Part 12 (1/2)

There comes a time, I've seen it happen, omen offer to decode the compared to a moment's shared revelation between old pals

The self is curved like space, I tried to say to ain and again to the sharpness of early excitations The sexual spasm, despite its hideous embarrassments and inconvenience, is the e enter the realm of the ecstatic The only way It's a far darker and irls chattering on about ”climaxes” and saline douches I wanted to tell her about Professor Popkov as io with his endless sportive variations (The Royal Gonad, I called hi off in his wispy way I intended to hold nothing back, not even my pitiable little encounter on the train I persuaded e whatever it is that has shut off Daze's happiness and made her into a crazy woman

But the as a disaster She would not be coaxed out of her dark bedroom; she lay flat on her back, her neck and shoulderaway one after the other ”Don't make ht her a lunch tray ”It takes too ton and wrote her a note ofthrough The joy of future generations On and on

A week later an envelope ca No note, only my little pocket diary with its cryptic entries Imy suitcase

Cousin Beverly's Theory

Ten years ago back in Saskatchewan I got h that I was a divorced woman, and, boy oh boy, that was a real crime back then, let me tell you, but worse was to come

Two short years after I kicked ot boinked by Leonard Mazurkieorked in the pickling plant (et the willies just thinking about it-but anyway it wasn't worth it, three o, there I was in the faary but I was too scared I the ay over there in Britain Boe when I was young And then I came home to Saskatchewan at the end of the war and the puff just went out of et married And my parents

And my sisters Everyone So about being nant no ot up to Ha!-and after one ht roll with Leonard Mazurkiewich, just one, I was up a stuet theht of it for oneI could still shut my eyes when I wanted and remember what I was like over there in Britain, how brave and full of pep I could be-this picture would light up foron a calendar or in a et it back, only I couldn't, not if I committed suicide, that's for sure

Aunt Daisy in Ottawa took me in I was one of the family She let me paint the storeroom in the attic pink and white and put up curtains-s up, and later, after Victoria was born, she said, ”Why don't you fix up the downstairs sunrooht and a half pounds at birth which is a skinny like the Flett side of the faood baby after she got through the colicky period She was born with this gorgeous soft yellow hair Now she's nine years old and what a doll! Thank God, I didn't put her out for adoption the way I planned I look after her, s and talk to her teacher, all that stuff, and et on Aunt Daisy's nerves I also take care of the housework here, do , and earn a little extra on the side typing insurance policies And lately I've been nursing Aunt Daisy who's suffering from nervous prostration

Myself, I don't think it's her change of life that's done it, or her allergies either I think it's the kids who've got her down Being ashe feels extra responsible, I can understand that, and then again some people are just natural worriers She used to worry about her daughter Alice who has this way of co-, does she ever! Then she worried for a time about Warren, as a nice kid but sort of a drip He had this real bad acne growing up and thatis, after a certain age, no one's really a drip any more, they're just kind of sweet or else ”individualistic” That's so man-his skin's a whole lot ietting his ree in music theory, first in his class, the Gold Medal Aunt Daisy was planning to go down for the graduation, she even bought herself a darling little pillbox hat, kelly green, but now that's out She can hardly lug herself out of bed, she just lays there in the dark and cries a whole lot and scrunches up the sheet in her hands, just wrings those sheets like she's wringing someone's neck I think it's Joan she's worried about now, little Joanie, the family princess, spoiled rotten, but s I don't knohat, whatever hippies get up to She says she's selling jewelry down there in New Mexico, but I bether mother's heart It kills eration, giving Victoria and me a home, and noant to save hers, only she's the only one who can do that A person can make herself sick and that saain, that's my personal theory

Warren's Theory

My mother's an educated woree in Liberal Arts froe for Women, class of 1926, but ask her where her diplo

Once I came across a cardboard box up in the storeroo up so Cousin Beverly could move in-and in the box was a thick pile of essays my mother wrote back when she was a student One of the essays was titled: ”Camillo Cavour: Statesman and Visionary” I couldn't believe that my mother had ever heard of Camillo Cavour (I certainly hadn't) or that she could write earnestly, even passionately, about an obscure period of nineteenth-century Italian history The ink after all these years was still clear and bright-those were her loops and dashes, her paragraphs and soaring conclusion Italians everywhere owe a huge debt to this hts of his countryo, y? She has never once, that any of us can remember, mentioned the subject of Italian independence to her family Or the nineteenth century Or her theory about Mediterranean city-states that's so clearly set out on the pages of her 1926 essay It never occurred to ht of the Italian peasant As aa book except maybe a love novel from the library or some pamphlet about how to breed better dahlias When I think aboutcheated, as if there's so joke locked in a box and buried underground And then I think: if I feel cheated, howfor the squandering of herself Soue My ed woence and ood luck, so that you would expect her to land somewhere near the e The least vibration could knock her off

