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PARTISAN REVIEW
If
on ly she'd known the madness and betraya l she was contribut–
ing to by h as tening his p leasure! he tho ught, blind ly cas ting about,
right and left, like a frightened horse.
"Looking for somethin g?" as ked Mary.
"No, here it is," he said, reachin g for the mustard .
She dec ided if he hadn 't seen it standing there ri ght in front o f him
he must no t be we ll.
Afterwards he got up and slow ly bent over her, till hi s li ps grazed
her cheek. T he ki ss seemed to have dropped by parachute, on a p lain
no t ye t touched by grief.
T ha t ni ght , in the first glass case, there was a doll sea ted on a lawn ,
surrounded by huge spon ges, which she seemed to think were fl owers.
He didn 't fee l like guess ing her fa te so he opened the drawer with the
captions and read: 'Thi s woman is sick in the head; no one knows why
she loves sponges ." "As if I didn 't pay them to find ou t," he thought;
then , bitterl y: "They must be to w ipe away her guilt. "
T he next morning he woke up ro ll ed into a ba ll and couldn 't help
remembering who he was now. He imagined himself signing a bad
check, under a false name. His body was sad, as it had been once before,
when 'a doctor told him he had thin bl ood and a sma ll heart. But that
o ther time he'd go tten over the sadness. Now he stretched his legs and
tho ught: " Formerl y, when I was youn g, my skin was a lot thicker: I
didn 't care so much about hurting o thers. Am I getting weak with age?
Or is it a la te fl owering of shame and guilt?" He got u p feeling much
relieved ; but he knew the dark clouds were still around somewhere, not
far away, and tha t they' d be back with ni ght.
v
A few days la ter, wanting to di stract Horace, Mary took him for a
wa lk . Along the way, she kept wondering whether he was miss ing
Daisy or the real daughter they' d never have any more.
T he afternoon Daisy got back, he didn 't seem pa rticul arl y g lad to
see her, and again Mary thought she wasn 't the reason for hi s sadness .
But, a moment before dinner, she caught him linger ing over her
fondl y, and felt relieved.
After tha t, for several nights, as he kissed his wife before go ing in
to see the do lls, he searched her face with sharp eyes, as if to make su re
there was n othing strange hidden there. He hadn 't ye t been a lone with
Daisy.
