I could hear sheets stirring as I neared the door of her bedroom. My knees grew weak as I turned the knob. The sheets continued to rustle followed by occasional gasps for breath, as though she were dreaming that she was running in some race. I feared waking her, lest she was just steps away from victory. I strained to make out two acrobatic forms. One was obviously my mother, arching her back; her legs, bent and open, gave strange little jerks, as did her hips. The other seemed to be feeding gluttonously on her stomach. As it descended lower, my mother gave little cries of pain and struck his back a few times with her heel.

“Eat me …” I was startled to hear Ursula’s voice and not my mother’s.

I figured out that it must be Harry, who began to make slopping noises like when a dog laps water; his jaws and lips were without any doubt up to some strange work.

I covered my mouth, thinking I’d vomit or faint. I could tell from Ursula’s groaning that he was hurting her. She took hold of his great bald head and tried to pull it back up. He refused. She stifled the sounds of her pain by biting a pillow. At Sharon Minsky’s sister’s daughter’s wedding, the priest had proclaimed that man and woman will become one flesh. I hadn’t understood what exactly that meant, though I had imagined the newly-weds united, not so much as a man and wife shish kebab but as a rosary, with pink and white beads touching each other as our own palms do in prayer. Were couples forced to consume each other’s flesh? Or somehow share each other’s meat?

“No, no, no … ” protested Ursula …

Her voice had grown deathly weak, very much as though she had lost mouthfuls of flesh and blood; yet Harry continued to gnaw mercilessly at her thighs. The sounds he made were sickening me. How could anyone watch unmoved. I ran to the refrigerator, desperately sought my leftover steak that I finally found on the second to bottom shelf in the right Tupperware behind the leftover carrots and leeks, and rushed back to the bedroom.

Harry was now on top of Ursula, crushing her. He panted like a wild beast as he tried breast-feeding from both her breasts at one time. He squeezed them together with both hands like a bouquet and sucked. He was starving. Ursula threw her head from side to side in pain.

“Now!” Harry ordered her, shaking her repeatedly with his whole body to get her to react.

I switched on my mother’s bedside lamp and bravely offered my cold meat to Harry, holding the opened Tupperware container as close as I could to his mouth.

Harry and Ursula stopped moving. Ursula’s neck and breasts had red specks all over them. No wonder she was in pain, I thought. Harry’s back had long scratches down it, some of which were bleeding. I started. Was Ursula defending herself or feeding on him, too? Well, they can both share my steak.