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Show 1^2 I had hit upon it, his distraction. His eyes were suddenly stuck on my favorite photograph, of him and his sailboat, and I could tell that he had nearly forgotten about me. "Going alone?" I asked. He wouldn't answer. The silence was unbearable. "Oh Jesus," I said, "sailing to Haiti," giving away more of my overheard news. "The sun is really bright down there, isn't it?" I couldn't help it. Not only would I miss him, and be jealous of whoever he was taking, I would be jealous of all that incredibly healthy sun. "Bright, but hot," he said. I couldn't help myself. "I would love it," I said. We were lost to each other, in our own worlds; his without a cloud and mine miserably overcast. We were quiet. Dublonsky fumbled, yes fumbled, for a cigarette. He knew he was playing his professional role poorly. Sometimes I imagine that he is the patient and I am the doctor, the way he can become flustered, the way he can be so easily manipulated. "Adolescence," he said after a long and awkward minute, "is always difficult." Even in the winter, when blue jeans and long-sleeved high-collared blouses hid my blistered skin from the eyes of others, made me appear to those who didn't know me like any other pretty teen-age girl in casual dress, my dreadful body was never far from my mind. |
