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Show Moon -15 David came over unexpectedly one Saturday night. He hadn't called since her Monday art lesson. He was drunk. Even Anne, who could usually call the brightness in his eyes and the slurring of his words a passionate intensity, knew he was drunk. He lurched into the house, pushed past her to the kitchen and sat down at the table. He put his head down on the oilcloth, then reached his hand toward her, tilting up the palm like a cup, and said, "I need you. So much. Why can't you accept me?" Anne stood at the other end of the table. She sucked in her stomach to keep herself strong. "Go home," she said. "You're drunk." Saying this, she felt a power rise in her, a power she had only felt making the bold circles he had taught her with the charcoal. It was right for her to say this. She knew it, as she knew most everything, if only she could have believed in her knowing. She knew she loved him, and she knew she had to send him away. Ruth stood in the kitchen doorway. Anne hadn't heard her come. The strong lines in her mother's face had gone soft, the way they might look in a peaceful sleep. Her parted lips were pink, generous. Her eyes shone like the streets after a rain. The hand carrying the heraldic dustrag was clutched to her breast, the other was held out like a shepherd's. She looked like someone Anne had never seen before. Then she spoke, and it was in a sweet, almost pleading voice Anne had never heard her mother use: "You can't allow that poor man to go away when he's like that." She swept the rag toward David, who was still hunched over the table, his supplicating hand motionless, as if to move might break a spell. "But Mother..." |