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Show Woodworth/231 so she tips the bottle up to her mouth and drains the rest in jerky swallows. Imagine if they walked in now. She smiles against the kiss of the bottle. Wouldn't that startle them, to see this. This is mother. But no one comes. She finishes the bottle, and puts it back on the table. Where was I? She looks around the kitchen until she sees the cleaning closet, and remembers what she wanted. Opens the closet, and looks in. How do you clean that up? Vacuum cleaner? No. Dry mop? Wet mop? She grabs the wet mop, and the handle jumps back from her grasp and hides in the back of the closet, away from her hands behind of jumble of vacuum hoses and clothes pin bags. She plunges in after it. "This is going to be a good breakfast, for Megan, no matter what you bastards think," she mutters to the conspiratorial cleaning utensils. Then giggles, caught in there with the strands of dry mop pulling at her hair. Here I am in the cleaning closet, swearing like a sailor. I should have an affair she thinks simultaneously, as if one is as bold and impossible as the other. Why Shouldn't I go to San Francisco, too, and stay in a motel with someone. It would be more fun than going with Ned. Maybe women's lib has changed things, and why shouldn't she change, too, and enjoy them. Why shouldn't she if they don't even want her as a mother any more. It isn't fair that she should have to stay being one, especially when there isn't anyone around to mother, and what she really wants to do is have some fun. She deserves to have some fun, after all the time she has spent just doing the things that will be right for other people and not thinking about herself. All she gets in the end is one daughter that's |