Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

Anywhere New York Back to Europe of course but in New York some of the people still you & Barton knew the friends your own age She looked at me. With the pupils expanded like this, her eyes looked almost black; blind too.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

I spoke; she could read single words if they were slow: “You? Afraid?” She said:

“Yes. I dont want to be helpless. I wont be helpless. I wont have to depend.”

I thought fast, like that second you have to raise or draw or throw in your hand, while each fraction of the second effaces another pip from your hole card. I wrote quite steadily while she watched Then why am I here and drew my hand back so she could read it. Then she said, in that dry, lifeless, what Chick calls duck’s quack:

“Gavin.” I didn’t move. She said it again: “Gavin.” I didn’t move. She said: “All right. I lied. Not the depend part. I wont depend. I just must be where you are.” She didn’t even add Because you’re all I have now. She just stood, our eyes almost level, looking at me out of, across, something—abyss, darkness; not abject, not questioning, not even hoping; in a moment I would know it; saying again in the quacking voice: “Gavin.”

I wrote rapidly, in three-or four-word bursts, gaggles, clumps, whatever you want to call them, so she could read as I wrote Its all right dont Be afraid I Refuse to marry you 20 years too much Difference for it To work besides I Dont want to

“Gavin,” she said.

I wrote again, ripping the yellow sheets off the pad and shoving them aside on the mantel I dont want to

“I love you,” she said. “Even when I have to tell a lie, you have already invented it for me.”

I wrote No lie nobody Mentioned Barton Kohl

“Yes,” she said.

I wrote No

“But you can me,” she said. That’s right. She used the explicit word, speaking the hard brutal guttural in the quacking duck’s voice. That had been our problem as soon as we undertook the voice lessons: the tone, to soften the voice which she herself couldn’t hear. “It’s exactly backward,” she told me. “When you say I’m whispering, it feels like thunder inside my head. But when I say it this way, I cant even feel it.” And this time it would be almost a shout. Which is the way it was now, since she probably believed she had lowered her voice, I standing there while what seemed to me like reverberations of thunder died away.

“You’re blushing,” she said.

I wrote that word

“What word?”

that you just said

“Tell me another one to use. Write it down so I can see it and remember it.”

I wrote There is no other thats the right one only one I am old fashioned it still shocks me a little No what shocks is when a woman uses it & is not shocked at all until she realises I am Then I wrote thats wrong too what shocks is that all that magic passion excitement be summed up & dismissed in that one bald unlovely sound

“All right,” she said. “Dont use any word then.”

I wrote Do you mean you want to

“Of course you can,” she said. “Always. You know that.” I wrote Thats not what I asked you She read it. Then she didn’t move. I wrote Look at me She did so, looking at me from out or across what it was that I would recognise in a moment now.

“Yes,” she said.

I wrote Didnt I just tell you you dont ever have to be afraid and this time I had to move the pad slightly to draw her attention to it, until she said, not looking up:

“I dont have to go away either?”

I wrote No under her eyes this time, then she looked up, at me, and I knew what it was she looked out of or across: the immeasurable loss, the appeaseless grief, the fidelity and the enduring, the dry quacking voice saying, “Gavin. Gavin. Gavin.” while I wrote

because we are the 2 in all the world who can love each other without having to the end of it tailing off in a sort of violent rubric as she clasped me, clinging to me, quite hard, the dry clapping voice saying,

“Gavin. Gavin. I love you. I love you,” so that I had to break free to reach the pad and write

Give me the card

She stared down at it, her hands arrested in the act of leaving my shoulders. “Card?” she said. Then she said, “I’ve lost it.”