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Show Moon - 8 him food when she thought Ruth wouldn't notice. Once, when she'd laid down a cup of broth on the table by his bed, he stopped her with his hand. His eyes were a faded blue and filled with an old pain. Now, she thought,.now, maybe he will speak and I will finally know him. This frightened her, for ever since the time with Michael she had hardened her heart against him. But all he said was, "You're a sweet girl." Then he slumped back on the pillow and turned his head to the window, which looked over the fan-shaped filligree of the elm tree. The sky was the leaden gray of an Illinois winter. Sometimes at night her father cried out. Only Esther dared to say, "For God's sake, get him to a doctor." Anne bent double in her bed and covered her ears. She grew ambitious at her job and calculated how much money she would need to move out on her own. The art class was drawing from live nude models now: women with great round breasts and thick muscular legs, who looked at her with bold eyes and became as marvelous as trees. One evening David covered her hand with his to guide it on the paper. "Circles, circles. Make them round, exaggerate." One night he stopped her with his pine-smooth hand as she as leaving and said, "Wait for me." I know what it meant to her, those words, "Wait for me." It's like being in a game where someone yells "Freeze!" and you stop exactly where you are, hardly breathing, a little off-balance, a study in arrested motion. Chosen out of the many, a woman in the thrall of those words is poised on the death of her past life. She is ready to be told what to do. Anne waited until David had paid the model and sent her home, put away the art supplies, locked the classroom door. He cupped his hand over her arm and took her to a fashionable bar that overlooked the lake. He drank two |