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Show Motherlunge a novel 107 she didn't, for example, sign a lease on a luxury condo, get addicted to video poker, or invest in a home-based business vending Ellyxyr, The Seaweed Secret To More Passionate Living. "This arrangement still leaves a few things on the table," Pavia had pointed out to Walter and me. "Stuff we still won't be able to prevent. Sexual indiscretions, for example." "Yeah," I said, "And the composition of overlong poems channeled from Claus von Bulow's comatose ex." "Sunny?" Pavia had asked. "Sunny." "The thing is," Walter had said, feigning pragmatism. "It's safer. You can make decisions about her, if you need to." He meant that when Dorothy got too far out there-a dot in the sky, disappearing like a kite snapped free from the line, or when she was free-falling back down, silent as Skylab-Pavia could get her. Inpatient at Caldo Springs Center for Mental Health, pronto. Which was where Dorothy was anyway, most of that late winter and early spring. She was receiving treatment to which, apparently, her brain's receptors were not receptive. Rather, resistant. And when she had finally been released, it was to Pavia's oversight, meaning she (Dorothy) went home alone. Walter saw her twice a week, and Pavia called her every Sunday, and sometimes I got on the phone, too. Things were back to usual, more or less. "I should start nesting," my sister announced one day in the grocery store, in the household items aisle. She had finally started to read the books about pregnancy that I'd |