Years before, maybe two or three after they split up and he moved back to New York, he wrote “I’m no longer in love with you, you’re for sure no longer or never were in love with me. And you’re with someone, I’m with someone, and you constantly gripe about me in your letters and occasionally say how much you hate my guts. So would it be okay if this is my last letter to you and I don’t get one in return? Give my love to B-J
I’ll of course keep in touch with him and try to see him when I can.” “Give Brons your nothing,” she wrote back. “Keep in touch with your nothing, you great bullshit artist. Besides, although I’ve rarely bad-mouthed you to him, he said ‘If he’s against you, Mommy, then he’s against me, and I never want to talk to him again.’ I told him that his relationship with you is his business and apart from me, but he doesn’t see it that way. So I’m sorry but he doesn’t want to be bothered anymore with my passing on your feeble greetings and bogus love. For a little unurban kid, he’s hip to your schemes.” He got a letter from her two years later (he’d written Brons a few letters during this time but got no answer) saying an old letter of his popped up from behind a file cabinet she was giving to Goodwill because she’s redoing her house outside and in (“I’ve come into some family money and this savvy stockbroker fellow I know pretty well invested it for me and I made a killing”) and she read it and thought of the days they were close and how good he was for Brons at such a vulnerable age and for so many years and she harbors no ill will to him anymore and just wanted to know how he was, and the correspondence resumed and Brons wrote and called that he wanted to see him, so he flew out, stayed in her guest room for a night and in her bedroom the rest of the week. Or a few years after that he remembered one of the many things he’d left behind in her house—a drawing several centuries old he had when he met her and hung on her wall but had never given her and now wanted—and included in the letter more than enough money to send it special delivery and apologized for the inconvenience this would cause her and swore he’d never ask for anything else of his again and she wrote back “Why not fly out to pick it up personally plus the rest of your little art treasures—none of them fit in with anything I own anymore—and see Brons along the way? He’s dying to see you but is too shy to ask and can’t face the hurt if you refuse. As for me, I’m comfortably with someone now (if I can be juvenile for a second: the coolest, cutest dude I’ve ever flipped over, and he’s nine years younger than me), so I’ll make and receive no demands. In other words, if you think I’m encouraging you to come because I’m lusting after you, you’d be nuts. This is all for Brons.” So he’d fly out and the new guy had gone backpacking in the Sierras for two weeks and he’d sleep with her after the first night. “Why not?” she’d say each time he came out. “We were always great together in bed and I’d only get horny in a few days knowing you’re in the next room beating your meat.” Or she’d call after a year and say “I was thinking of the three of us in Portugal and Spain, hitchhiking along back roads –people there had never seen such a gorgeous towheaded boy before, it seemed, the way they kept mussing his hair. And I wondered what you’ve been up to, working at, reading and yes, even though she disliked me—I liked her, by the way, or admired her—how your mom was holding up too. .” Anyway, always resumptions in their correspondence, overtures to fly out from both of them, he’d scrape up the dough to go, for a few years, annual visits in June and the same arrangements at her house every time. Till she wrote that last letter, his to hers, their postcards, then it all stopped.
