This seemed to be my chance. He was obviously—I have tried not to focus on that quality. Although this was not Providence protruding into my life and sticking its big hand out in a hello.
He said, “This happens to me all of the time! Can you help me? You look just like the woman on the bus who was sitting across from me, except for the hair. I have to get something for my daughter. Should I buy TRESemmé?”
“Buy this one,” I said. “I am sure your daughter would like something fancy.”
Then the man said, “I smell a bakery.”
“You said, ‘I smell a bakery’?”
“Yes.”
“I smell it, too.”
“I hate it!” the man said.
“You said you hate it?”
We must have talked for many minutes more about his daughter, and after that I bought plain bond paper and a packet of rubber bands.
I wish he had seemed genuinely impressed by me.
As to the life he was leading, he said there was no wife.
I have always thought I was a careful person, but apparently I can surprise myself.
One aspect of the whole situation is that it would soon seem to be normal.
We now sleep in the same bed, drink one or two glasses of neat whiskey before dinner.
He’s remained with me in my house and so has Clarinda.
Clarinda’s a flower that’s growing that we cannot gather.
She’s not a child and she holds an important position here.
I have forgotten that the man is her father. That is sad to say and sad to hear. I consider her to be my husband’s much younger and his better partner—for the pair of them scorn very similar things.
Often when I make the beds before I start supper, I can forget my family troubles that are unfunny or enigmatic. But soon they come back to me, as if in secret I’d had a coughing fit.
Such misfortunes are like the common corn cockle flowers on the fabric of my wing chairs. Never delicate—the way they’ve lasted—and isn’t it my task to admire them? Didn’t I select it?—that chintz—with slight reluctance, but unguardedly.