Boris Fishman - Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

The fingers at her temples worked in repeating circles so that she could imagine them whorling new channels into her brain. The words intoned by Madam Stella were blurring into meaningless sound. Maya shuddered. Her embarrassment at being ministered to had vanished. She was so disarmed, so satisfied by the touch, that she actually felt wetness between her legs. She wasn’t sure when it had started, like looking up to realize the window is slicked up with rain.

Maya remained distantly aware that she was visible to her son, but she couldn’t resist the recollection coming upon her, as if she was being walked into water and was willing to drown. Maya slaps Alex’s belly, as flat as her own. “Hey now,” he says sleepily. “It’s your cooking. Don’t cook so richly. .” “I’ll move it,” she says, sliding her hand down to his penis. He shudders slightly. She squeezes it like an udder. “Ow, Maya. .” She squeezes harder. He grows hard in her hand, like a balloon filling. “Take mercy. .” he says. “Think of our children.” She moves down over him. “No, up here. .” he says unpersuasively. She holds him in her mouth, feels him fill out. He breathes deeply and mutters something. His hands come up on her forearms and he drives her up toward him. Alex is stronger than she is and can make her go where he wants. She wants that. He brings her lips to his and mashes them with his own. Then he notches her up by another foot so that his tongue is on her breasts. She feels the cool, slick trail of his tongue around her nipples. “Revolutions around the track. .” she says. “Rubin is after the gold. .” He yanks her up again. She slams into the headboard. “Ow, ow. .” They dissolve in laughter. “But don’t stop. .” “When they bury me,” he says, “the stone will say, ‘He loved belly buttons above all. .’” “ This belly,” she corrects him. “He loved this belly,” he repeats obediently. She continues moving above him — his mouth is on the fleece between her legs. “I am going to tell you a secret,” he whispers, lifting his mouth away. “The girls I’ve been with are all bare, but I prefer it this way.” “Put your mouth back on me,” she says. Her thighs are next, her knees, her shins, her toes. He plucks each toe with his lips. “You can’t take them,” she says. Finally, he lowers her onto himself, his legs underneath her. They rock back and forth. She buries her nose in his hair, then hiccups. They giggle. They talk about something — shelves? They slide up and down a little to make it easier to come — they try to synchronize. As they get closer, they fall away from each other, though they try halfheartedly to hold on. She feels him hit the walls of her like a warm rain. She twitches painfully in an attack of her own. They remain inside each other as Alex goes soft. “You first,” she says. “You first,” he says. “I’m not moving,” they say at the same time. They laugh.

Maya’s underwear was soaked, and she felt a cool bracelet of cum exit and trace a half-moon around her leg. She was being led somewhere — in life, not the dream. Maya felt her arms and legs meet a rough surface, as if she was being laid across the back of an animal. She swam, an anchor on each leg. She sank and sank, and though she was aware she could make a reach for the surface, she did not. She went where she was being summoned, down, down, down.

She dreamed. Her family was at the dinner table with guests, though they weren’t familiar to Maya. She eyed the group from her post behind the cooking island. Where was Alex? Not at the dinner table. Maya checked again — he was not there. As he was not in the bathroom, nor away on some trip. In addition to Eugene, Raisa, and Max, the table held three men and two women. But which man was her husband? She recognized none. How could she be married to a man she couldn’t identify? And why did Eugene and Raisa — Eugene was orating with a glass of wine in his hand — find this so untroubling?

Maya winced awake. The room was blurry and she tasted sourness. The mastiff was folded into an impressively compact circle at her feet on the horsehair bed. On the other side of the closed slats of the window, it was still daytime. Her eyes adjusted to discover her son tippy-toed on one of the stools as he rearranged the weeds that lined the cherry-red board. Maya called out for him sharply.

“But it’s mixed up,” Max said. “This is bur marigold, not coltsfoot.” He added defensively: “I waited till she left.”

Maya brought her hands up to her temples and flinched. They felt raw, as if they had been rubbed with sandpaper. She closed her eyes. What time was it? She swept away the sheet that covered her and leaped out of bed. The mastiff opened its eyes. An interrogation of her son revealed that Madam Stella had gone to use the workman’s toilet. Maya paced the room, but the door would not yield the healer. Finally, Maya counted out five twenties, wedged them under the cutting board that held the loaf-log of butter, demonically keeping its shape despite the close heat of the room, and commanded her son to follow her out, which he did, obediently unhanding the clumps in his fist.

Creaking down the stairs, Max’s hand in hers, Maya called to Madam Stella, but no answer came, and she did not wish to embarrass the older woman by banging on the door of the toilet. She yelled that she had left the money under the butter and hurried out.

She drove above the speed limit; she compensated by inquiring of Max three times whether he was wearing his seat belt. The sex Maya had remembered was twenty years old, back when Maya was still teaching Alex. Thinking of those young people was like thinking of other people entirely. The two of them had turned out to be physically matched in a way that could be explained only by luck — sometimes it went your way, too. She treated this fact as a vindication of the reckless decision she had made in marrying Alex — why weren’t things allowed to work out? Alex was not initially an adventurer in bed — the first time she mumbled arduous words into his cheek (“I want to feel it in my chest, in my throat”), his hard-on drooped, and he remonstrated with her to watch a porno film if that’s what she wanted. But he learned, even as he disliked being a student. He was solid, thick-skinned, the fleshly block of him above her like a good fact, and their unflagging desire was as responsible as anything else for moving them through the years. But over time it had cleaved from the rest of their story: an organ driving at full throttle while so much else tripped, sank, got turned around on itself. And since Max’s trouble began, they had not touched each other at all. Their disinterest seemed as mutual as their erstwhile desire; they did not discuss it, simply heeded the feeling, a bitter harmony. She glanced at the car clock: 5:47. They had left just after two. She pressed the pedal.

She berated herself. Unlike her outing on the bus, which risked sacrificing only the mother, she had now disappeared with the most precious cargo of the Rubins’ lives. And instead of paying attention to the road, she was examining the clotted shallows of her psyche. A gruesome word floated up. You are a cunt, Maya, she mouthed silently at the wheel.

Maya turned to Max. “So Madam Stella played the game with me. .” She trailed off, hoping Max would fill in the rest, but he only nodded. “Did anything strange happen?” she said.

“You made noises,” Max said.

Maya ran a hand through her hair. It felt reedy and damp, as if she really had just emerged from a tangle of sheets.

“What kind of noises?” she said.

“Like it hurt you somewhere,” Max said. “But Madam Stella said you were fine.”

Maya nodded, the corners of her eyes filling with tears. She felt a great desire to close her eyes.