🎧 386: Later, in bed, ...

LATER, IN BED, in the pleasant lassitude after love, it all came out, slowly. If we had overheard, if we had been, say, Dudley, outside, beneath their windows, eavesdropping, we wouldn’t have been able to catch it all, just a snatch of mumbled revelation, a bit of whispered confession, the occasional bold declaration, a giggle, a chuckle, with interstices of silence, of ignorance, where we would have been forced to imagine, to insert ourselves in their murmurings, using what we know to suppose what they said.
     “That duck, that papier-mâché duck that Uncle Luther made for me — that was how it started. Uncle Luther. I still get a cold feeling in my stomach when I think of his hand, the missing fingers. But I loved to sit on his lap — and you know, now I think I can remember feeling his — his erection, under me. I wonder if I really remember that, or have I just imagined it? Well, he never touched me when I was little, but he — he did later.”
     “You don’t have to tell me — ”
     “Oh, it was nothing, really. But Bertha and Clara, especially Bertha, were so jealous of me, because of him. Bertha was mad for him. His ‘little lady’. That’s what he called her. I had forgotten that. Anyway, it was Luther who taught me to model, and to carve, and it was Luther and Bertha who gave me my original inspiration. You know the story I’ve told you, about seeing them having — doing — making love once. The truth is that I saw them doing it many times — ”
     Herb thought she was confessing, using Bertha as her stand-in. He brushed his lips against her cheek.
     “To tell you the truth — ” she began. Herb pressed his finger to her lips. She kissed it. “Let me go on,” she said. “The truth is that I spied on them, but always from a hiding place, and I never had a clear view. I’d see parts of them only — their heads or a leg, two legs, Uncle Luther’s back, thighs, whatever — and I had seen animals do it, and birds, chickens, and so I put together what I knew and what I could see and I imagined some things that — some things that may not even be possible, things I’ve never even dared to suggest that we try. And then Uncle Luther taught me to carve, and when I was good enough he asked me to work on little naked people. He made models, papier mâché models, but I used other models too, models in my mind — what I remembered of Uncle Luther’s body, and Bertha’s, and what I learned about my own, especially my own. I would stand in front of the mirror and study myself, run my hands over myself, check the modeling of my body, and there was always a lot of me in the women I carved, always. I was never just a copyist. I — personalized my work. I made the couples do what I wanted to do. And then Luther tried to make love to me — and he revolted me. And everything changed. I despised him, and I despised what he had taught me to do, or I thought that I ought to despise what he taught me to do, but, you know, I never did. I never despised it, not really. I loved it, but I was ashamed all the same.”

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