Colony by Anne Rivers Siddons Page A

beside his father on the sofa with the birch logs snapping in the fireplace, and made no move to rise, and I would have died in my tracks rather than initiate any movement up to where that huge bed crouched. I sat looking at yellowing old magazines, my eyes growing heavier and finally drooping, until Mother Hannah came out of the rudimentary little kitchen and said, “You children should get some sleep now.
    You’ve had a full day, and you’ll
    want to be out and around with the birds in the morning.
    Peter, Parker Potter said to tell you he needs a partner on the court at eight, and he’ll wait until eight fifteen for you. Tina’s making pancakes in the morning; she said to tell you. She brought you the first of the blueberry jam. Maude, dear, is there anything you need?”
    Nothing but a long, hard, teeth-jarring, eyelid-rattling fuck from your son, I thought, getting to my feet.
    “No, thank you,” I said.
    “Well, then, good night. If you should want anything, just call out. I’ll hear you.”
    No, you won’t, I thought.
    But of course she did. Peter was reluctant when at last we slid under the heavy covers in the big bed, but slowly, and in total silence, I teased him with my fingers and then my hands, and then arms and legs and feet, and soon he had no choice but to roll over to cover me with his body, and only a moment after that he entered me. He was quieter than he had ever been before, and so was I; we strained and thrust together in total silence, our muscles clenching to keep from shaking the old iron bed. But it was no use. Both our climaxes were beginning when I heard her voice, as clear as a funeral bell, drifting up through the floor. “Peter? Are you ill, dear?”
    He stiffened and lay rigid; I felt him slip out of me.
    “No, Ma,” he called, his voice tight.
    “I thought you called out.”
    “No, Ma.”
    He lay beside me in the darkness for a moment, quiet and still, and then he said, “You still game?”
    “Oh, yes….”
    And again, as the damp heat flowered deep within me and all of that secret darkness opened for him, came the voice.
    “Peter? Petie?”
    “Ma, I’m fine,” Peter called back. His voice now was flat and furious. For some reason, I began to laugh. I laughed and I laughed, even as, inside, I ached for him, burned with incompletion. I could not stop. I stuffed the covers into my mouth, but the silent shaking went on and on.
    “By God, come on, Maude,” Peter said between clenched teeth, and got out of bed and jerked me after him, and caught up the Princeton blanket and pulled both of us into the tiny, freezing bathroom off the bedroom.
    “What?” I whispered, doubled over with laughter. “What are you doing, you damned fool?”
    He threw the blanket into the stained old claw foot bathtub and half pushed me in on top of it.
    “I’m fucking my wife,” he muttered. “I started it and by God I’m going to finish it and Mother can go kiss a quahog if she doesn’t like it. This sonofabitch is bolted to the floor; if she can hear it thumping and squeaking she’s a goddamn witch. Lie down, Maude.”
    I did. My head hung over one end of the bathtub and my feet over the other, and my stomach heaved with silent laughter. I looked at my tall thin naked husband, standing over me. He was shivering with cold and rage and his hair hung down in his slitted eyes, and he was fully and powerfully erect. I loved him absolutely. The laughter threatened to burst from my lips and sweep down the stairs and drown my mother-in-law.
    “She is a witch,” I gasped. “I could have told you that. She’s turned me into a pig and you into a whooping crane with a hard-on.”
    And so it was that we made love for the first time in Retreat, Peter and I: laughing and wallowing in a cold porcelain bathtub on a black-and-orange Princeton University blanket, with a washcloth in my mouth to
    stop my cries and the sound of Peter’s mother’s voice over his laughter as he came: “Peter? Are you