Chapter 20
Zoe sat naked in the middle of the room. She held the shirt that Ron had worn yesterday up to her face and inhaled the traces of his scent. With her other hand, she worked the hard plastic buttons on the cuff of the shirt back and forth over her clitoris. Her eyes were closed. She imagined herself flying through the air and he was flying with her, his head between her legs, his tongue snapping the way that it did across her clit. Her mouth opened and she rocked back and forth and then, in the dream, he opened his mouth and began to devour her. He took large bites out of her vagina, chewing and swallowing her. She tried to fly faster, tried to get away from his mouth but he was devouring her from between her legs. Her hips bucked faster over the buttons, the hard buttons that could have been teeth. She was sweating and smiling at the same time. He was eating away all of her fat. She would be thin if he kept eating at her. The waves of the orgasm rushed over her and she bucked her hips faster. Then he was spitting her out. Parts of her dropping down from the sky and wherever they dropped, flowers sprang up and tried to ensnare her. It was the fat trying to get back into her. He was spitting her out. He was just like she was. She raised her fingers from between her legs and stuck them down into her throat and then began to gag into his shirt and then the burn of the vomit, the harsh gritty feel of the vomit in her mouth, making her pay for what she had eaten. Her body wretched and shook and still she was cumming. Then she got up and ran into the bath room, frightened as a little girl. She scrubbed the shirt clean of what had come out of her, her entire body shaking. Now she could draw. She sketched the likeness of a fat hippo sucking on a straw that was stuck into an ice cream sundae.
When Ron came home, he found her curled up in his aunt’s wingback chair. She had been crying. Her hands were in front of her mouth. She watched him walk in and drop his book bag down and take off his jacket and then walk towards her. She held up a hand for him to stop before he reached her.
“Why do you want to live with me?
“What?”
“I’m a pig. Why do you want to live with a pig?”
“You aren’t a pig.”
“I’m a fat, filthy, disgusting pig and I don’t want to be with someone who could stand to live with a fat, filthy, disgusting pig.”
“You aren’t fat. You aren’t a pig. You aren’t disgusting.”
He stood in front of her an expression of complete confusion on his face. “Did you have a bad day?”
She screamed and ran passed him into the bathroom and locked the door. Ron stood there feeling helpless. What was he supposed to do now? What was wrong with her? What did he have to do to fix it? He paced through the apartment rooms. His stomach growled at him, a reminder that he hadn’t eaten all day, nothing except coffee. He picked up the mail that he had gathered from his parents’ house the day before and sorted through it. The envelope in Robin’s handwriting made him drop the stack of mail like he had been given an electric shock. Was this it? Had she seen the letter? It was still sealed. Had she found a way to open it or read it through the envelope? The door opened and she walked out fast, her face angry. “I’m going to take the train back to my father’s house.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t stand to be cooped up in this ugly apartment all day long. I want to run. I want to swim. I want to ride my bike.”
“I’ll drive you, if you really want to go, Zoe.”
“There’s no place for me to be free here,” she screamed. “I’m dying here.”
Ron felt like he had been slapped. He felt as if he took a step off the curb and that some bus had whacked him in the side of the head. “Wait,” he said.
She dropped her bag to the floor and he moved to her and gathered her into his arms. She was crying and shaking and he body trembled like a leaf in a stiff breeze. She reached her arms up and held onto him, like he was the branch that was keeping her from being torn off. “I’m so fucked up,” she whispered, “and I don’t want you to see me like this.”
Ron patted her ass and said “Go clean yourself up and get dressed.”
She went back into the bathroom and Ron picked up the envelope and opened it. “I’ll be arriving on Wednesday on Flight 148 on American Airlines. It gets in at 8 pm. See you then. Love, Robin.” Wednesday, today was Tuesday. Ron walked to the bathroom door and said, “Maybe a few days up at your parents’ house will help you to clear your head.”
She opened the door. She looked like the angelic child again. “You won’t mind?”
“If it’s what you need, it’s what we should do,” said Ron.
Her face brightened. I just want to run and swim and get my head in a better place so that I can come back to you healthy,” she said.
Ron nodded. “It’s ok. I trust you.”
Someplace inside a voice told him that he should be feeling very guilty, but he wasn’t. He would tell Robin that he was staying with his folks until he figured out what to do about an apartment. She definitely would not want to go to his mother’s house. Funny, he thought, she calls it her father’s house and I call it my mother’s house. Is it a gender thing?
That night after he drove Zoe, and picked up a pizza, he sat at his desk and called Robin. She answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?” she said. “The phone is disconnected and I really didn’t want to be calling Rahway again so I wrote in care of your parents’ house.”
“That’s where I’m staying, just until I get things sorted out. I didn’t want to stay at Rahway. I’m sure you can understand why.”
She laughed. “No, actually I thought that any excuse that got you back into Rahway would be the one that you would take.”
Ron flushed. “Contrary to popular opinion, I do have some integrity, Robin.”
“Anyway,” she said, “Can you pick me up?”
“Absolutely.”
“How’s the teaching going?”
“It’s incredible. It’s where I want to be. It’s who I am. It may be the best thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”
“That’s good, Ron. Just remember that you aren’t Warren.”
Ron’s hand clenched on the receiver. Why did she have to say shit like that? His voice was small. “I don’t drawl,” he said with fake drawl.
She giggled. “I’m really looking forward to seeing you and everyone else.”
Ron felt panicked. Who was everyone else? “How long are you staying?”
“Let’s see how it goes. Ron, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be staying in Minneapolis. Things have gotten complicated here and I am thinking of coming back home.”
Ron felt his pulse quicken. Zoe cleared from his mind like she was a hallucination. “There is nothing that I would like more than that.”
And then they hung up.
A minute later the phone rang. Zoe’s voice said, “I miss you so much. I don’t want to sleep without you next to me.”