The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

sometimes she put on Crowded House at night as she fell asleep, because Crowded House wasn’tthe type of band he would think was okay to listen to. They were too old and sweet, too nerdy. But the harmonies and the organ,the chimes of the guitars, created the same warm pooling feeling in her chest that she felt listening to Reckoning or in Tedquarters or at the sleepover at Abby’s: the pleasurable sadness, like the lush sadness of autumn leaves, the sense in autumn that everything was full with loss and longing, with memories so beautiful that they couldn’t be spoken before they were washed away with winter’s thaw, and the spring would begin unaware of all that had been lost. These sentiments were too embarrassing to be put into words, too melty and mushy to be pounded into shape. She probably couldn’t tell anyone about them. They could only travel through chord progressions, vibrations through hollow chambers, compressed air through pipes. They were secrets and needed to be enjoyed in secret, like the nighttime car trips she used to take with Mom. The best and realest parts of life were unspoken, or unable to be spoken, the things that no one would tell you about—you had to teach yourself the language alone, and it had no words. You had to be in the right place at the right time, and paying attention. You had to be with the right people in the right doorway.

Crowded House had a new song called “Fall at Your Feet,” and to Lauren it naturally paired with Billy Bragg’s song “Trust,”because both songs had lines about a man being inside a woman. Weirdly, in the Billy Bragg song, the singer—a man—was singingfrom the perspective of the woman, and on top of that, she was pregnant. “He’s already been inside me,” Billy Bragg sang.So much of the character of his voice was located in the damp thrusting of his lips. The voice, the words, and Billy Bragg’sadenoids pressed against her wet and close, a squeaking-squishing that Lauren found almost unbearable and that she kept rewindingand listening to, squirming, because it was so strange and obscene and she wanted to understand it.

“I feel like I’m moving inside her,” the wimpy nice guy from Crowded House sang in “Fall at Your Feet.” She squirmed at this,too. He feels like it? Or was he doing it? That nerdy little noodle of a guy? What would it feel like? How would he know?

She thought about Mr. Smith. She felt his hand on her back from the afternoon. She’d been trying not to think about it. Sheput her hand between her legs so it could all overcome her and she could go to sleep. She thought about what he was like whenhe was alone, or alone with his girlfriend, if he had one—Paula had asked him if he did, and he’d shaken his head vehementlyand said “No, no,” in a manner that left ambiguous whether he was denying having a girlfriend or denying Paula’s right to ask the question,and certainly left no space for clarification. During the school day, he could use up all his jokes and puns and sarcasm,alternate them as offense and defense as he dealt with all those dumb kids like Rajiv and Andy Figueroa, and by the time hecame home he would be drained of anything that wasn’t serious and compassionate and ardent. That was a word Lauren had learned from him, ardent: overcome with admiration, loyalty, and passion for the one you love. Stunned by her. When he was alone and only one other person in the world was looking—a person that hadn’t been foisted on him but the one he wanted—that’s when you could see who he really was.

 

“Where’s Jamie Lee?” PJ asked as he and Sean piled into the back of the dragon wagon. Mirela’s car seat was empty and Laurenwas in the front passenger seat. Sean and PJ’s latest nickname for Mirela was Jamie Lee, after the actress who screamed throughthe old horror movies they taped off HBO.

“Where’s who?” Mom asked.

“Jamie Lee is PJ’s special name for his binky,” Sean said. “Where’s your binky, PJ?”

“Oh, I remember, I left it up your butt,” PJ replied as they punched each other in the arms, laughing at how much it hurt. Throwing their heads back, thrilled withthe pain.

Mom turned up the car radio over PJ and Sean chanting, “Kill! Kill! Kill!”, which was a key line from a Jamie Lee movie calledProm Night. A woman on a call-in show was talking through her nose, her voice echoing behind her on her own radio that she’d forgottento turn down. “I’m not pro-abortion, I’m pro-life,” the woman was saying. “I think abortion is wrong. I want to be clear aboutthat. But what is also wrong is these out-of-towners coming in here telling us what to—”

Mom turned off the radio.

Lauren flipped it on again.

“—when this is about overwhelming our local police, overrunning our local court system, spending taxpayers’ money to—”

“Even the people on your side aren’t on your side,” Lauren said.

“Don’t be smart,” Mom said. “It’s not just out-of-towners who will be participating in the protests. Is Father Steve an out-of-towner?”

“Yes, he is!” Lauren said. “He just came to our church a couple months ago, and you act like you’ve been best friends forever.”

“Well, wherever they’re from—good people can disagree. I want to listen to all sides.”

“That’s why Mom turned off the radio!” PJ said from the back seat. “So she could listen to all sides!”

“The mayor invited them, after all,” Mom said. “It’s not a crazy fringe thing.”

“A federal judge has ruled we have to keep a minimum of one hundred and fifty feet from the clinic doors,” a voice on theradio said. “But it is our constitutional right under the First Amendment to provide sidewalk counseling to—”

“This is not primarily a free-speech issue,” another voice interrupted.

“Is that what you do? Sidewalk counseling?” Lauren asked.

“Okay, well, that—that is an out-of-towner thing,” Mom said. “They try to talk the