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my silence, which
is
concretely true of my behavior, is a symptom of
my difficulties in dealing with a rather extreme sense of personal guilt.
So what if I happen to have difficulties in dealing with a rather
extreme sense of personal guilt? That's
my
problem, isn't it? Not
yours. Silence and detachment aren't exactly the worst things the
woman has to bear in most marriages, you know. I mean, it's only
a
temporary
silence, and it's never more than a
failed
attempt at de–
tachment. You know this. Eventually I always start to talk again,
little by little, evasively, I know, but eventually I circle back to you,
and from there to my particular offense and guilt, and from there to
my general guilt. You've never seen it work any other way, have
you? I might ask what the hell you're afraid of in the first place.
In this case here, you can be sure that if there
were
some particular
offense I had committed, I would finally return to it, would confC$
it to you, would admit that, yes, I did make a pass at Rose, as she
claimed I did, for example. Just for example. And once there, you
can rest assured that I would admit that I had overreacted, had
treated a particular, minor offense as if it were a general, lifelong
one, that therefore I had reacted to a small offense in terms of my
consciousness of an overall guilt. I mean, this
is
what has always
happened, isn't it? No exceptions. None whatsoever, not in ten years.
So why are you so determined now to conclude from my silence and
my
seeming
detachment that I necessarily must be reacting to a fail–
ure to confront my guilt for a minor offense? You don't have to
worry about it, because if I were, you'd know it by now. You always
have. Why is this any different? What are you afraid of? That some–
thing dreadful will happen if you don't push and shove me back over
the past few weeks all the way to some forgotten, ignored, completely
minor offense against you? What the hell are you afraid of?
She told me to shut my goddamned mouth. Shut your god–
damned mouth. Low and level, the words came out like looping
circles of rope that cleanly hooped one after the other around my
head, and I shut my goddamned mouth. The others in the room,
also women, stared quickly down at the coffee-cup cluttered tabletop
between them, fingered their paper napkins. One of them, Rose, I
think, said, Jesus, it's hot by this stove, and moved her chair with–
out getting out of it, bumping it against the floor of the kitchen,
down the side of the rectangular table and away from the wood-
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