Flesh of My Flesh: Short Story (7 page)

She keeps clinging to him as he sits up. She thinks he’s trying to get away. But he kneels between her legs and parts her labia with his fingers. Then he licks her there. It’s the first time this has been done to her. She assumes it’s preliminary. He keeps it up, though, soft, steady, devoted, cat-like licking until her body begins to loosen. Her joints unhinge. Her vulva breaks free and levitates, and her skin spreads like dough, a lovely, funny sensation, and then a disturbing one. And then she doesn’t care—she’d die to prolong it.

Her orgasm is like a series of electric shocks. Her pelvis jolts and her vagina contracts almost painfully. “I love you,” Sam says urgently, as if he knows that she’s in new territory. “I love you, I love you,” over and over until she lies still.

“Oh, my God,” she says then. “I love you,” she says. She hasn’t told him in five months. After a moment she says, “It’s you I love.” Under the circumstances that sounds more precise, more to the point. Tomorrow he is going into the hospital. Flying down to Boston by himself. Since she wouldn’t talk about it, wouldn’t even think about it, there was never any
question of her going with him. Now, for the first time, she allows herself to wonder what will happen. She is still not ready for details, but she asks if the operation is dangerous.

“Apparently not,” he says. “I mean, not life-threatening.”

She turns to him and places her hand over his crotch. She knows he’s wearing underwear, which makes it easier.

“Don’t!” he says, wrenching sideways.

“No, let me,” she says, and puts her hand back. She presses her palm down and feels the springiness of his pubic hair. “It’s just like me,” she says, oddly relieved.

He doesn’t move.

“It’s you,” she says.

“It is,” he says. “And it isn’t.” He takes her hand and holds it to his chest. Then he covers them both with the sheet.

He is still holding her hand when she wakes up. His head is arched back and he’s snoring, a soft purring sound. It’s morning. There’s a band of grey light between the drapes, and another band flaring across the ceiling.

If somebody were looking down on them, Marion thinks—if, for instance, her mother’s spirit was that clean, geometrical flare—they would seem like any other man and wife. They would seem content, she thinks. Peaceful, and lucky. Two people unacquainted with grief. They would seem like two happily married, perfectly normal people.

If you enjoyed “Flesh of My Flesh” by Barbara Gowdy, look for the print and e-book versions of the entire short story collection
We So Seldom Look on Love
.
E-book:
9781443402484
Print:
9780006475231

B
ARBARA
G
OWDY
was born in Windsor, Ontario, in 1950. When she was four, her family moved to Don Mills, a suburb of Toronto that would come to inspire the settings for much of her fiction.

Gowdy considered a career as a pianist until she decided her talent was mediocre. While working as an editor at the publishing house Lester & Orpen, she found herself writing characters into her clients’ non-fiction and took this as her cue to start writing professionally.

Her first book,
Through the Green Valley
(a historical novel set in Ireland), came out in 1988; the following year she published
Falling Angels
to international critical acclaim. Her 1992 collection,
We So Seldom Look on Love,
was a finalist for the Trillium Award for Fiction. Four years later, the title story from this collection was adapted into
Kissed,
a film directed by Lynne Stopkewich.
Falling Angels
was also adapted to film in 2003, with Esta Spalding as screenwriter.

Gowdy’s books, including three bestselling novels—
Mister Sandman
(1995),
The White Bone
(1998) and
The Romantic
(2003)—have been published in twenty-four countries. Gowdy has also had stories appear in a number of anthologies, including
Best American Short Stories, The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English
and the
Penguin Anthology of Stories by Canadian Women.

Gowdy has been nominated repeatedly for many prestigious literary awards: four times for the Trillium Award and two times each for the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
The Romantic
earned her a Man Booker Prize nomination in 2003. In 1996, she was awarded the Marian Engel Award, which recognizes the complete body of work by a Canadian woman writer “in mid-career.” Nine years later, Ben Marcus praised Gowdy’s literary realism in
Harper’s Magazine,
singling her out as one of the few contemporary writers who has “pounded on the emotional possibilities of their mode, refusing to subscribe to worn-out techniques and storytelling methods.”

Barbara Gowdy has also appeared on television as a regular commentator on literary matters and has taught creative writing courses at Ryerson University. Her sixth novel,
Helpless,
was published by HarperCollins in 2007.

She lives in Toronto.

THROUGH THE GREEN VALLEY
FALLING ANGELS
MISTER SANDMAN
THE WHITE BONE
THE ROMANTIC
HELPLESS

“Flesh of My Flesh” © 1992 by Barbara Gowdy.

All rights reserved.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

This short story was originally published in
We So Seldom Look on Love
by Barbara Gowdy, first published in print form in 1992 by Somerville House Publising. First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. in print form in 2001, and in an ePub edition in 2011.

Original epub edition (in
We So Seldom Look on Love
) April 2011 ISBN: 978-1-443-40248-4.

This ePub edition DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 978-1-443-42189-8.

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