Free Cleaving by Julie Powell Page A

terrified that if we sleep together at this point, you'll be mad at me for not living up to what you're expecting--that
     I won't be funny or brilliant or even good in bed."
    I laugh, cuddle into his side. "Don't be silly."
    "Or else it'll be great and then you and Eric will get divorced and you'll blame me for wrecking your marriage when you realize
     that I'm not as good a catch as he is and then we'll both just get bitter and I'll lose my teeth and end up being an embarrassment
     to you for the rest of our lives."
    I punch his arm. "Now you're just making up crap for the sake of it. And what is it with you and your obsession with your
     teeth?"
    This is where we should be having the Fight Sex. Where I say something sufficiently angry, petulant, ultimatum-y, that leaves
     nothing for him to do but flip me over and fuck the living daylights out of me. In the past year this has happened countless
     times; I almost look forward to our fights now. But not this time. This time he just talks and talks. And it takes me so long,
     so agonizingly long to realize what's happening. He even speaks his immortal
Team America
line, and still, still, I don't get it. But finally I realize: He's not saying he can't have sex with me now. Or next week.
     Or until I'm happier, less needy. He's saying he can't ever. Not ever again.
    I clamber from the bed in a panic, as if my abrupt epiphany is some kind of nasty crawling bug I can brush off. With my back
     pressed up against the window, as far from him as I can get, I stare at D. He's flat on his back, still smiling. He makes
     a gesture that in the last two years has become all too familiar. Without lifting his head from the pillow, he reaches his
     arms out to me like a hungry baby, his hands flapping toward his chest, his eyebrows raised in mock distress, dark eyes wide,
     soft lips parted to emit an urgent whine. It's an exasperating, endearing, indolent gesture of desire, and in the past has
     had the unfailing effect of drawing me back into his arms, comforted, laughing indulgently. But now at last I see what it
     really means.
I want to hold onto you a while longer
.
    But it will never mean what you want it to mean
.
    Oh,
Jesus
.
    When I begin to sob, he doesn't come to me, not at first. He knows I've finally figured it out, something I've been ignoring
     for a long time, something that he's known. I cry and cry, and this isn't like the crying all the times before, not lusty
     and somehow at root pleasurable. This is the coldest, loneliest feeling in the world.
    Now I will become part of another of D's favorite postcoital mythologies. Not the romantic epic of how the stars aligned to
     bring us together, but the litany of D's Lunatic Exes. The leggy blond model who didn't know the difference between Herbert
     and J. Edgar Hoover. The withholding Spanish exchange student who wound up being very impressed with his private parts. The
     dull grad student he narrowly avoided marrying. And now the crazy, clinging, married chick.
    "I can't do this. Can't. Have to go." I pick up my purse, and then he does try to hug me. But I can't have it. I cringe in
     his arms. I'm not angry--oh, how wonderful anger would feel! I'm just... done. I'd so wanted certainty, and now that I have it,
     I can't breathe for the weight of it.
    He takes me down to the street, helps me catch a cab. He wipes away my tears, even cries himself. It's the first time I've
     ever seen him cry, but it doesn't make any difference. He kisses me once more as the cabbie waits, which makes my heart blossom
     and die.
    My brother, when he was eleven or so, had a baby iguana for a pet, whom he'd named Geraldo. One night we had been out, for
     dinner or something, and when we got back to the house he went to his room. The rest of us were still in the kitchen when
     he came running out, sobbing. "Geraldo is dead!"
    In fact the poor thing was gray and cold but still, barely, alive. My mother took it into her cupped hands, blew onto it,