Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver Read Free Book Online Page A

beach rocks. He tells her, “Sex will get you through times with no money better than money will get you through times with no sex.”
    “The thing I really missed was your jokes.”
    “I missed your cognitive skills,” he says. “And your syntax. Honestly, that’s all. Not your body. I despise your body.” He drawls on purpose, sounding more southern than he needs to, though he can’t match the hard-soft angular music of her Kentucky hills.
    “Well, that’s sure a load off my mind,” she says, laughing, shuddering her dark hair off her shoulders without self-consciousness. She’s the first woman he’s ever known who doesn’t give a damn how she looks, or is completely happy with the way she looks, which amounts to the same thing. Usually women are aware of complex formulas regarding how long the legs should be in relation to the waist in relation to the eyelashes—a mathematics indecipherable to men but strangely crucial to women. Taylor apparently never took the class. He wishes he could have been there when she was born, to watch the whole process of Taylor. He lies across the bed with his head in her lap, but when he realizes she’s looking at his profile, turns his face away. Although he rarely sees it himself, he knows his profile is unusual and even startles people: there’s no indentation at all between his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Taylor says helooks like an Egyptian Pharaoh, which is exactly what she would say, with no apologies for never having seen any actual Egyptian art. Taylor behaves as if what she believes, and what she is, should be enough for anyone.
    She’s not the first woman on earth to insist on his good looks; that’s not why he is in love with her. Jax has broad shoulders and hands that apparently suggest possibilities. He’s proud that he can reach an octave and a half on a piano like Franz Liszt; his one gift is largeness. When his band performs, women tend to give him articles of their clothing with telephone numbers inked on the elastic.
    “You think she’s asleep?”
    Taylor shakes her head. “Not yet. She’s having trouble relaxing. I learned a lot about her breathing on this trip.”
    “You’re picking up certain character traits from your friend Lou Ann.”
    Lou Ann Ruiz, who is like a second mother to Turtle, tends toward an obsession with health and safety. But to her credit, Jax allows, Lou Ann is making bold changes in her life: she recently got a job at an exercise salon called Fat Chance and now wears Lycra outfits in color combinations that seem dangerous, like the poisonous frogs that inhabit the Amazon.
    “Is now a good time to tell you about the phone calls?”
    “What phone calls?” Taylor asks, through a heartfelt yawn.
    “The approximately four thousand calls that have come in since you achieved national prominence on Monday.”
    “Oh, right.”
    “You think I’m kidding.” Jax gets out of bed and rifles through the mess of music and lyrics on his desk. Sometimes, in his nightmares, everything on this desk sings at once. He comes back with a legal pad and his hornrimmed glasses, and reads.
    “Lou Ann: wants to know if you took Dramamine for Turtle because she threw up that time in the car. Lou Ann again: to tell you never mind, it was her son that threw up in the car.”
    “Lou Ann often called me before I was famous.” Taylor presses her mouth against her kneecap. Sometimes when she’s concentrating on something else she seems to be kissing her own knees, or the backs of her hands. Jax has tried it out in private, to see how it feels to love oneself unconsciously.
    “Okay,” he says, “I’m skipping all the Lou Anns.” He runs his finger down the page. “Charla Rand from the Phoenix Gazette . Marsh Levin from the Arizona Daily Star . Larry Rice, photographer from the Star . Helga Carter from the Fresno Bee .”
    “The what? I don’t believe this. What do they want?”
    “The story of the year. A suspense-movie plot with