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PARTISAN REVIEW
cascade through his frame-how well I remember my Ned ogling my
bras-I feel that it is only right, as we near the end of our really good
talk, only right to tell you-although I cannot blame you , dear man,
knowing intuitively that you were horribly aroused some time before
our rendezvous-how long ago it all seems!-I feel, anyway, that it is
only the right thing to do that I inform you that I have been pregnant
for fifteen minutes! Yes, Martin- I carry your unborn child!
It was as like to a thunderclap as one could fair approach . The
winds howled. I laughed aloud into the tooth of them . Stupid
mankind that shall never be plumbed as to its dumb acts and so forth!
So I shouted . I must have seemed the maniac to Daisy , whose hands
went to her womb to protect the life that grew there . Leaping up from
the grass, I pulled her up and we started
~ff
across the deserted park
that now seemed like a landscape of the moon. Don't. . . hate me . . .
Martin ... Martin? I laughed at the hidden moon.
Later , leaving the abortionist's office , we embraced. There was
something real , something lost yet very personal in the way that she
kissed me. I felt a kind ofliquid sunshine in her mouth , a taste of the
purest honey. Had I but known her years ago! I stifled a sob and cleared
my throat in which a scream of despair , despair and loss hung there .
And now, her voice , somehow happier now-who can plummet a
woman 's many moods that change like the light on the clouds as they
sail , stately galleons, over the face of the unknowable sea?- went on,
almost happy now. What is it that women want? I asked the ignorant
wind . ..
. . . I led cheers , hung around the pavilion at Lake Hiawatha, hay
rides and french fries , trips to the city, fun was all was my gauche
motto , my cri de coeur. Harvest moons, dirty songs , the Friday night
dance. My girlish heart was bursting with witless joy! A foolish girl who
wished to marry a mechanic, I can see his black fingernails now. Later
he became a fairy and did artistic interesting things in New York or
something . It is all gone . . . now . But Tom had made my memories
cheap and for that I can never forgive him, no, not ifhe crawled to me
on heels and toes , never! And then I met Ned Beaumont and-you
know the rest, dear Martin . We ' ll never tell of this night's warmth,
shall we? They'll never understand and it's best we bury it in the midst
of time .
In my lover'smisery I nodded affirmation to her query. I whistled
