Watch Your Mouth Read Online Free PDF Page B

through, and it was so hot.”
    “Bed?” Gramma said again. “You’re sleeping in one bed ?” “Oh,” Mrs. Glass said, “yes, we decided that, mother.” “Together?” Gramma shrieked.
    “That’s what they’re doing at school,” Mrs. Glass said. “It would be hypocritical—”
    “It’s the summertime, ” Gramma said. I filled my mouth with nougat. “There isn’t any school.”
    “It would be hypocritical to—”
    “You don’t even know him— ” The violins swell; Gramma lifted her dessert spoon toward me like a gavel. “Well, I for one—”
    “Mother,” Mrs. Glass said patiently. “I talked it over with my daughter. And Ben. It simply doesn’t make any sense to forbid them to share a bed, when they’re just going to go back to school and—”
    “No!” Gramma shouted. “I won’t have it!”
    “ Please, let’s not get to shouting about it. It’s only the first night—”
    “It’s against the law!”
    Steven giggled. “No it’s not,” he said. “Well, it’s against the laws of nature!”
    “Please,” Mrs. Glass said, smiling nervously at me. “Let’s just enjoy our parfaits.”
    “No,” Gramma said, and here it comes: the old woman’s curse. From such grumpy seniors do lovers die, castles crumble. It always happens at the wedding feast. “If they sleep together under this roof they will not be forgiven. If they sleep together I call upon catastrophe to visit this house. If they sleep together, this will be my revenge.” On this she held up her parfait glass like a goblet. The parfait will be her revenge? In some ways it made sense: a parfait is sweet. A parfait is a dish best served cold. The part with strawberries and ice cream didn’t make any sense at all, but if anything’s important in opera they always repeat it. “If they sleep together, this will be my—”
    “O.K., Mrs. Glass,” I said. “Everybody. I am very grateful to this family for taking me in this summer, and I don’t want to intrude on anybody’s hospitality. If it makes you feel better, I’ll sleep in another room. I don’t mean to upset anybody, and— well, besides, it will be good. I have an ‘incomplete’ from last semester, and I need to write a paper, so I’ll probably be up late nights.” I couldn’t meet Cyn’s eyes as I said this last one. “So it does make sense for me to sleep in another room. I mean, if you have another room. If it isn’t intruding on anybody’s hos- pitality to sleep separately. ” I couldn’t believe what I was saying. As if the idea of the summer was actually to work Arts & Crafts at Camp Shalom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of all places,
    rather than blanketing myself in Cyn’s body. After sex we were usually so breathless we couldn’t even summon up the energy to grab an inside-out T-shirt and wipe ourselves down; we’d usually just let ourselves drip-dry underneath the glare of cheap dormitory fluorescence. Now, during the hottest months of the year, I was agreeing to summon up the energy to leave the room. But I was raised right. And after the ceramic mishap during the main course I felt obliged to better my batting record.
    Gramma’s eyes—long, thin rectangles like cars from the 1950s—met mine, but she didn’t say anything. She was still holding up the parfait; inside the glass, the remaining ice cream liquified and a strawberry toppled into the bottom layer of nougat.
    “That’s not necessary,” Cyn’s mother said to both of us. “I have made my decision, Mother, and I’ll thank you to—”
    “No no no,” Gramma said, shaking her head. She stooped up and took a little sweater off the back of the chair. It was red with little black decorations, the Pittsburgh equivalent of a sweeping gypsy shawl. “I’m going home. I hope you two”—her arm sweeps were so vague I didn’t know which set of lovers she meant—“do the sensible thing. The right thing. The legal thing.”
    “It isn’t illegal, Gramma,” Steven said. But