And suddenly they were laughing, despite their earnest attempts to try this, to get something out of it, and despite the unbearable news they’d heard tonight. “This position is terrible,” David said. “I think I’m going to be castrated. We’ll have to adopt. I’m sorry I suggested it.”
“We can at least do the falling away onto the bed part,” she suggested.
“Yeah, let’s do that.” So they let themselves fall backward, away from each other, drawing their legs up, everything exposed, holding their knees like two tumblers hurtling through the air.
“What were they thinking?” Claudia asked him a little later. “Did they really imagine that anyone else would enjoy this? Did they enjoy this?” But it didn’t matter what the parents had been thinking, she knew; it was a riddle, a puzzle, a thing conjured up in darkness, and she could never solve it, and she knew that she didn’t even want to because, after all, it was about them, not her.
She and David both lay on their backs now, stretching their legs out fully, their laughter dying down. The drunk men on the street had wandered away, together or apart, and the car alarm had finally been silenced. At dawn the light would climb the side of the brick walk-up building where Claudia Mellow and David Gupta slept, and it would enter through the window glass, and she would be awakened, and there would be things she would have to remember, but not yet, not yet. The narrow bed held them fast until morning.
About the Author
MEG WOLITZER is the author of six previous novels, including The Wife; Surrender, Dorothy; and This Is Your Life. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City.
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Meg Wolitzer, The Position
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