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Show Moon -122 know why I love you?" Mother humming as she hooked the curtains onto the wooden frame. Caleb and Lee looking up at me with those hungry eyes, and my cousin Tommy reaching out his hand to lift me into a tree. These people grab my elbow and tug me back, when what I need to do is get on with the story, which is not really a story about me, but about a person named Joy. I hope that the "I" and the "Joy" will soon become one voice. Then, too, there's the voice of Anne, and the voice of speaking to the ghost of Anne in the name of Mother. I seem to be divided up into a kind of rescue crew going into a ruined house. Each worker has her own flashlight, her dark rooms to explore with random beams of light. Someday soon, I hope the light will pool together in one place, on the one person who needs to be found: the simple and entire First Person. Mark was a determined man in a hurry. He called Joy for dinner every night. He brought flowers. He said, "You're the woman who must be my wife." He said this with the air of a man with superior knowledge. "You need me," he said, his large hand tight around her wrist. "I can help you know yourself." This angered Joy in a way she couldn't quite grasp, but it finally wore her down, for she was exhausted trying to plan a separate future in the face of his persistence-which surely indicated great love she ought to appreciate. Finally she agreed to become engaged. As if to spur herself into enthusiasm, she wrote her family with the news. Her parents telephoned. There was an edge of anger to James' hearty congratulations. Her mother said with a great sigh, "Thank God." Caleb and Lee each came on the line for a few moments, but they sounded shy and unsure of what to say. Caleb said, "I miss you," and Joy wanted to weep. |