Wild Things by Karin Kallmaker Read Free Book Online

years.
     
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    "What starts a revolution?" I glanced at my students, noticing that I had, as usual, the attention of about two-thirds of the class. "Come on, it was your reading assignment. I'll make it easier. What started the French Revolution?"
    Guesses ranged from a nobleman running down a street urchin with his carriage (Victor Hugo, apocrypha), to a new tax (factual), to a particularly spectacular and wasteful party thrown by the aristocracy (probable). Starvation, poverty, disease, imperialism, exploitation, child labor, too many writing assignments, and general misery were also suggested. Then the more involved students, of which thankfully there were a half-dozen, began to lump causes together.
    "It's not just one thing," said the only student in class who showed flashes of passion for the subject. "It's a lot of little things until finally one more — even something silly — is just too much to bear."
    Their assignment for Monday, met with groans, was to create a table to compare and contrast the causes of the American and French Revolutions. It was only noon, but I resolutely left my office and got on the El, armed with the Tribune apartments-to-rent section.
    What starts a revolution? What prompted Eleanor, married five years to Louis of Prance, to make her first appeal for divorce on the basis of consanguinity? Louis had been a second son and had trained for the church. Had she finally realized she had married a monk, not a king? Had she become utterly bored with the dullness of Louis's court, finding it empty of direction and intellectual pursuits? It mattered very little because the same abbes who found her not too closely related to Louis for marriage found so again. Eleanor stayed married to Louis, at least for a while longer.
    A revolution — even a personal one — does begin from a lot of little things. For me those little things were deeply buried memories surfacing again. Not just Renee Callahan, but what life had been like before Meg left home.
    As the El clacked towards North Avenue, I thought about what it would be like to see Meg every day and spend my evenings trying to make peace between her and our parents. It had always been my role and I didn't want it again. Meg and I got along better on our own. Meg's coming home, even for a few months, seemed like a sign to me. It was time to conquer some territory of my own.
    I had spent the previous evening looking at my bankbook and playing with a budget. Today I studied my bankbook again until the El stop near Lincoln Park. I had paid off my student loans ahead of schedule by applying all of my previous royalties to the balance. My paycheck over the last few years had helped with household expenses and had finally paid off my parents' mortgage. Now I was free of debt, had an advance for Eleanor and a substantially increased paycheck because I was tenured. The only large sums of money I spent were on travel, and I needn't go to Europe again next summer. There was no economic reason to live at home. I thought about where my relationship with Eric might lead, but decided that was irrelevant to today. I had to think about now, not what might be. That left the larger reason — honoring the traditions of my parents and our church.
    I told myself that if Joan of Arc had lived to be thirty-four, she wouldn't have lived at home either. Of course I was no saint. Despite my intentions to relegate Renee to the back of my mind, I had dreamed about her last night and woke up in a sweat. Say that you want me, I could hear her whispering. The memories of my anguish made my head throb. I had thought I was over it. I wanted to be over it and over her. But when I finally slept again, I dreamed once more, but this time only of sex. Sex and Renee, and my body so tightly tuned to her that she played me in her own symphony.
    I had awakened just after daybreak in a different kind of sweat and found myself reaching for James's too-tempting apartments-for-rent listings.