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Show DAD-61 terms to indicate that I'm in his league. He likes that, so much so that it occurs to him to ask me what I do. "I'm a secretary," I tell him. No. Of course I don't tell him that. I'm not that dumb. "I'm an artist," I say." True enough in its way. He stares at me when he thinks I'm not looking It's a relief to remember that he's on my good side, where the line from my nose to my lip is just a bit smoother. I let my face be expressive as I watch the runners. Sensitive. Feelings deep. I know what he'll be like. I turn to go and think how quickly people disappear when one turns, but he stops me with his hand. His fingers are long and slender: an artist's. "I ought to tell you this," he says. Here it comes, the wife bit; I am almost relieved, not that I mind either way. "We're going to separate soon, next week actually; she wants to live with someone else." I am surprised, a little afraid. Usually that's the man's prerogative, or it's a groovy casual gotta-be-free good-bye. I believe George has been hurt. Extraordinary. We arrange to meet for lunch, which I always do first to allow for mistakes, terms. The night after my mother's funeral my father cried after he'd had a few drinks and asked me to sleep, so to speak, in my mother's bed. I said no, as I always did, of course, but the daughter thing was out, had been, I suppose, for a long time. Mom died at forty-nine, leaving behind a desk filed with blue papers on which she'd written as much of herself as she could find. Blue was her color, and the papers are now in a box under my bed. Once, she wrote this: "There's a rip on the underside of things, dark things we weren't ever meant to see, things with no answers, no healing." I don't visit Dad anymore, and I've decided two |