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Show Moon - 241 I ask Lee about Lisa. He says, "Yeah, we're lovers, but she's very heavy." I ask him what he means by "heavy," and he says, "Oh, she gets infections; she worries; she had a baby she had to give up for adoption and keeps talking about it." "Yours?" He shrugs. "It happened at a commune. There were lots of guys around." The heat rises in me and I want to lecture Lee on how men need to be accountable. Lisa will go from man to man saying, "Love me, listen to me," and these men, for all their liberation rhetoric, will be like Lee who encourage such women and then leave them. But I don't think I'm going to be able to change anyone's mind about anything, except maybe Josh, who will, perhaps, finally put a window in Windfall's stall. "I'm trying to help her," Lee says stiffly. "She doesn't have anyplace to go." "Your generosity is touching," I say, still angry. He lays a hand on the table, studies his slender spread-out fingers. "She's very spiritual. She teaches me things." We are silent as our food arrives. Then we talk about Mom and Dad. We always do this at some point when we meet. We pool our memories, make them into a picture that might comfort us with symmetry and form. We all three need to keep on loving James, are quick to praise his considerable intelligence, his excellent career-though we don't know quite what it was, for it was too secret to talk about. Eventually, however, our talk slips into the terrible memories. Lee's eyes grow dark and he says, "It feels like Dad killed Mom." |