The Up-Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand with her right, pulled him up, and led him into the bedroom.

 
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    Pace carried on with Bitsy for a couple of months, rendezvousing with her three or four weekday afternoons while Del was teaching at the high school. This turn of events disturbed him because Del knew nothing of his liaison with Bitsy. Pace asked her what she intended to say to her husband if and when she became pregnant; after all, Pace said, Del had been tested and told he could not father a child. “I’ll just tell him it’s a miracle,” Bitsy answered. “It’s proof that miracles do happen, and that he should be happy.”
    Pace wasn’t so sure about Del buying Bitsy’s story. What Pace was certain about was that she continued to have sex with Del while she kept on with him. What was happening, Pace realized, was that he was becoming more emotionally involved with Bitsy than she was with him. Bitsy treated their lovemaking sessions with a demeanor Pace found a little too breezy for his taste. Not that she was distant or not tender during their “sessions,” as Bitsy called them, it was just that after a while, once he’d gotten over the initial thrill of making love regularly again with a beautiful young woman, Pace began to resent his being used. It would have been better, he decided, to have just donated his sperm and let a doctor inseminate Bitsy with a needle. Pace had fallen a little in love with Bitsy, and he was not happy about it, not under these circumstances.
    When Pace confronted her with his feelings, Bitsy looked into his eyes and said, “I been tryin’ to suppress my feelings for you, Pace. I was in love with you, I guess, even before we started up. Now I’ve got a confession to make: Del never has had any medical tests to determine the motility of his sperm. Only I’ve been examined and the doctor said there’s nothing wrong with me, that I should be able to conceive.”
    â€œWhy didn’t Del have a test?” Pace asked.
    â€œI never insisted on it. He’s just always said if it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t that’s okay with him, too. He just says bein’ with me is the most important thing.”
    Bitsy began to cry, and said, “I’m sorry I lied to you, Pace, I truly am now. I suppose you won’t want me any more.”
    Pace didn’t say anything for a minute. He wanted to tell Bitsy that despite this revelation he wanted her almost more than ever, but he held his tongue.
    â€œLet me think on it, Bitsy,” he said, finally. “Let’s both of us take some time to decide what to do.”
    Bitsy kissed Pace on the cheek and walked out of his cottage. Pace wished right then that Sailor were still alive and that he could ask him what to do. “Leave her be” were the words that popped into Pace’s head.
    â€œThanks, Daddy,” he said.

 
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    Pace left before dawn two mornings following his last conversation with Bitsy. He headed his Pathfinder north with New York City as his intended destination. He left a note tacked to the front door of the big house addressed to both Bitsy and Del, informing them of his sudden desire to revisit New York. He wasn’t sure when he’d be back, he’d let them know. Pace took his notebooks with him, planning to continue writing his book about his parents wherever he landed. That was the great thing about being a writer, Pace thought: you could do it anywhere.
    If somehow Bitsy had conceived a child fathered by him, Pace did not really want to know. She would certainly tell Del that it was his and they would both be happy. It didn’t matter what Pace felt or thought. He welcomed, even depended on his insignificance in the matter. In the end—or the interim, whatever the case might be—one’s understanding of one’s actions does little or nothing to alter the result. Pace wondered if he had read this somewhere, or was it