Michael Malone - Weebly

treasure, children's books all bearing a card saying
POLLY'S LIBERRY. PLEASE RETURN IN A
WEEK —locked in there, she pulled to her window a
wicker chair (also painted blue, as were the walls, the
bed, and the dresser, and as would have been the floor
and ceiling as well had her father not said, "Enough's
enough, I'm seasick"). Just outside the window was
Polly's maple tree, the Xanadu of her hermitage.
Climbing through the window onto the roof, onto the
big branch, among leaves in her favorite escape, she sat
to think it over. Sex.
It was a funny thing, overrunning people's lives,
driving them crazy, destroying them—like Anna
Karenina or Mrs. Abernathy or The Scarlet Letter or
the poor Great Gatsby. Not her, Polly determined.
Passion was not going to ruin her mind, not going to
make her act like an idiot, not make her slide about on
a sweaty floor, tangled up in somebody else's arms and
legs. Not make her put goop on her eyes as Joy
Strummer now spent hours doing. She would not be
Madame Bovary, but Madame Curie, dedicated to
science (or something), her faculties intact, her limbs