PARTISAN REVIEW
439
Inside me, where the Fear once was,
there
is
nothing - a scooped-out womb.
Vince catches up with me and helps
me on with my coat. My heart pounds
at his nearness. I am afraid of him. I
really don't want him. While he chatters
I
think
of my mother in the hospital ...
I want to see her this evening, I want
to make her confess ... confess some–
thing.... I don't want love from
this
man! I want love from her. I don't
know why women love men. What
is
there about their
grins,
their sweat, their
big hands, that women must love? and
must lie down to love? Years ago I
had a lover, a boy, and what passed
between us was like a movie I had seen
years ago, nothing more. I know he
was my lover. I remember his room,
the sunlight through the cracked shades
. . . it must have happened . . . I re–
member
his
face, even. But it is no more
real to me than a story in a movie. It
is less real, because the movie could be
seen again, sharply remembered upon
a second viewing, but the act of love
is
gone forever and cannot be remembered.
Vince walks with me to the elevator.
Someday I will make a report on him
for myself: Vincent Ellman, WWT-TV,
television personality, born Waco, Texas,
1924, worked with twenty-two radio
and/teIevision stations in the United
States, England and Canada, came to
Detroit in 1963, married, four children,
not quite my lover. What more can I
find out about him? What is his interest
in
me? -
is
it my slightness, my pretty
face, my turned-away face, my fear of
