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Show Moon -194 "Never mind," Gloria cuts in. "Why speak ill of the dead?" Why indeed? I don't think I should try to explain this to her, but the dead are not dead, and sometimes evil needs to be named. Gloria goes on to say, "He left the cottage to you and the boys, I hear." "Yes. Caleb and Lee are living there now. I'm going to see them next." I want to go on to say, "I'm going to see them because maybe this will help me. I've been to see everyone, hoping I can find out why I've been obsessed with suicide. I almost had sex with a man in New York who reminds me of the man I called Daddy. I have wiped off the New York soot and walked alongside the ranks of the incarcerated mentally ill, in case that was where I really belonged. I've pressed myself into Alice's perfect, lavender garden, and now I'm here." But I cannot, for Gloria has let me know she's like the rest of the family; she won't believe me. But perhaps it doesn't matter. Even if her stories are lies, like the craft of art is a lie, I love to hear them. Gloria tells me things I've heard before, but I don't mind. She tells me the story of my mother's proper introduction to James, of my grandmother's distinguished family. Finally, she rises to go to bed, but then she turns to me and says, "Will you be looking up your real father? He's around, you know, still at the university." When I've imagined finding my real father, I've pictured him running away in panic, down alleys, in and out of tawdry saloons. His eyes would be wide with the horror of this unwanted evidence of his past. Td finally catch up to him at some dead end, and he'd flick his hand at me as if I were an insect, saying, "I don't want you." This scenario has been so real to me, I can't absorb what Gloria is saying. "David?" I say stupidly. |