So he was immediately drawn to her in the laundry room. The day?—sunny and dry. And her hair up or down?—now he’s not sure. Up, he thinks. Down, he thinks. Either way, she looked great. Through their entire relationship she had bangs, so she had bangs that day, but wore the rest of her hair many different ways. And she seemed vulnerable in the room, also protective of her son, more so with both those at the same time than he thinks he ever saw since, for a while clutching Bronson’s shoulders from behind, using him as a shield or device of some kind—well, literally to hold on to and hide behind—because she felt so discomposed or shy, and saying “shield” and her placing Bronson between them or keeping him there would make her less protective of him than he just said, and she also seemed interested, even attracted to Gould. Of course, the vulnerability and shyness, which he noticed when she first met other men she was attracted to, but it was probably mostly an act. And was it shorts she had on or long pants? Jeans, tight . not jeans but these thin summerweight cotton pants, he just remembers, red, and tight to her skin, and he now thinks a yellow tank top. But long solid legs on the small short body, but perfect legs, it seemed, and if the pants were long—they were long—then he could see the outlines of her skin through the cloth. “So-and-so” (she mentioned a well-known West Coast writer a little younger than Gould) “once said my legs were the most amazing and dazzling—lots of z’s—on earth. ‘Naturally,’ he said, ‘I haven’t eyed out every woman’s legs, but there are just so many kinds and I doubt any pair could be better than yours.’ Am I sounding too conceited and slight?” and he said “It’s okay, what else did the big brain say?” and she said “That I ought to model them. Or have a fashion photog take black and white shots of me only from the top of the thighs down and to blow up the best one to poster size, stencil the word ‘legs’ below the photo and to make a half-million copies of it and have someone market them to poster stores. That men would want to marry me just for my legs or pay five dollars for a thirty-second peep at them in some sideshow or porno place where just my legs were visible. Then he got really gross about my legs, where he’d like them in regard to him—he was pig rich from his novel by then and had big strong arms and a wrestler’s neck and chest and beautiful bushy blond hair but an ugly face on the largest head I’ve seen on someone who wasn’t a sad idiot and decrepit breath could that be the right word?” and he said “If you mean ‘stinky,’ no, but I get the point.” “And would I mind if he told his best pal about me—the Playboy of the Potato World, he called him: a fat cat from Idaho, you see, or son of one, and all from tubers—since he thinks I’ll fall for him madly and he wants to know someone who’s seen my legs with nothing above or on them in bed. ‘Tell whoever you want,’ I said jokingly, and his pal—Brons Sr., though without the S just yet—shows up at my place a day later, says who he is and that he’s selling eros but not from door to door, just to mine, and swore he never used that line before,” and he said “Why, did he think it a good one?” “And I tell you we flashed on each other right there and were on the floor in five minutes with not even the front door closed—that must be a record—with him lapping my legs up and down and around till they were greasy from his spit, and in a month we were married and with kid. Really, I don’t know what the big fuss is with men over legs. What are they, at their very best, but shapely sticks to walk on and cross. You guys get gunned up by everything. Even some with my poor chest: they must think of it as a pubescent girl’s and that turns up the heat. Or they see me as a boy or something in between, the creeps, where they then get both. But I’m being too egocentric again, aren’t I?” and he said “No, I swear, I love your stories.”
He liked to lie close to her in bed while she slept, or pretended to, and stare at her face if there was any moon or room light on it. Beautiful from all sides and the front and from in back too: the head shape and little perfect ears poking through the hair. Hair what he already said: long, black, bangs, different styles, etcetera. Eyes, small nose, chiseled lips, he’s so bad at descripts, tiny waist, didn’t mention that before but it was probably assumed and he’d wanted to say “minuscule,” slim hands, small delicate feet or delicate hands and small slim feet, flat muscled tummy, and so on the works. “This writer also said I had the best-looking ass for a woman my size he’d ever seen, so a qualified compliment but one he still thought I should appreciate. That there’d be men there too who’d want to marry me just for it. But through him I hooked up with Brons-S and from that I got J,
so something good came from the legs-and-ass man.” He loved her ass too. Turning her over in bed—no, that doesn’t sound right. If she was on her back, then sort of encouraging her to get on her stomach and she’d say “Why, what do you have in mind?” and he’d say “Nothing, really . you know,” and massage her shoulders and neck and rub her back and legs and butt and then, or after some preliminaries with his fingers with at first a number of quick furtive forays, lift her butt up and try to get in her from behind. Hold the porno. “I’m a little small down there,” she said several times, “and I’m sorry if I can’t accommodate but it hurts too much that way,” and then “What are you doing?—you know it hurts,” and finally “Jesus, you rat” or “Schmuck” and once even “Hyena,” “Will you stop that! You know I can’t do it and unless something with age happens to my cunt, I never will. Try it next time and I’ll tell you to get lost for good.” Only one position she liked. He on her right, both on their backs side-by-side, her right thigh raised, he in her that way. Tries picturing it and it seems right, though remembers it always took a bit of twisting and doing, he never went in easy and straight. Became frustrating, unexciting sometimes, even uncomfortable, and humdrum too—more than three years of it and, when they weren’t fighting or sulking, they did it about four days out of five. He wanted the variety of positions two people living together for a long time would do and she kept saying she didn’t have the anatomy for anything but the double-back one and that sometimes even then it was only a little more pleasurable than painful for her, though about once every couple of months she let him come in her a different way. One time, when he knew better, after about a half hour of pleasant foreplay, he got on top of her when she was still on her back and she said “Get off, you tub.” Another time, on an unusually hot humid night for that part of California, they didn’t even own a fan, and she was naked on her back and seemingly asleep from the heat as it was around nine and they’d been reading in bed just to be on cool sheets, he said her name and she didn’t answer and he repeated it and her eyes stayed closed and he slowly bent her legs up at the knees till her heels almost touched her thighs and her vagina opened, smeared his penis with saliva and positioned himself above her without touching any other part of her body and tried gliding it in and she opened her eyes, winced from pain but calmly said “I’m not going to fight you. You’re halfway in and it already hurts like hell. But fighting you will end up hurting worse than allowing you to proceed, but I’m warning you I might be capable of doing a lot more to you when you’re done than just ordering you out of the house and cutting up all your precious things,” and he withdrew.
