Page 21 - Contrast1980v23n2

into his room to speak to him and went about the house in a rage. The echos of his deep, tortured groans drove me
from the house and sent me racing through an open field. I knew that I had lost all understanding of his world; the
d~rkness, the frightening world which came to me in my sleep. I lay safely among tall grasses, then rose slowly to
picHkethweaiQteudeefnorAmnnee'tso Lspaecaek. , to explain myself and my flowers. I stared far beyond his tired, vacant expression
and asked myself how I could have been foolish enough to think that he could ever understand me.

"What is it? What do you want, Judith Ann?" he managed to ask me. I watched him as he moved his head
back and forth as if to twist my presence from his mind. It seemed that I was looking into a mirror, or perhaps be-
yond that mirror ...I hovered somewhere above my body watching the scene below. I looked through the eye of the
caLmaetrea aafntedrnpohoontogTreanpnheesdseehissufnaschei.ne was peering at us through a tear in the lowered blinds and mirroring our re-
flections against one wall. Something was wrong. I could not understand the flowers. They made me feel too sad.

"Do you miss that boy" he asked me, "do you miss that boy Jon?"

I"Fbaetchaemr,e" cIonssacidio,u"sDoafddh'yis .k..i"ssing me with the realization that this was something completely natural. His mouth

sought mine innocently at first, then with a growing forcefullness and intensity. His teeth seemed to lock with my
Own as he attempted to force his tongue, as deeply as possible, into my mouth. Then my father pulled me to him,
softly weeping for something that he had never quite found, or something that he had lost years ago. My Queen
Anne's Lace lay abandoned on the floor. I stared at the lacy, white mass while lost to time and the world within
the protective curve of my father's arms. I placed my arms willingly about his shoulders and cradled his head
agOam~smt ymfyatohwern's. lap, his hands searching below my hips, I tried to focus on the ruined Queen Anne's Lace slowly
tu.rTruhnerge bwroilwl nalwonayas cboeldthwaot ovdefrlyoosra.d thing waiting for me in the darkness as I try to fall to sleep, pour a glass of
wme for myself, or maybe I will sense it as I get into my car after a late meeting at school. The sadness lingers be-
tween old conversations and pictures in albums of people I cannot remember. My father's picture is the sadness
too, but I do not always remember him or even what he looked like. Sometimes I remember nothing ...as if there
were nothing for me to remember.

Suzanne called me yesterday. It was our father's birthday and she had taken him to lunch.

E. C. Feldman

19