Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
The first time I pegged Joseph was on a Wednesday, the kind of cruelly bright evening that made the white-painted trim of our bedroom window ache with summer. My son stood at the threshold, hugging himself in the way he’d done since the orthodontist appointment at twelve years old, when she’d said, “He’ll need the bite corrected. If you’re not careful, he’ll grind his molars to powder.” He’d looked at the floor that day. He looked at the floor now, as if the scratches in the wood between his big toe and the Persian rug held the secret to another world, one he’d rather inhabit.
I considered telling him to stop being so precious, but the moment required a measured authority. “You did the cleaning routine?” I asked, more to remind him of his place than because I needed the answer.
“Yes, Mother,” he said. “Just like you told me.”
He wore the navy towel I’d set for him, knotted low to show the ripening triangle of hair below his navel, still sparse, still surprisingly innocent. The sight made me savor, for a split second, the way the body carries old embarrassments into adulthood, a line of baby fat refusing surrender, a pale seam from a failed skateboarding trick. I had only hours before he’d seal himself in armor again, and I meant to use them well.
“Drop the towel, Joseph,” I said, and he did, folding it over the back of the oak desk so precisely I wondered if he was being passive-aggressive. I watched the pink of his skin gooseflesh under the air conditioning. He had never looked so much like a boy as he did while standing there, naked and obedient, trembling with anticipation and shame. It was exquisite.
I’d already prepared the implement and laid them out on the edge of my vanity stool. There had been a time, when I was a teenager myself, when the mere thought of owning such things was scandalous. But I was not seventeen anymore, and neither was Joseph. He had come to me as a man and discussed the secret horror of his desires, and I had listened first as his mother, then as a woman. This was our decision to walk boldly forward into this new reality.
“On the bed, elbows and knees,” I said. The softness in my tone surprised even me, so I repeated myself. “Now, please.”