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Show Moon -176 The train of thought was not a good one. There had to be a way to keep on thinking well of herself, which would have to be a way not provided for in the patterns of our language. Was this even possible? Could a person exist outside of language? Alice had driven her to the airport, tight-lipped, and hurried, dropped her off at the curb. Anne had thought about calling Joy who lived practically right here, but Joy was someone who visited her. Did Joy know how much her mother craved approval from her? Did she know how she longed to bask in that strength of hers like the heat from an open oven? Joy was still pushing away the milk, the hands that would comfort her. She was too impatient, too quick to take offense, too easily moved to dart out the doorway saying, "Never mind, it doesn't matter." She was too hot with her hungers, too afraid someone would put her out-douse her like a campfire. Or put her out like a kitten at night, like a doormat on a stoop, like being taken advantage of. And so her daughter had picked herself up by the scruff, gone away, and never come back except for those hurried visits to the cottage or the house in Washington where they lived now. She had her reasons, which Anne was content to know only vaguely. She'd learned to listen to people through a fine hissing of rain that filtered what she heard, and to see them through a kind of aura, a crown of light that let her see people in some essential way, overlooking that which could involve a word tike "black." Now she'd fallen in the corridors of Idlewild, people swirling around her like eddies of water. No, it was called something else now. Kennedy had been shot, that was why. She let a man help her up, stood swaying a little as a nice |