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Show -12- She was alarmed to find she could make him angry, for she knew what anger would bring. She found herself standing in the doorway to the dining room, and she realized it had become a little habit with her, to pause just a moment in the late afternoon, reviewing the things he would need. She did not have to open the drawers, of course; she need only stand in the doorway, arms folded, counting the supplies and reminding herself where she had put each item: alcohol and talcum for massage, so th± he would not get bedsores, adhesive tape, extra blankets, even the diapers left from her neighbor's dead mother. Except for the sphygmomanometer, which she insisted he use nearly every day, everything he would need was ready. She could see him, lying flat and heavy on the pillow, his chest moving with a regularity so deliberate that it grew oppressive; she could see his thick sallow hands unmoving by his sides, the limp flowers by the bed, a smeared glass of water. And then: herself, alone irrevocably alone. "Forever," he had said. How he betrayed her! * * * * * At the back of one of the drawers in the dining room sideboard, tucked inside a stiffly starched napkin, lies the photograph of his father, the one he had shown her years before. Now she takes it out, carries it upstairs, and tapes it up beside the bathroom mirror. In the morning, still in her nightgown, she stands behind him as he shaves, and watches as he compares the heavy jowls, the fleshy skin, the puffy eyes. |