She once lunged at him with a steak knife after he’d made what he knew when he was saying it and even a few seconds before was a cruel remark about her. He flinched, the knife whisked past the place his face would have been if he hadn’t moved back, and then he jumped behind the table—it was in the dining room, they’d been clearing off the dishes after dinner—and said “What’re you, crazy? You just almost killed me,” and she said “I didn’t, I knew exactly when to pull back. I’ve got plenty of reserves; you’re the one who hasn’t, in anything. You’re fantasizing again, thinking I’d waste my time trying to stab you and then the next twenty years of my life wasting away in prison because I did. Please, get your freaking things together and leave the house now,” and he said “Don’t tell me you didn’t try to stab me. You did, so of course I’m going—how could I trust you again?” and she said “Listen, you’re raving, but do what you want,” and her face said she was trying to forget the incident and he wondered what to do. She put the knife and a couple of other utensils back on the table and looked at a photo on the wall of the three of them in a rowboat, Bronson and he rowing, she looking as if she was barking comical orders to them through cupped hands, and then left the room. He cleared the rest of the dishes, washed them in the sink, continued wondering what to do, leave? stay? What would he say to Brons? “Your mother and I just don’t get along. We do some, but not enough. It’s a pity too, because I love you, but I’ll see you and we’ll do things if I stay in the area, you and I, but that’s the way it is, I’m sorry to say, though it’s nothing you’ve done that’s sending me away.” She came into the kitchen and he expected her to say “What are you still doing here?” but she started drying the dishes. “How do we pile up so many dishes and pots and stuff for just three people and a simple dinner?” and she said “We’re extravagant,” and he said “Oh yeah, that’s us.” Then he called Bronson if he wanted to carpetsweep the dining room as he did last night—“You did a great job. And it needs sweeping badly, kiddo; lots of everyone’s crumbs,” and Brons said from his room “If it’s okay, can I not? I’m busy playing,” and he looked at her and she smiled and said “He’s playing; what a life,” and he said “So, what about that thing before?—our argument. Does it mean we’re over it? Fine by me if we are, but you don’t want it discussed?” and she pressed her cheek to his chest and put her arms around his waist and her hands went under his shirt till they were on his lower back and he kissed the top of her head and said “Your hands are wet, but you can keep them there,” and she said “I’d never try to hurt you like that, never. If it looked like it then that can only be because when I was pretending to wield the knife, but with no intention of coming close, I must have stumbled frontwards a bit, though I don’t remember that. But I’m sorry and it’s finished, the incident, all right?” and he said “I’m sorry too if I misjudged the distance of the knife from my face, if that’s what I did,” and she said “It had to be, or like I said, it was all to sort of scare you a little, more like a harmless jolt, but I got too close by accident or mistake.”
