OCR Text |
Show Moon - 111 he's afraid I don't love him. I get afraid when he says he loves me. This doesn't leave a lot for him to work with, I know. Do I ask too much? Do you think, Mother, that he loves me enough to see this through? He is forever stroking my hair or reaching for my hand. He makes beautiful boxes for me out of fine hardwood, brings me flowers gathered from the field. He wants to be the father of our child. What's wrong with me that I can't appreciate? I want him to come out of all that sunlight. Reasonable or not, this is what I believe: If you love, really love, you have to get brave like Sir Gawain and risk crazy because that's how you know you're really sane. You take this journey to the dark side and come back full-bellied and round, not half of anything. Can Josh do this sort of love? Can anyone? Should I have insisted that you hear me? I think you would have said what Jane's mother said when she appeared to her in the night as a goddess of the moon, what you did say in so many words when you pushed me off to art school: "Flee temptation, my daughter." Temptation? Surely not. Except that now I keep thinking I need to find this man with gray hair at the temples, as if I am compelled to some strange completion. If I were to give myself to a man like James, would some ghost be appeased? Would it finally be over? James said Td been seducing him all along. How can this be true? Can I ever sort this out? When did I begin to do what he called seduction? On the grass under the stars? Under the dragon in the Chinese restaurant? The night I came home wearing lipstick the first time? When I twirled in front of him showing off a new ballet step or suffered him to hold me close at the foxtrot? Don't all daughters do these things with their fathers? But perhaps an unreal father can do whatever he likes-except that he was supposed to be the good |