540
PARTISAN REVIEW
his friends, a warring couple who were on the way to Mexico. There
to
read Lawrence and become free! Ah, that was a clinical case history of a
trip, I allow . Such my poor life became. The grimy towns, the rains,
the chili made in one place with Heinz's ketchup, over all the grim sky
brooding and also changing. The dusty streets of my wretched
womanhood-if! had known when I was a girl . .. and now I seem to
vagely remember sitting in my father 's sinister car outside Nathan 's
Famous in Coney Island . Rhythmically squeezing together and
relaxing my nervous thighs. I stealthily ate a hot dog the while . I
remember that I was wearing a red satin garter belt trimmed with white
lace and that we had come from the BronxZoowhere we had gone earlier
in the day
to
see the bears . How grown-up I felt! God, that'sa long drive .
Lucky my father had a powerful blue Buick convertible! I see in my
mind's eye now, yes, now I remember, a strange man at the Zoo-he
was in a corduroy cap, a seedy raincoat, drinking muscatel , I should
think, from a bottle . Three-day beard. How sad he seemed! How sad
and shabby! I had the oddest impression that he was once a famous
lawyer or nuclear physicist-perhaps a scholar ofcomparative literature
with svelte wife and pillared mansion from whose shady veranda you
can jump in the picturesque lake. Or perhaps he was a poet of local
fame whose best friend had maligned him in a roman clef. But-for–
give me, Martin-may I call you Martin? Nathan's. Perhaps it was at
that moment, my dad getting lobster rolls and clam broth , and I secre–
tively engaged in the act ofgirlish whimsy, that my life changed, as the
poet says about the yellow woods where the wrong turn will lead you
into a lot of crap, forgive my demotics. Perhaps there , there was the
turn that led me
to
Tom and Ned and ultimately here with you , dear ,
good Martin, here in this lonely and almost deserted diner ...
Cafeteria, Daisy, I sobbed . l was sobbing uncontrollably now. My
trapped throat raged somewhere inside the lost despair that was me
with the furor of a typhoon of emotions gone mad, head over heels , all
ends up, blood pounding and the lost heart black with its secrets that
no one can ever know-who can decipher the dark heart's fathomless
theories and suppositions? Not to mention its illogical things? Who
indeed?
.. . so many things, she trilled . How variegated it's all been, now
that I have this quiet moment with someone who
understands,
to
think it all over. Ah, see how my eyes dance! See my lips flutter as I