He left her house for good a few times—three or four—but always came back and stayed. Phone call to her about something—Brons, important mail he’s expecting and if it came, though he was probably hoping she’d ask him over—and she said “What are you doing now, want to come by? Brons is at a friend’s for the night,” or he took Brons for the day, dropped him off and she said, which he was hoping she would, “Want to stay for dinner, even spend the night? Brons will love it if he sees you in the morning and I’ll be honest—one of us has to—I haven’t had sex for weeks and from what you’ve indicated about all the women you’re not seeing, you’ve been dry for a while and could use it too,” and he said “That’d be okay if that’s all it’d be, a deal?” and stuck out his hand and she looked at it and said “Oh sure, we’re gonna shake.” It was Brons. Fine, for that night he wanted to get laid as he was as horny as she said—hadn’t been with anyone since the last time he slept over a month or so ago—but he loved that boy and wanted to live with them again almost solely because he didn’t want to just see him once a week or every other for a few hours that day. Once she called his deep feelings for Brons as bordering on the sick and he said “Why? I think of him, though I have no illusions about this, as like my son. One would think you’d be pleased he has someone who feels that way about him besides you,” and she said “Sometimes I am but other times I think it’s carrying it too far. He has a father. And even if they rarely see each other now, I feel in five years or less Brons-S will grow up to the point where he’ll discover what he’s missing and he’ll want to see him as much as J wants to see him now. And so they’ll see each other a lot and if you’re still around, you’ll be in the way, and maybe even J will go live with his dad. That’s how it often turns out, not that I’d love the idea. But you and I? Come off it, we’ll never stay together and we’ll be lucky, the way we hack out at each other sporadically, if we last another two months. Then when you really leave—and it might be the next time or the time after that. But when every one of your books is with you and you have a rented apartment instead of a cheap room and nothing of yours remains in this house, the boy will be clobbered the hardest by you so far. Maybe double what it was with his father, as he’s older now and remembers more than he forgets and this bad shit tends to get etched into kids his age permanently, but
anyway, that for the second time he’s been blown off by the big man in his life. How this will affect his future relationships, male and female—you never liked my psychological speculations but here it is—don’t even ask.”
Used to imagine her with normal-size breasts or just ordinary small breasts but not completely flat. Sometimes he’d suck one up by the nipple, close his other eye so as not to see the second breast and look at the distended part and think is it really possible that if she had breasts like this one he’d feel much better toward her, might even want to try sticking it out with her for life? He wanted a few times to get her pregnant just to see her breasts enlarge, also to have a kid. She’d said she loved—wait a minute. What he means by that “also” remark is that even though he knew they’d never marry, or chances were slight, and that he’d probably end up living apart from her and their child—or maybe they would marry now that they’d had that kid and it could even be that their relationship would get infinitely better because of it—he was thirty, a little past, and felt he should be a father by now. Not the attitude he’d take today, almost thirty years later, if he still didn’t have a child, though who knows. And she’d said she loved being pregnant with little Brons because not only was her marriage then as close to being euphoric as it ever was (“Nobody believes this, but between periods of contractions we made love right up to the moment we drove to the hospital to have the baby”) but because for a few months, till she went dry a few weeks after the delivery, she had breasts, she said, that could fill a small-cup bra and even gave her cleavage when she wore an evening dress once and a man could hold on to, and so on. Brons-S took lots of photos of her breasts then with and without clothes and might still have some, and if Gould wants he should write him for a few; she’s sure he would appreciate the craziness of the request and part with them gladly or make dupes if he still has the negatives and send those. But most times he’d tell himself “What’s the difference? Big breasts, no breasts, middling breasts, if there’s anything there it’s just fat and flesh, and she has a cunt, small too, she says, but most times sexually okay and adept in the limited way she’s set for it, and the sweetest little horizontal hairline right above it but no other hair around (she swore she didn’t shave the area and it never felt that she did), and one that never smells of anything—urine, sweat, soap, deodorant, perfume (no chance of contraceptive jelly since she was on the pill)—or that’s how she prepares it before she comes to bed: maybe just water and a washrag, and a beautiful ass and great legs and all the other things, and she does have normal nipples and aureoles and he does what he can with these, more than he thinks he would to a woman with more heft to her breasts. “I should wear a shirt to bed, I’m so ashamed of my top,” she said in different ways a number of times, her hands covering her chest, and he said “No, your nipples are gorgeous, the red circles around them exciting, I love when they’re erect, sucking on them and the rest,” and she said “You’re just compensating,” and he said “So what, but my feeling is you get what you get, both of us, me with that, you with my hairy shoulders and back, so make the most of it, though I don’t know what you could do with my furriness.”
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