OCR Text |
Show 50 Before lunch, Martha McAllister had looked up from a poem she was reading, announced: "I may leave my husband." "Excuse me," Hunt had said. "He doesn't see me. He doesn't hear me. I took some books out of the library. Poetry. I hadn't read i t , really, since college, and when I was here, last week, and read nearly all day, I went home and thought: God, really, what am I missing? Why have I forgotten this? So I went down -- and took some books out. An anthology and one by that wonderful man who's in this one, Theodore Roethke. And I tried to read some of the Roethke poems to my husband, Donald, and a l l he said was: 'Wake to sleep'? what does that mean? It doesn't even make sense.' I mean, I'm supposed to know all the bloody names of his clamps - but he won't listen to a line of poetry!" Hunt had nodded. That was something he did a lot of too: Sunk in his stupidity about women, like the mute bellbuoy in the harbor, he bobbed and nodded. "Half the people that we know are leaving each other," Martha'd gone on. "More than half probably. Donald t e l l s me about i t , t e l l s me the stories. I think he wants i t . 'Did you know that Chuck and Elaine are splitting?1 he said to me Sunday night. And then last night, he asked: 'Guess what I heard today about Arthur and Pam?' He wants i t . He's expecting i t . He's planting the seeds." More bobbing from Hunt. "Well . . . " h e ' d managed. "Do you have a woman?" "Woman?" "Someone that you don't just paint. A woman. A g i r l f r i e nd - I'm sorry." |