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Show Moon - 222 Nothing was in there. She would have to tell her father, who would be angry, for he would have to drive his wife many miles to the nearest doctor to have the catheter put back in. Joy wondered why her mother couldn't be allowed this last small pleasure of natural urination, but she wouldn't be able to discuss this with him. She'd simply have to face his anger at her negligence and her own confusion of guilt and odd happiness. She lifted her mother into the bed, for she was tiny and light as a child. Her mother reached for her daughter's hand and said, "I love you, dear." Mom, you would have admired Kate. She's tough. She's smart. She knows what she's about. She's also rather nice, though I can't read her very well, for we think so differently, never see each other now. James met her at some government-crowd party in Georgetown about six months after you died. He got into the social swing quickly, I think because the years you were sick were lonely for him. And there she was: attractively stout, substantially dressed, with dark naturally-streaked hair fashionably layered at the nape. Her father had some big Pentagon connection and had left her a lot of money. She was about James' age. Women with money seem to keep their looks. You'd think she'd be someone to envy, but I've learned this much: everyone's got a story. This is hers: She marries men who die. It began when she was the one who happened to be around her father during his lingering death by emphysema. She spoke of this to me and the boys when James was ill and after he died; clearly it's a preoccupation. Her father had to wheel a little oxygen cart around everywhere he went and breathed through a transparent |