I wonder what the warning was. My memory is delicate, obscene. Mad Meg in the Maelstrom: shouting through the jostle, yelling at a shoulder, addressing a chest, demonstrating handholds, grips on history. Susu’s slit is long and thin, as she is (a shameful same), and lined with red like a bloodshot eye, eyebrows on either side (so the photos show it), as if quizzically raised. From Mad Meg a spray of speech, a spray of spit. Imbecile. Yes. The story was too good to keep. Yet I remember protesting. I protested. I did not idly acquiesce. Yes. The marble tries to gleam, but shadows fall on shadows there like played cards. Meg cannot gesture freely even as an image on the floor. And above him, where his voice has risen, there is an equally obliterating babble. When I grumble about my work, Martha moves in., smiles across the breakfast table, wags the spoon she’ll use to stir her coffee, ungut her grapefruit. How I hate that imperious gesture. Intemperately, Tabor reiterates, tries to make himself heard. The spoon which wags will, in a moment, stir. The light that was glowing in its bowl floats on the surface of her coffee now like cream. And I re-create him, including his ear fur, the hair on his hands. You really don’t want to finish that Big Brutish Book, Wilfred. What would you do then? What would you do? You’d be a knitter without wool; you’d be a hotel with a left-out lobby. Martha’s mind has this habit of incessant example: first a horseless rider (easy), then an Easterless bunny, a Mellon without money. You don’t want to—for fear of—fear of finish, Wilfred. What would you do? You don’t have a hobby. You hate to teach school—your students pester, annoy, and bore you—so the only work for which you’re paid turns out to be workless. ([Is Billy supposed to admire this pun? Well, Billy don’t.]) You have refused friends, my help, the advice of your sons. ([{The advice of my sons!}]) You won’t do anything but dub around the house. Will you trim shrubs, grow flowers, comb the cat? I don’t blame you for holding back. You’re simply afraid of retirement, of living in a vacant lot, behind a billboard ([and Billy, as bored by all this as the buffalo on a worn-off nickel, is supposed to admire the pun; well, Billy don’t]), in some weedy, windy, empty place. Muffin crumbs have made my saucer unsafe, the butter tweedy. Martha’s face is full of freshly scrubbed blood. The wall is acrawl with paper vines. I wonder would one of them hold me. Martha’s crack, in contradistinction to, is now so wide the nut’s milk is seeping. Imp without evil, she smugly suggests, that’s what you’d be. Dispitched, my fork simmers in a broken egg. I’m not allowed to lick my knife. So let me mow the snow on the weekends, Daddy, for a dime. I lift my fork to salute the devil which I serve.