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Show -325 "No hard feelings," I said, . Morgan fell asleep clutching my hand and her red bandanna. Her face was tear-stained; the delicious folds at the corners of her eyes were a little swollen, pink with the effort of crying for Carlo. Or for me, or for life. Her legs were stretched straight out, knees touching each other; her breasts under a thin dark-brown pullover pointed up and a little outward; one barely brushed my arm. It's a crazy life, I thought, but still it has to be lived. And I decided that Adam's was not the worst example in the world. His ridiculous topsy-turvy life had, I could see it now that the shouting was over, a certain odd dignity. He had been a lousy sculptor, with the single possible exception of that disturbing self-portrait that Carlo had hammered back down to raw stone, but what I had mistaken for dumb stubbornness and a determination to be unhappy I began this afternoon to suspect might have been strength of character. Excessive pride is another name for it. My dad had wanted to be Right; he had used all his wit and energy in an effort to be Good; he'd poured himself into an inside-out Quakerish try at perfection. He'd insisted on trying to be all the marvelous things rolled into one: a vegetarian, an artist, a family man, a good father and good husband. It was a peculiarly American attempt, even more, a particularly Oregonian attempt at virtue. My native |