Joan's Theory

My mother's been sick this year, a nervous breakdown everyone's calling it, and o ho she had thought it over and come to the conclusion I was the best person to cheer our lassful of medicine” Which is just like Alice; she's so people

I expected to find e It seems a man called Pinky Fulham has snatched away her newspaper colu about flower borders and seedlings, she now funnels into her hatred for Pinky Fulha else She's narrowed herself down to just this one little squint of injustice, and she beats her fists together and rehearses and rehearses her final scene with his he did and said, especially his concluding remark which was, apparently: ”I hope this won't affect our friendshi+p” He said it blithely, unfeelingly, the way people say such things, never even noticing how pierced to the heart my mother was, how crushed she was by such casual presuo She lies in her bed and goes over and over that final exchange, how she'd gone to his office at the Recorder and pleaded with him, and how he turned to her and pronounced that i: ”I hope this won't affect our friendshi+p” Myharshly, weeping, shaking her head back and forth in a frenzy, and begging

I'd only been ho all this, the pure and beautiful force of her hatred for Pinky Fulhaed There's a certainin her life has delivered her to such a pitch of intensity-ouldn't she love it, this exquisite wounding, the salt of perfect pain?

I held her hand and let her rage on

Jay Dudley's Theory

Of course I feel guilty about what's happened, how could I not, though I never actually led her on, as the saying goes (One h for h We had our moments, one in particular on that funny oldfashi+oned bed of hers with the padded headboard, like so out of a thirties movie Well, that was fine, more than fine, but I could see she had a e, not in a direct way Anyway, it seemed best to put a little distance between us I had no idea she'd take it so hard, that our ”friendshi+p”-and that's all it was- else to her

Labina Anthony Greene Dukes' Theory

When Ia strong husband He was straight-backed, his shi+rts tucked neatly into his slacks, his shoes glossy The man played tennis He swam for Indiana Varsity His face was tanned and finely shaped, and I used to adore watching the way histo someone speak That slackness of jaw heldinnocence He had a fastidious alh he had theh they were breakable

I was the breakable one Wo disappointh It'sdown on top of each other

After a while it gets to see

Cora-Mae Milltown's Theory

The poorOh my, I remember to this day the first time I laid eyes on her Eleven years old, her and her father driving up to the Vinegar Hill place in a taxi cab, and myself still up to my elbows in soap and water, not half ready for the two of them, I hadn't even started on the kitchen Where's your missus?-that's what I was about to say, but thank the Lord I buttoned one and passed away years before, the life went out of her giving birth to this washrag of a girl

It was Mr Goodwill hiot to know hi from Canada like he did, he wasn't used to coloreds, and he talked toelse too ”Cora-Mae,” he said, ”s, she'll be wanting a bit of company when I'm not here First her mamma died, you see, and then an old auntie who took care of her up in Canada, and now she's got no one in the world, onlyfor Mr Goodwill by the week instead of just Wednesdays the way the co about, they'd hired on Mr Goodwill and brought hiton A -irl Now this would be round about 1916, when Orren was overseas, his leg all shot to pieces, only I didn't know it then That very fall our own Lucile was six years old and starting school, and so I said yes, to Mr Goodwill, I'd co and see that the child was dressed nice and clean for school, and look to the house and the wash and all Two dollars a day he paidhouse, and that was good pay for colored help then

They treated me nice Mr Goodwill had a jokey way about hihnuts on the kitchen table ”What's this?” I'd say, and he'd say, ”Why, someone must've left those there for you, Cora-Mae, a little treat to go along with your coffee”

I'd start in on the dusting and the beds and I'd wax the furniture if it needed doing and after that I'd sitirl was home from school for sohnut too and a big glass of milk Once she turned and said to hnut with a fork, Cora-Mae?” ”I don't know,” I said back, and I didn't ”I never saw anyone eat a doughnut like that,” she said, all puzzled-like, and I couldn't guess herfresh or just curious the way ue and tried not to scold or fret too s she'd do I'd say to myself, reme worse in this world than being motherless

I still think that way in my mind My Lucile lives way out there in California now and has her own family and a beautiful home of her own, ranch style, and I haven't seen her for, oh, six or seven years She hardly ever sits herself down and writes a letter ho after her family, and I don't hold her to blame one bit about that Her mama's nofrom ay back when, and that's the way my mama is for me You can tell that story in five minutes flat You can blink and o away Yourand sos over and over, like watch out now, be careful, be good, now don't get yourself hurt

Well, that's why I took to Mr Goodwill's little girl the way I did

I'd be ironing one of her dresses or brushi+ng her hair and I'd think: I'ot I' to get How's she going to find her way?

How's she going to be happy in her life? I'd stare and stare into the future and all I could see was this dark place in front of her that was black as the blackest night