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Show Motherlunge a novel 224 Walter told her that he had moved out. He said that Dorothy had problems. "I couldn't take it anymore," he told her. "I know that's shitty." "Standish," Judith warned her dog again, who had started growling. "Not necessarily, no. You have to save yourself first, right?" "I guess," Walter said. He gave a bitter little laugh, the kind you read about. "But it's not like I'm going back in to save anybody else." "Who could you save?" Judith asked. "Not Dorothy. Not the girls." "Why not the girls?" "They're girls. And almost teenagers." "Too late, then?" "For what?" She didn't wait for an answer, "You love them. You'll see them. That's enough." Walter could imagine her shutting a book, smoothing the dust jacket the way you pet a dog. "Yeah," Walter said. "But it doesn't feel like enough." He listened to Judith breathing into the receiver. Walter stepped forward and pressed his face into the screen door; he could smell the tang of aluminum and the cool air straining through it. The yellow moon shone on the patchy spider grass in his backyard, and^the crickets thrummed like the night's heartbeat. "I know," Judith said after a while. "I know it. Nothing feels like enough." Nothing is enough. Walter heard her words with a slow sense of recognition, like something peeling open. And this hurt so much, so directly, that he could hardly breathe. He let his body lean deeper into the screen; the little wires crossed against the flesh of his cheek, digging in. He closed his eyes. And when he closed his eyes two hot tears came |
