OCR Text |
Show 116 to discover one's true thoughts and feelings. It seemed like before today she hadn't a true thought, one that was really hers, a feeling with which she was completely comfortable, in the past year-over a year now-since moving in. Roger returned, his face ruddy, his hair glistening with the sea mist. The fog was moving in, he said. And as they sat down to table, to the soft, shining candles, to the brief prayer which Mr. Green offered, she again thought of how strange her life had been over the past year, since her father's death. To have survived that year, the funeral, the Bradshaws, the constant confusion-that was the worst of it: that terrible confusion, that constant feeling of ongoing crisis, day after day. It absorbed her, it smothered her. It was suffocating. But now, sitting here in the soft candlelight, with the clink of utensils, the pleasant sound of voices around her, the glow of the candles -their faint warmth-on her face, she recalled that, moment earlier in the evening, on the drive here, looking out over the green expanse of ocean: when her real self, her true self, had suddenly assserted itself in her. To have come through all that with the Bradshaws, to have endured, to have survived-so that now, sitting here, she could sense her true, continuous self-it was a miracle. For dessert there was apple pie a la mode. Across the table, Roger began mimicking Mrs. Harms, to the delight of Alice and Mr. Green. She had never seen Mrs. Harms, but with Roger's parody, she imagined she would recognize her if she ever did. His large fleshy mouth was redrawn in this part-for of course that was what this was for him: a |