Chapter 20
I Have Never Actually Read the Thing
For three days we each give 100 percent of ourselves.
We’re not really spending that much time together. During the days, while Charles is at the lab or the hospital, I go back to my apartment to help Margaret pack and clean, or I read more P. G. Wodehouse. And Thursday and Friday evenings I have rehearsals for the students’ dance recital on Saturday.
But at night, for those two or three hours, or in quick, urgent bursts in the morning, I simply turn my body over to him. I feel safe with him. I feel challenged. When I have the orgasm he wants me to have, while he pins me by my wrists to the bed and fucks me hard, his pubic bone pushing against my clit, I feel delighted with my body. When I masturbate while he watches me, or when I’m on top of him, when his eyes are on me with a look of leashed hunger, I feel beautiful. When I can be as still as he wants me to be, my hands on the wall and my knees spread on the mattress, while he rubs his hand on my clit and presses the head of his cock little by little into my lube-slick ass and he praises me, whispers into my ear that I’m amazing, that I’m the best he’s ever had, that he wants me so much that he can’t breathe, I come so hard, my vision goes dark and my head spins.
And I feel him trusting me with his history, feel him trusting more and more of his weight to me. Before sex, after sex, sometimes during sex, he tells me about his life, his fantasies, his future. We talk about his research—which we’ve talked about before, of course; I ran at least half the subjects for his last study.
But now we talk about why. It’s partly because the science is so cool, but partly because he witnessed the effects of trauma in his own mother. His dad, the asshole viscount, was abusive to her.
And so for three days, he lets me have him. And I let him have me.
And then Saturday afternoon: the recital. My ballet class struggles, my jazz class does great, and Amy, Paul, their mom, and I nail our piece.
Nail. It.
The tech rehearsal Thursday night was the first time I danced with the music—the kids singing and their mom on the piano—and I knew for sure we’d be a hit. While I’m dancing, these two cherubs are standing at the front of the stage, over to one side, singing this beautiful sweet good-bye song. It starts with Paul singing to his sister, “Only me beside you, still you’re not alone,” and becomes a duet, brother and sister singing in harmony.
Like I said, we nail it. Even if my technique is sloppy, I’m so right there in the moment with them, celebrating my students, celebrating my four years with them, saying good-bye, and all the parents in the audience are totally there with me. They get it. When these two kids sing, “Hard to see the light now, just don’t let it go,” they’re right there with me. We’re having this big Feelsies moment, and I love it. There’re four long seconds of total silence when the song ends, then a thunder of applause, and I burst into loving tears and grab up the kids in a giant twin hug. We curtsey together—Paul bows—and then I hoist them off their feet again and carry them, giggling, off the stage.
It takes me so long to say good-bye—this is my second big good-bye, after Dr. Smith; I hug everyone, talk to every parent and student—I’m not surprised to find that Charles hasn’t waited.
It has started to rain, a light, cool sunshower, and I turn my face into it as I walk back to his apartment. I grin, knowing I’ll be damp by the time I walk through his door, knowing how he’ll feel about that. As I walk, I imagine all the things he might do to me, all the ways he might lick the rain off my skin.
But none of that is what happens. Not even close.
I let myself in with my key, and find Charles sitting on the kitchen floor, his hands raked through his hair. There’s a rose wrapped in paper on the counter, beside a padded envelope covered in stamps. He looks up at me, his face bleak, when I come into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I say. “Why are you on the floor?”
“Hey. Er. Your graduation present came,” Charles says, indicating the package.
“Aw! You didn’t have to get me anything.” I pick up the package. It’s obviously a book. I sit down next to him. “Is that why you’re on the floor?”
“I didn’t get you anything, really—it’s just something I had that I thought you might like.”
“Aw!” I say again. “That’s even sweeter! Can I open it? Is it a tie? Is it a toaster?”
“Sure. Here, before you open it—” He hands me a dish towel to dry myself off.
I can’t figure out what’s wrong, so I just wipe off my face and hands and hair and then open the package. I pull out a book wrapped in brown paper. Under the paper I find a couple of layers of tissue paper and then the book itself. It is old and green. I read the spine—and drop it instantly on the floor and cover my mouth with my hands.
“Oh my god,” I say through my fingers, eyes on the green cover.
“I considered Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man and decided it was too, oh, on the nose,” he says. I look at him. He has half a sad, crooked grin on his face.
He’s making a joke. I can hardly breathe, and he’s cracking wise with sex puns. I look up at him, my hands still clasped over my mouth.
“This is not a reproduction,” I say. I sit there, stunned, not daring to touch the thing.
