BARBARA PROBST SOLOMON
575
dumb crud. Better to give it back to the lions, the tigers, the fish and
the birds. Now swans, Elena, after they lose their mates, they never
remate. Just keep paddling. But swans don't deserve much. Too
dumb to know how to build nests. They pull the same crap around
each year, always putting it in the wrong place...." he pauses.
"That man clearly envied me. With that dead-loss Madame
Vomit wife of his. I saw him looking at you, Elena. He was im–
pressed. I must say, you did nicely as Mrs. Braden."
Daniel's unaware that he had used up all the oxygen; had semi-
paralyzed three people in the cabin.
"Do you mind, Elena, if I ask you a personal question?"
"What did you say, Daniel?"
"... a personal question . How long do you think a marriage
between us would last?"
But the affair is over.
I have been following a different scenario. I
hesitate too long. Then Daniel's pride is hurt so he quickly starts to
mimic me . "What did you say, Daniel? What did you say? Is that
you, Daniel?" Then his mood shifts again, "Wouldn't have thought,
umpteen years ago, that afternoon, you, Lewis and Adelina and I
sat together on our lawn, at Hannah's Point, that you and me would
have ended up together in the sack. Wasn't in the cards. Oh, I had a
few thoughts. Sitting there. Watching you with Lewis. You see a
woman looking subdued, refined, and there ain't no sex talk - just
babble about politics and the control of nuclear energy, and then
you look at her man, and gauge his sexuality, and you can guess at
all the things she's heard and done. Because men know other men.
And all that turns a man on, and he gets curious. Not that I would
have done anything. I truly loved Adelina. But you and I, in our
varying types of relation to each other ... have ... have been oddly
enduring." Suddenly he stops. And his face turns fierce, and he runs
up on deck. "Adelina, you bitch," he yells into the Long Island night,
"leave us alone!"
I go up there, after him. And make him come back down into
the cabin . "Daniel, those voices you hear, that's you ... not her. Buy
yourself a new yawl," I spit out at him, "and name it something that
makes sense .
Daniel's yawl."
I pause, and take a deep breath. "It has
nothing to do with who did what to whom. Survival matters," I
pause, "Adelina was crazy." I've made my voice deliberately flat.
"Nuts . Off her rocker. Suicides leave shitty voices behind ."
Daniel seems shocked . "You are doing her an injustice."
"Anybody alive is worth more than the dead."
