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Show Moon -158 the black tatters like pompoms. "What's going on here? What haven't you been telling me all these years?" Joy was looking at James with a certain set to her jaw. Her daughter was willing this man to answer to the words in her eyes, something she herself had not been able to get him to do in over twenty years of marriage. James had gone pale, but already he was marshalling the easy nonchalance, the glaze that made his eyes as impersonal as a custom clerk's. Anne saw that Joy had been seduced into diving into this man who held himself hidden like a treasure. Has she begun to free herself? Anne wondered. If not, she'll go under for good. She'll drown. "Never mind!" she shouted at her husband. "I can see it. You've been afraid to tell me. You've told everyone else, and Everyone Else is afraid to go against your wishes, even though you've been dead wrong." She looked at each of them one by one, the tattered black strips held out like flags. "Am I right?" she said. She said it again: "Am I right?" Lee and Caleb fingered their absurd collar-length hair, looked at each other, and then sat carefully expressionless. Before too long, though, Lee began to smile a little from the corner of his beautiful mouth. This was because he appreciated his mother's gusto. It would never matter to Anne what faults Lee might have. That he could appreciate the right things about her was more important by far. "I can handle it," Anne said, finally laying the black lacy scraps in her lap. "Who do you think I am? Have I done so poorly? You don't know me well enough? You don't know I can handle it?" |