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Show Moon -187 Soon, too soon, Gloria swooped down on them as they pulled into the driveway. She'd gained more weight and her hair was piled untidily on her head. She grabbed Anne's bag away from her husband, took his elbow, helped him up the steps to the front door, leaving Anne to struggle up alone. "You look terrible," she said to Anne, when she finally entered the house. Michael said he needed a nap. Anne said, "Me too." They walked together into the back hallway, touched hands briefly. Anne lay awake on the narrow guest bed and thought that now Michael loved her in a better way than David had, the way he'd touched her hair and then touched nothing else. Eyes like black olives, but green in the sunlight. Lee's eyes. How she missed her youngest son! A boy isn't someone you can keep. You have to let a boy go free. You can't lean out of a window to this son who is passing by only once and call out like a woman in a burning house, "Help me." To whom, then, could she call? She wasn't sure she was strong enough simply to not need help at all. Nor did she think she'd ever be strong enough to say to Lee, "Leave us. Get on with your life." He'd look up at her slowly, wave his hands in X-s across himself as if to erase her words. But, if she could, she'd go on to say, "Your father and I have a lot to do. We need to be alone. I know he isn't being very nice to me, but that isn't your concern." She wished she could be that loving, that strong. But the fact was, she wanted Lee to stay around. At dinner, Gloria swept in from the kitchen flourishing a roast, her cheeks pink, her eyes bright with possession of her home. Michael was still asleep and she explained that he'd had some digestive trouble, that Tommy's decision to go back to Vietnam had taken its toll, and she wanted him not to be disturbed. |