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Show Moon - 73 are they real?" I would have to say, "Not exactly." Always, it comes back to the great problem of perspective. The technically correct foreshortened presentation, for example, makes a thing look real but is much bigger than it actually is. It simply isn't possible to be both believable and real. And, remember, I am trying to look at this from all three persons, which allows for certain liberties. Joy's mother lost the feeling in her hands for several weeks. They went numb and she dropped things, was unsafe around hot water and stoves. This meant that Joy had to wash all the dishes and do most of the cooking. James drove Anne into the city to see doctors. Her faith, she told Joy, was never very strong. The doctors told her, finally, that she was having a "conversion reaction." Joy wondered if this had something to do with God. She wondered if the numbness had to do with her always feeling cold, but her mother only smiled indulgently when she put her theories to her. Her mother's hands looked the same as ever to Joy. They had never seemed to belong with her quiet smiling face, but were white and nervous, always in motion, like pale moths pressing against glass. Joy wondered what it would be like to feel nothing with one's hands. Maybe it would be like a small death, and maybe it was a wonderful thing. At night sometimes she pulled a scarf tight around her throat, trying to feel what death would be like. And sometimes she slept on the floor rolled in blankets, feeling somehow closer to God. Grandpad Tad died while they were still at the cottage. The funeral home on Long Island had plastic plants, a fact Joy discovered because she could not help herself, she always touched plants. Grandpa Tad was in an open casket, and |