542
PARTISAN REVIEW
unmistakable frown that one gets on a face when one smells gas. Was
that a jet plane whining overhead? Thus does memory serve us all. Did
not Simon of Mesopotamia note that "I remember, therefore I was.
Yet what was I?" A moment later and it was over and the dear girl
gorged up her Danish happily, washing it down with coffee. Time in
its kindness heals our memories of its grievous wounds inflicted with–
out regard to race or creed or status. Does not a rich man as well as a
poor yell a lot when he is punched in the mouth? Marx forgot these
basic truths. Suddenly, I adjudged that Daisy had flown swiftly to the
ladies' room. Had I been wrong, after all, about her? Fool! Fool! Blind
stupid fool. How I had hurried on, a frail canoe with the current,
rushing from the past! And now it was all too clear what a mistake I had
made. I bit my knuckles until they hurt me like coals offire. I mean like
ifcoals had been applied to them. Thus was the sharpness of my teeth.
Then she was back, eyeing me narrowly and with a curious stare as
if
realizing that it was I that she had earlier looked at as if seeing for the
first time and not someone that she had indeed seen for the first time.
So does the mind trick us despite our most careful ideas about things to
do. I suddenly understood Kant's description of the mind as a "what–
not." Then, somehow, she was back, her trim, lithe form across the
table staring at mine, words tumbling from her mouth ...
. . . dances, balls, how he tried to fill my life with laughter and
joy! Vast annual benefits for dread diseases, how we ladies posed for
the newspaper photographers, trying to expose just enough of our
thighs to arouse the silent and unknown audience out there-some-
where! Who knows who will ultimately see a photograph? We did our
best, the parties to stamp out crab lice, which even some of our most
attractive young matrons harbored in their curiies, odd word, that.
\
Yes, don't look aghast, it's true, even our most affluenced ladies get
them now and again, from subway toilets more often than not. Think
•
then, of the sympathy we had for those unfortunates who lived with
them day and night! Somehow, at this time I remember sleeping a
great deal-to escape from the reality of what Tom thought were my
days ofhappy hours. He often called me his dozing Daisy-stranger to
say, he could turn a phrase after business hours. In my waking mo-
ments I espy him, always in the middle of a group of the most exciting
celebrities, the kind you see in the
Post
on Saturdays, in the back
somewhere, all smiles and dopey tuxedos, those shiny wives and their
