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Show •97 under her iron determination to buy, to control, to own things, she was given to deep sadness. "Men," she said, more softly this time. She sat down in a chair, her hands clasped together and her forearms resting on her knees, a man's pose made incongruous by the black dress. "I never met one yet who was good for much of anything except putting" babies in us. Which my two husbands weren't very good for either. But when we're young, like Mary-Ellen, we think we'll surely die if we don't get the one we want." She looked at me. "And so we will, whether or not." In some ways she reminded me of my father. Two gloomy people without very much faith in the world. Maybelle set out to conquer it and Adam to be defeated by it, but those are the two faces of a very thin coin. Poor Adam! He talked largely about universal love and the brotherhood of man but I'm not sure he ever met anyone he liked. I include his sons. For my dad love was a civic obligation like voting, done without love. He was my father but his nature was to be a cold son of a bitch. I have as much natural affection as anyone's child, but there it was-the clear truth. Or so I thought when I was twenty-three. The coffee arrived and Maybelle poured me a cup. "Keep him here till he's sober enough not to act like a jackass with my company." She leaned over and whispered something more which I couldn't hear, then she went out into the |
