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Show Moon -190 really looked from day to day. She pointed to the picture and asked, "How did my father die?" Gloria looked at Anne warily as if questioning the soundness of her mind. It was possible that Gloria hadn't heard Esther's story about the closet, in which case her question would seem odd. Anne found it hard to believe that Gloria, who seemed to know everything, hadn't heard, but she realized suddenly that for all her volubility and canny perception, Gloria shied away from the hard truth in the end. Was this why her son Tommy was bent on self-destruction, and why she was talking Michael to death even as she loved him like a doting bride? Gloria flipped the page in the album and pointed to a faded square on the black page where a photo had evidently been removed. "This was a picture of David that Esther snapped once when he wasn't looking. I threw it out a long time ago. Would you like to know what's become of David?" She closed the album. "No, of course you wouldn't." You wanted very much to know what had become of David, I'm sure of that, but not from her, and you didn't want to know about Grandad, even though you'd asked. Like the rest of us, you used words to disguise what you wanted, praying all the while that someone would catch the meaning that flowed like an underground spring. You wanted to see the house you'd lived in as a child, for example, but didn't want to ask. You kept on making jokes when you wanted just one person to pause and look at you and hold you close and say, "You're here, thank God." |