Still. I began to know that I would always remember Xavier as he was these six days, these two-hundred and four hours, these dozens of units of time alone together. I would remember how it was when the clenched strands of my DNA finally relaxed and drifted out over my small nephew's body like glass noodles, like jellyfish tentacles, like spider silk. When I took care of my genetic material; I fell in love. So now, after all, comes the scene where I stand in the doorway of the darkened bedroom and gaze at Xavier. But in the scene I wasn't thinking of him after all. I was thinking of his mother, and of his mother's mother-your grandmother, Dorothy. I looked in at the crib. I reached out on both sides to grip the doorjamb. I was feeling the wave that had caught Pavia and Dorothy-impulses toward escape, desperate convictions, a terrible and energizing dismay after joy-and for a moment, it pulled me backward, too. I held on. The wave passed, and ordinary sadness washed back into the room around me. |