Grossman David: Her Body Knows

Then she lay down beside him on the floor. She was so exhausted, so full and engorged, that she couldn't open her eyes to take in one more image. He got up and dressed with an odd, panicked speed. Then he lingered by the door for a long time, as if he already knew something and was afraid to step outside the place where everything was possible. She was surprised that he said nothing to her, and thought vaguely that perhaps he needed to be alone with himself for a while. She heard the door click shut behind him and smiled, and told herself with her seer's certainty that he'd be back soon, and then they'd say goodbye properly. And although she didn't have a drop of imagination, she fantasized about how they would stand facing each other, how they would be so embarrassed that they'd almost shake hands, and then she'd grasp him in her arms and they would embrace, and she'd feel the flutter of his lips against her neck for an instant.

That was what she thought, that was what she hallucinated and dreamed, and that was what she tormented herself with later, during all the years to come-the years of aridity, of longing, in a world which perhaps did not contain another boy like him. When she opened her eyes, she found the hotel already bustling with its daily noise; the quarry workers from the north had gone on their way long ago. She lay on her back for several more minutes, extremely quiet, and lamented something very transparent and rare that had passed her by, hovered for a moment, and disappeared.

I put down the last page. My neck and shoulders are hard as stone. Only after several breaths do I dare look up. Her lips are pursed. She's focused on something.

"You and Melanie," she says finally, shocking me by being completely unpredictable. "You're happy together."

She doesn't ask. She asserts. I find it difficult to talk, so I nod my head.

"You and she, you're good for each other." She looks up at the ceiling with her eyes wide open, and I am completely shaken: How is it that she doesn't talk about him? Or about him and her? How can she not say a single word about the ending I gave her and him? As if it has no importance to her, as if that is not the story now.

"I felt it so intensely all of a sudden when you were reading," she sighs, "in the massage, at the end. I felt so strongly what you have between you."

"Really?"

We are both quiet. Each submerged in herself. My heart suddenly flutters twice. A skip ahead and a skip back.

"Tell her to take care of you. Tell her from me."

"I will."

She reaches out. I put my face close to her. She runs her finger over my forehead. My eyes, my nose. My mouth.

"That mouth." She smiles.

Which is slightly swollen with bitterness, I quote myself. Her hand climbs up. I put my head down. She draws wavy lines on the back of my skull. With her last remaining strength, she presses my throbbing painful spots. Even now her finger is smarter than my whole brain. Then, for an eternal length of time, roughly my whole childhood, I just sit there bent over, inhaling her touch. Her finger traverses with angelic gentleness, walking over the winding crevices of my brain, in the cold and sad regions, in the places that were always closed off to her, the places where-as she always knew, without resentment and without bearing grudges-she was betrayed. "I'm so glad we finally talked," she says.

June 2001