Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

I kept brushing, wanting her to suffer a little.

The Object’s forehead wrinkled and her eyes grew soft in appeal. “Do you hate me?”

“I’m still deciding.”

“You’re so mean!” she said, comically frowning, and snapped the curtain shut.

After breakfast, we were on the porch swing, drinking lemonade and gliding back and forth to create a breeze. I had my feet up on the railing, pushing off from it. The Object was lying sideways, her legs spread over my lap, her head resting against the arm of the swing. She had on cutoffs, short enough to reveal the white lining of the pockets, and her bikini top. I was wearing khaki shorts and a white alligator shirt.

Out in front of us, the bay flashed silver. The bay had scales, like the fish beneath.

“Sometimes I get really sick of having a body,” the Object said.

“Me too.”

“You too?”

“Especially when it’s hot like this. It’s like torture just moving around.”

“Plus I hate sweating.”

“I can’t stand to sweat,” I said. “I’d rather pant like a dog.”

The Object laughed. She was smiling at me, marveling. “You understand everything I say,” she said. She shook her head. “Why can’t you be a guy?”

I shrugged, indicating that I had no answer. I was aware of no irony in this. Neither was the Object.

She was looking at me, low-lidded. Her eyes in the brightness of day with heat currents rising over the baking grass looked very green, even if they were only slits, crescents. Her head was bent forward against the arm of the swing; she had to look up to see me. This gave her a vixenish attitude. Without taking her eyes off mine, she adjusted her legs, spreading them slightly.

“You have the most amazing eyes,” she said.

“Your eyes are really green. They almost look fake.”

“They are fake.”

“You’ve got glass eyes?”

“Yeah, I’m blind. I’m Tiresias.”

This was a new way to do it. We’d just discovered it. Staring into each other’s eyes was another way of keeping them closed, or off the details at hand, anyway. We locked onto each other. Meanwhile the Object was very subtly flexing her legs. I was aware of the mound beneath her cutoffs rising toward me, just a little, rising and suggesting itself. I put my hand on the Object’s thigh, palm down. And as we continued to swing, looking at each other while crickets played their fiddles in the grass, I slid my hand sideways up toward the place where the Object’s legs joined. My thumb went under her cutoffs. Her face showed no reaction. Her green eyes under the heavy lids remained fastened on mine. I felt the fluffiness of her underpants and pressed down, sliding under the elastic. And then with our eyes wide open but confined in that way my thumb slipped inside her. She blinked, her eyes closed, her hips rose higher, and I did it again. And again after that. The boats in the bay were part of it, and the string section of crickets in the baking grass, and the ice melting in our lemonade glasses. The swing moved back and forth, creaking on its rusted chain, and it was like that old nursery rhyme, Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Christmas pie. He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum . . . After the first roll of her eyes the Object resettled her gaze on mine, and then what she was feeling showed only there, in the green depths her eyes revealed. Otherwise she was motionless. Only my hand moved, and my feet on the rail, pushing the swing. This went on for three minutes, or five, or fifteen. I have no idea. Time disappeared. Somehow we were still not quite conscious of what we were doing. Sensation dissolved straight into forgetting.

When the floor of the porch creaked behind us, I jumped. I withdrew my thumb from the Object’s pants and sat up straight. I saw something in the corner of my eyes and turned. Perched on the railing to our right was Jerome. He was in his vampire costume, despite the heat. The powder on his face was burning off in spots but he still looked very pale. He was gazing down on us with his best haunted expression. His Turn of the Screw expression. The young master led astray by the gardener. The boy in the frock coat who’d drowned in the well. Everything was dead except the eyes. His eyes fixed on us—on the Object’s bare legs lying in my lap—while his face remained embalmed.

Then the apparition spoke:

“Carpet munchers.”

“Just ignore him,” the Object said.

“Carrrrpet muncherrrrs,” Jerome repeated. It came out in a croak.

“Shut up !”

Jerome remained still and ghoul-like on the rail. His hair wasn’t slicked back but fell limp on either side of his face. He was very controlled and intent about what he was doing, as if following a time-honored procedure. “Carpet muncher,” he said again. “Carpet muncher, carpet muncher.” Singular now. This was between him and his sister.

“I said quit it, Jerome.” The Object now tried to rise. She swung her legs off my lap and started to roll out of the swing. But Jerome moved first. He spread his jacket like wings and jumped off the railing. He swooped down on the Object. Still his face was completely impassive. No muscles moved except those of his mouth. Into the Object’s face, into her ears he kept hissing and croaking. “Carpet muncher, carpet muncher, carpet muncher, carpet muncher.”

“Stop it!”

She tried to hit him but he caught her arms. He held both of her wrists in one hand. With his other hand Jerome made a V with his fingers. He pressed this V to his mouth and between this suggestive triangle flicked his tongue back and forth. At the crudity of this gesture the Object’s calm began to crack. A sob rose in her. Jerome sensed its arrival. He had reduced his sister to tears for over a decade; he knew how to do it; he was like a kid burning an ant with a magnifying glass, focusing the beam in hotter and hotter.

“Carpet muncher, carpet muncher, carpet muncher . . .”

And then it happened. The Object broke down. She began to bawl like a little girl. Her face turned red and she swung her fists wildly before finally running away into the house.

At that point Jerome’s fierce activity ceased. He adjusted his jacket. He smoothed his hair and, leaning against the porch rail, stared peacefully out at the water.

“Don’t worry,” he said to me. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone what?”

“You’re lucky I’m such a liberal and freethinking type of guy,” he continued. “Most guys wouldn’t be so happy to find out that they’d been two-timed by a lesbian with their own sister. It’s sort of embarrassing, don’t you think? But I’m such a freethinker that I’m willing to overlook your proclivities.”

“Why don’t you shut up, Jerome?”

“I’ll shut up when I want to,” he said. Then he turned his head and looked at me. “You know where you are now? Splitsville, Stephanides. Get out of here and don’t come back. And keep your hands off my sister.”

I was already jumping up. My blood rocketed. It shot up my spine and rang a bell in my head, and I charged Jerome in a blaze of fury. He was bigger than me but unprepared. I hit him in the face. He tried to move away but I crashed into him, my momentum knocking him to the floor. I climbed on his chest, pinning his arms with my legs. Finally Jerome stopped resisting. He lay on his back and tried to look amused.

“Any time you’re finished,” he said.

It was an exhilarating feeling to be on top of him. Chapter Eleven had pinned me all my life. This was the first time I’d done it to somebody else, especially a boy older than me. My long hair was falling into Jerome’s face. I swept it back and forth, tormenting him. Then I remembered something else my brother used to do.