434
"Yes. You're looking wonderful."
"I'm awful ashamed of how I acted."
"Oh,
Ma. ..."
"What
is
it like at home?
Is
it
all
right?"
You
kMW
very well the house was
sold.
"Everything
is
all
right."
She stares at me. Silence.
"I
am getting well," she
says
slow–
ly.
"I
am going to leave here pretty
soon...."
Why do you tell such lies?
"On Easter, did I tell you, some real
nice girls came in from a high school,
to sing to us . . . they were about
thir–
teen or fourteen, the cutest nicest
girls...."
And you loved them! You loved
them, but when I
was
that age you tried
to kill me!
"Then
all
this week I worked in the
laundry . . . I worked real hard . . . I
didn't do anything wrong, not once...."
Yes, you tried to kill me. I won't
forget that.
JOYCE CAROL OATES
1969
Monroe W. Mason, Civil
Liberties
Union, degrees from Columbia
and
Harvard, lawyer, married, three
chil–
dren, tufts of sandy hair, perfect
teeth,
long nicotine-stained fingers. He
and
Vince are earnest, intense, interrupting
each other. I watch them on the moni–
tor. A man
is
a man: a woman falls
in
love with the idea of a man, but
in
