Nude Men

little. I thought perhaps you were a bit disturbed. I always wanted to ask you about that. How did your mouth get full of blood?”
    “I was resting my tooth against the tip of my pen,” I explain, “and it slipped and stabbed my palate. The blood came out quickly, but I thought I was swallowing it fast enough for you not to notice.”
    “Well, that’s a simple explanation, much less spooky than I feared. When I got to know you better, I realized that I had been right. You are not the run of the mill. But I also realized that you were better than the run of the mill, that you were gentle and kind, and that there was no one I would have preferred my daughter to fall in love with than you. Nevertheless, I thought that her interest might fade. To tell you the truth, I even hoped it would, because although it seemed perfectly clear to me that Sara should do whatever she felt like, there remained a part of me, from the old days, that thought that maybe I was still too young to understand why children shouldn’t have sex. Anyway, Sara’s interest in you certainly did not fade; it became a passion. By then I had gotten used to the idea that she had made up her mind to charm you. I started worrying about how disappointed she would be if you did not reciprocate her affection. I was virtually certain that you could never be interested in her because she was so young and because you were interested in me. I told her this many times. I didn’t want her to get her hopes up. I told her she should set her mind on someone her own age, but she wouldn’t give in. That’s when she came up with the idea of Disney World. It was her idea, and she spoke in such a rational, intelligent, and mature way that she convinced me to let her go with you.”
    The more I listen to Lady Henrietta, the more I feel my guilt and tension leaving me.
    “How old were you when you first wanted to have sex?” she asks me.
    “About ten.”
    “How old were you when you did?”
    “Twenty-one.”
    “Was the wait bothersome?”
    “Yes.”
    “Frustrating?”
    “Yes.”
    “To say the least?”
    “Yes.”
    “May I go so far as to say that it was a form of torture?”
    “Yes.”
    “Children should be educated, not kept in ignorance. The only danger for them is pregnancy and disease.”
    “I don’t want to see or hear from Sara anymore,” I reply. “Tell her to stop calling me. You may not think that what happened was wrong, but I don’t want to live my life this way. I was hoping you’d put an end to it. In a way, you did. I can never again do what I did with Sara, knowing that you know about it.”
     
    * * *
     
    I feel much better, but I realize I do not like Lady Henrietta as much as before. As a result of having been traumatized, I crave normalcy now.
    I go back to my apartment. Charlotte’s there.
    “You called my mother,” I accuse her.
    “You told me I could.”
    “But you said you wouldn’t.”
    “I changed my mind.”
    “So did I,” I say. “I think we should not see each other for a while. I would like you to leave my apartment. I want to live alone again.”
    “Oh.”
    “I want you to be gone by tomorrow evening. I’ll sleep on the couch tonight.”
     
    T he next day I am in the supermarket, buying food. I’m at the lemon stand, looking at all the plump yellow lemons. Whenever I see lemons I get a strong feeling of identification, and now, as I gaze at a whole pile of them, I get a feeling of belonging, of acceptance. It’s only with lemons that I feel this way, because we share bitterness. A woman stands next to me and says, “You’re tall; could you please grab me a box of those garbage bags up there?”
    “Do you want the tall kitchen garbage bags or the bigger kind?” I ask.
    “The tall kitchen kind.”
    I hand her the box.
    “Thank you so much,” she says. “I’ll use these garbage bags tonight to teach my daughter how to throw things away. She’s eleven, and she never throws anything in the garbage. Yet she’s n0t dumb. She’s quite mature for her age, but of course not mature enough to go to bed with a man.”
    The woman turns around and walks away. I stand there staring at her back. I have never seen her before.
     
    W hen I get home, I ask Charlotte, “Have you been sending a friend of yours around to bug me?”
    “No; why? Has someone bugged you?”
    “A stranger came up to me and spoke to me about little girls and sex.”
    “It’s your guilty conscience punishing you.”
     
    T hat