PARTISAN REVIEW
Why do you lie to them about me?
You tell them I threaten you!
"Why are you crying?" she says.
"I thought you could read people's
thoughts?
If
you could read them you'd
know," I tell her flatly.
This
is
the day Mrs. Price was on
the show. Watching her and Vince that
morning, I felt a terrible pang of sor–
row, or desire . . . the two of them, a
man I loved and a woman who might
have been my mother, two people I
might have loved, on that small screen
... talking earnestly about the "chil–
dren" of the slums. Who are these
chil–
dren? Why are they more valuable than
we other children, who are living alone,
grown up, whose heads ring with the
terrors of childhood?
"I can't read thoughts. That was part
of my sickness," my mother says care–
fully. They have taught her to say
this.
I smile, to show that I see through it
all- her lies. Of course she can read
my thoughts! Mothers can read
their
daughters' thoughts, as if listening
in
on a telephone line, but they don't want
to admit it. She tells lies.
"I was sick then ... when I said
that," she explains.
I say nothing. Let her keep hearing
her own lying words, echoing
in
our
heads. Lies. She tells lies. Let her keep
hearing them. We can sit here together
for the next ten years, staring at each
other, both knowing the truth. This
will
never come to an end! There
is
no way out for us, we must sit here
forever! Weare two bodies, weighed
437
