and Saul meet when she is finishing law school and he is working as a research assistant for a Judaism professor. Saul has abandoned drugs to devote himself to a life of mystical scholarship. He now knows that LSD was a false doorway, a simulation of an experience accessible only after years of devoted study. He looks upon his acid insights as shadowy impostors, clay pigeons that will explode at the first touch of true transcendence. Though he knows he may never share the experience of the ancient mystics, Saul has decided to spend the rest of his life trying. Miriam embodies the intellectual discipline Saul senses he will need to reach his goal. Her unconventional mannerisms seem charming indicators of her rich mental life. He is attracted by her permanent slouch, her head always slightly craned forward as if examining a book’s fine print. He likes the solidity of her body, neither fat nor thin, which she carries with a charming lack of self-awareness. As their acquaintance deepens, the hidden workings of Miriam’s mind beckon to Saul like a seven-veiled Salome.
Their early courtship consists of shared dinners in the campus cafeteria followed by neighboring seats at lectures with titles like “God and the Plague: Religious Revivalism in the Middle Ages,” and “Unmaking Your Mind: Discerning Truth From Falsehood in the Midst of Vietnam.” Saul thrills to Miriam’s intellectual voracity, attends the lectures solely to observe her assiduity as she drinks in the words. Weeks later, she can alternately defend or destroy the lecturer’s arguments point by point without having taken any notes.
Until law school, Miriam’s entire academic career is single-sexed, boys an elective she bypasses. Though she has been on a few abortive dates, Saul is the first beau willing to indulge her interests, the first not to suggest popcorn and a formulaic comedy followed by an invitation to his apartment. Saul’s experiences with the greater portion of the female student body at his alma mater have taught him to be a good listener. With Miriam he is patient, luring her with his constancy.
Miriam is grateful for the attention. Aware that her unique temperament might severely limit her relationship options, she had been willing to take on someone far more socially stunted than Saul. Though not religious, Miriam takes self-congratulatory pride in dating a Jew, on occasion even accompanying Saul to synagogue for the opportunity to analyze group religious ritual.
Into their third week of dating, Miriam scrutinizes the library’s dog-eared Joy of Sex and Hite Report from the relative privacy of her cubicle. Sex, like ironing or changing a flat tire, is an essential life skill to be mastered. She is intrigued by a firsthand account of an orgasm as a giant body wave.
And so, after a month of twice-weekly dinner/lecture dates, Miriam and Saul make love. It is the longest Saul has waited to bed a woman he is wooing. While Miriam harbors unspoken reservations (she still prefers to wash her underwear twice and is well versed in the number of microorganisms exchanged during a kiss), she is intrigued by Saul’s vast sexual experience and knows he represents her best chance at a good lay. Miriam is glad they go to his apartment. While somewhat willing to yield up her body, she is less certain about her sheets and towels.
Though Saul wants to undress his new lover himself, Miriam insists upon removing her own clothes, standing with her back to Saul to fold blouse and slacks, placing each neatly on a chair before proceeding. Saul marvels at Miriam’s softness, at the woman inside the scholar. He loves her small breasts and wide hips, takes to calling her his hidden pear, a pet name that makes Miriam blush but which she secretly enjoys.
Miriam is intrigued by the spareness of Saul’s body. She is grateful for the opportunity to examine his angles, his long limbs and fingers, this her first object lesson in male anatomy. Miriam’s shyness at her own nakedness momentarily disappears with the novelty of his. She is more interested in Saul’s scrotum than his penis, fascinated by the way its skin undulates at her slightest touch, how it shrinks with the cold and Saul’s increasing arousal, relaxing into a loose purse after making love, when it has soaked up the warmth of the sheets and their bodies.
The two bond over their mutual lack of family ties: Saul from his disownment, Miriam from the car accident that orphaned her as a college junior. Both want children. Miriam has inherited her parents’ idea of procreative legitimacy, wants to compensate for her only-childdom. She sees in Saul the househusband who will enable her parental ambitions without disabling her autonomy. In Miriam, Saul sees the means to a book-lined study and a lifestyle conducive to mystical advancement. They are both absolutely certain these things equal love.
When Eliza knocks on her brother’s door Saturday morning, he is trying to abstract the reflection of his chest in the mirror. If he can pretend that his chest belongs to a stranger, he may be able to judge it objectively rather than through ugly-colored glasses. His sister’s knock sparks a comprehensive blush, the pale skin from forehead to stomach turning shades of sunburn.
Aaron hesitates before opening the door. To shirt or not to shirt? He and Eliza used to see each other topless all the time. That was before being six years apart meant anything, when their small, pale chests were indistinguishable in the tree-strewn sunlight of the backyard. It was before Aaron had learned that a small, pale chest can be a liability, that six years apart is an expanding universe with a brother at one end and a sister at the other.
But Aaron wants to play Shirts against Skins without chickening out if he’s picked for the wrong team. He wants to feel comfortable in just his bathing trunks. He decides he’d better answer the door the way he is.
Shirtless, Aaron looks even more breakable than usual, as if caught in an act better accomplished from within a cocoon. A thin vein descends the left side of his neck and across the skin of his upper chest like a crack in a windowpane. Eliza tries not to act surprised at the sight of it. Though she hasn’t given Aaron’s chest much thought, she assumed it still looked the same as the last time she saw it, which, now that she thinks about it, was a really long time ago. Since then, her brother’s nipples have grown. There are curly black hairs. The hairs are sparse and thin, as if sapped by their struggle to grow so dark from such pale skin.
Aaron’s chest hairs call to mind other body hairs, hairs that make Eliza decidedly uncomfortable. She shifts her focus to her brother’s face. When she looks up, however, she realizes that Aaron has been watching her watching his chest. She looks down again, this time at his feet, which she notices are also hairy.
“Um, I was wondering if you could drive me somewhere,” Eliza says to the tuft below the first knuckle of her brother’s leftmost toe.
Years and years before hairs and spelling bees, Aaron drives Eliza places all the time. Their two modes of transport are the living-room couch and the fallen-down tree in the backyard, one for when it’s raining and the other for when it’s not. While both agree that the log is better for making their destinations feel more authentic, Eliza has a special fondness for the couch, where she can sit beside and not behind her brother, taking head on the dangers that come their way. And there are always dangers. In addition to being navigator Eliza is official spotter of the alien monsters and sea squids and pumas with which they regularly engage in furious and bloody battle. Eliza likes letting her brother lead the attacks. Aaron knows all the secret moves of the ninja and Jedi and has even taught her a few. Eliza takes for granted her brother’s availability for these and other games, has no cause to question his lack of additional playmates, ones perhaps a little closer to him in age. It is Aaron to whom Eliza turns after a bad dream has scared her awake, the warmth of his bed assurance that she will be protected should her night crawlers return.
Eliza’s first day of kindergarten, Aaron pilots her through the doors of McKinley Elementary with sixth-grade flair. He points out office, cafeteria, and library, describes a secret short-cut to the playground swings, and explains the trick to evading as long as possible the teacher’s end-of-recess whistle. Eliza starts kindergarten assured that her six-years-older brother has vanquished all school-born monsters, squids, or pumas. Aaron, who can take Eliza to Neptune or to the bottom of the
