Y: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

and the girl and I are left to play.
     We see a garter snake dart in and out of the tall grass, and the dark-haired girl
     chases it until it disappears somewhere underneath the playground. She begins to cry
     and Clint reappears, picks her up roughly, and puts her in his car. He takes Moira
     in his arms and kisses her cheek, then bends down and looks at me. I have about an
     inch of fine white hair on my head and am wearing a little white dress. Clint smiles
     and says I look like an angel.
    When he gets in his car and drives away, Moira gets a look on her face as though she
     is suddenly in mourning. She stares at me as if I am someone she’s seen before but
     can’t quite place. She buys me a root beer–flavored Popsicle from the concession stand,
     and I concentrate on eating it before it melts and falls into my lap and ruins the
     leather seats of her car.
    When Julian gets back from his trip, he gives me a stuffed bear wearing a red- and
     green-striped scarf. He gives Moira a floor-length camel-haired coat. I hear them
     yelling one night, then a cold hard slap. After that, we do not see Clint again.

    When the weather is nice, Julian rides to work on his bicycle, his briefcase secured
     to the rattrap with bungee cords. One night he rides home after dark, a ghost on a
     dimly lit side street. It begins to rain and the temperature drops fast, steaming
     up the windshield of a car approaching him from behind. The car hesitates at the intersection.
     Julian is paused at the light. When the car makes a sharp right-hand turn, it catches
     the wheel of Julian’s bicycle and sends him spinning. He hits the curb and is launched
     off the bike with such force that his back skids along the asphalt before he finally
     comes to a stop. He stands, curses at the car, which has fled into the night, and
     pedals the rest of the way home on the sidewalk. The blood on his back sticks to his
     suit jacket like molasses.
    Moira is not home. Between the bars of my little bed, I watch him. I am three years
     old, my hair a big puff of white cotton, my eyes big and cloudy blue. He strips off
     his jacket and slowly peels off his shirt, which is caked with deep red blood. He
     drops it onto the carpet and walks toward me, lifts me into his arms, and sets me
     on his and Moira’s bed. He goes into the bathroom and returns with a wet towel and
     a tub of Vaseline, lies on his stomach, and tells me to rub the towel over his back
     as gently as I can. He finds the remote controls tangled in the sheets and turns on
     the television, presses Play on the VCR. I play with the blood on his back, running
     my little fingers down the sides of his spine. He puts a gob of Vaseline in my hands,
     and I smear it over the blood. I am bored and fidgety and so he makes a game out of
     it, asks me to draw circles and squares and letters and numbers in the pink gunk. Cat People is on the television. We watch it together while I rub his back, and when I wake
     up it is already morning.

    Not long after, Moira finds a deep blue bruise on my thigh. Julian confesses that
     he has trouble holding me. He says I wiggle out of his arms and drop like a stone.
     He says he prays for me to be still. At night, he tries to shake off the memory of
     his father beating his legs with a belt until they buckled and bled. He is a haunted
     man. He shudders every time I cry.
    “Will she ever stop?” he pleads. Moira sits at the edge of their big bed, her head
     in her hands. The guilt of her affair hangs between them. She will make it up to him,
     she says. She will make everything okay. What choice does she have? Despite the darkness
     she sees in him, she cannot imagine her life without him in it, without this solid,
     beautiful home.
    We begin playing a game she calls the Stillness. For every minute I sit still, I am
     rewarded with a cube of marble cheese. If I sit still for five minutes, I get a square
     of raspberry-flavored dark chocolate.
    “Concentrate,