“No, it—”
I cut him off. “But it’s, like, a third or fourth or fifth edition, right?” I look at him, desperate to hear him say it’s not, not, not, not, not a first edition.
“It’s a first edition,” he says, and a corner of his lip tugs downward, the way it does when he’s apologizing for being fancy.
“Oh my god.” I’m hyperventilating now. I stand up. I can’t even sit down in front of it. I press my back against the counter, my fingers pressing against my mouth, staring at the book, trying to breathe.
Charles looks a little worried. “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”
“No!” I yell. “God, don’t put me and water in the same room with this thing, I’ll just spill all over it and ruin it. I’ll just ruin it!”
Are you religious? If you are, then you might have some understanding of how I feel about On the Origin of Species. It’s a book that, like the Bible for many Christians, lays out a foundational system for understanding the nature of life itself. Unlike the Bible, it’s amenable to the shibboleths of science, with elements being disproved, elaborated on, or otherwise made truer all the time. Evolution is, in my view, the most important scientific idea anyone has ever had, and this book right here, lying on the kitchen floor, is the book that first explained it.
And, like many Christians with the Bible, I have never actually read the thing.
I confess this to Charles, as I struggle for breath, my hands now on my cheeks, and he says, “Oh, you should. It’s a blockbuster, a real page-turner. Though I would suggest not reading this particular one; this one’s more for pretties than for smarts. Or go ahead—it’s yours. Do as you like with it.”
“How”—I gasp—“can I possibly accept this? What the hell, Charles? Wait, you said this is something you just had?”
“Yes, it’s . . . It’s from the family library. Sort of.” After a pause, he explains in a rush, “The library was sold between the wars for tax, but the steward responsible was reluctant about it and so kept excellent records that have enabled me to track down and buy back a number of the more important . . . that is . . . And by ‘I,’ really I mean the agency. So you see, it’s really just a book I had that I thought might give you pleasure. Look,” he says. He takes up the book—in his bare hands! Like it’s just a book!—and opens the cover. There’s that large stamp, like a notarization, in the center of the blank page.
“Charles,” I scold. “Don’t be obtuse. A first edition Origin of Species isn’t ‘just a book’ under any circumstances, and when it’s part of your family’s fucking . . . whatever . . . ancestral collection, that makes it an even bigger deal! And you’re giving it to me? This girl you’re fucking for a couple of weeks before I drive off into the sunrise?”
He scowls at me and says softly, “You are not ‘this girl I’m fucking.’ You’re . . .” He hesitates and smiles a little. “You’re the girl I’m fucking.”
I give up trying to argue. I sit back down on the floor beside him, and I stare at the book. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” I say. With my arms crossed over my knees and my chin on my arms, I gaze at the green-and-gilt cover and breathe, “Oh my god.”
Charles watches my face. “I want you to remember,” he says. “When all the other blokes come along, I want you to remember our time together, remember it fondly.”
I turn my face to him. “You think I could forget? Have you forgotten your first person?”
“It was rather different,” he says with a downward pull of his bottom lip. “It was years, we had. And it was the first for both of us. And we were younger and . . . I don’t know. I have this dread that when you go away, you’ll look back on this and wonder what on Earth you were thinking.”
I don’t know what to say.
“Please accept it, Annie. It would mean a great deal to me if you would accept the book and give it a good home.”
“I don’t deserve this,” I say.
“Any less than I? What does it mean to deserve a beautiful thing? Annie, I don’t hold on to things just for the sake of having them as my possession.
“Please,” he says. “I want you to have it.”
I shift on the floor and sit mirroring him. I say, “Ten years from now you’ll be like, ‘Why the hell did I give my Origin to that random girl?’”
He shakes his head, his eyes on mine. “Ten years from now I’ll see you at a conference where you’re accepting some award or giving the keynote and I’ll think, ‘That woman is a gift to the world. She is my friend, and for a very short time she was the most exciting and joyful lover I’ve ever had. How on Earth did I get this lucky?’ And then you’ll introduce me to your partner, and I’ll think, ‘Crikey, no wonder she tossed me over. Look at this chap!’”
He’s teasing me now, but I can’t smile. I scoot over to him and curl myself into his arms, hugging him around the waist. I put my head against his heart.
“Thank you,” I say.
He wraps his arms around me and says into my hair, “This book is the scale of my appreciation and gratitude for what you’ve shared with me. It’s . . . Well, it’s rather selfish, in the end. I want it to be a thread that ties us together, even if it’s just in memory.”
“I’ll keep it safe,” I tell him. “I’ll always keep it safe.”