from her face. Yes, it
is
there, the
ugliness the hate. The nurse and I stare
at it.
"Ma, please don't. Please don't cry.
I have to leave in a few minutes," I
tell her.
"Would you like something? Some
tea?" says the nurse, gently, to my
mother.
JOYCE CAROL OATES
1969
Spring. Vince drives me out to the
country. Everything
is
rising, rising
in
sunlight, but I feel myself drawn down–
w:ard. The Fear
is
somewhere outside
me, waiting for me. Vince turns the
radio on, switches stations restlessly, as
he drives. And he talks. Chatter about
news at the studio, about friends of
his,
anecdotes - he knows so many people!
Once he was going to divorce
his
wife
to marry some
girl,
whom I have never
met, and now I think . . . I think he
would divorce that same wife to
marry
me, but I can't concentrate upon
this
fact. While he talks my mind
wande~
He talks, he talks, I make my face glow
with health and youth and a certain
kind of petite, sinister prettiness, and
so
he talks into me forever, trying to fill
me up ... but no one can fill me up.
He knows about my mother. He
is
sympathetic. It makes me weak in
his
eyes, like a cripple, a handicapped child
- I should be grateful for him, always,
for
his
interest. That
is
why I appear
to listen so carefully to him. I am al–
most young enough to
be
his daughter.
