The Love of a Good Woman

growly voice.
    “Hello little girl. Would you like a piece of candy?”
    I had learned to answer in a wheedling baby-girl voice. “Oh yes sir.”
    “Wahl.” Some fancy drawing out of the a. “Wahl. You cahn’t have one.”
    And:
    “‘Solomon Grundy, born on Monday—’” He’d jab a finger at me to take it up.
    “‘Christened on Tuesday—’”
    “‘Married on Wednesday—’”
    “‘Sick on Thursday—’”
    “‘Worse on Friday—’”
    “‘Died on Saturday—’”
    “‘Buried on Sunday—’”
    Then both together, thunderously. “‘And that was the end of Solomon Grundy!’”
    Never any introduction, no comment when these passages were over. For a joke I tried calling him Solomon Grundy. The fourth or fifth time he said, “That’s enough. That’s not my name. I’m your father.”
    After that we probably didn’t do the rhyme anymore.
    The first time I met you on the campus, and you were alone and I was alone, you looked as if you remembered me but weren’t sure about acknowledging it. You had just taught that one class, filling in when our regular man was sick and you had to do the lecture on logical positivism. You joked about its being a funny thing to bring somebody over from the Theological College to do.
    You seemed to hesitate about saying hello, so I said, “The former King of France is bald.”
    That was the example you’d given us, of a statement that makes no sense because the subject doesn’t exist. But you gave me a truly startled and cornered look that you then covered up with a professional smile. What did you think of me?
    A smart aleck.
    R. My stomach is still a little puffy. There are no marks on it, but I can bunch it up in my hands. Otherwise I’m okay, my weight is back to normal or a little below. I think I look older, though. I think I look older than twenty-four. My hair is still long and unfashionable, in fact a mess. Is this a memorial to you because you never liked me to cut it? I wouldn’t know.
    Anyway I’ve started going on long walks around town, for exercise. I used to go off in the summers, anywhere I liked. I hadn’t any sense of what rules there might be, or different grades of people. That could have been because of never going to school in town or because of our house being out of town here where it is, down the long lane. Not properly belonging. I went to the horse barns by the racetrack where the men were horse owners or paid horse trainers and the other kids were boys. I didn’t know any names, but they all knew mine. They had to put up with me, in other words, because of whose daughter I was. We were allowedto put down feed and muck out behind the horses. It seemed adventurous. I wore an old golf hat of my father’s and a pair of baggy shorts. We’d get up on the roof and they’d grapple and try to push each other off but me they left alone. The men would periodically tell us to get lost. They’d say to me, “Does your dad know you’re here?” Then the boys started teasing each other and the one teased would make a puking noise and I knew it was about me. So I quit going. I gave up the idea of being a Girl of the Golden West. I went down to the dock and looked at the lake boats, but I don’t think I went so far as dreaming of being taken on as a deckhand. Also I didn’t fool them into thinking I was anything but a girl. A man leaned over and yelled down to me:
    “Hey. You got any hair on it yet?”
    I almost said, “Pardon?” I wasn’t frightened or humiliated so much as mystified. That a grown-up man with responsible work should be interested in the patchy itchy sprouting in between my legs. Should bother to be disgusted by it, as his voice surely indicated that he was.
    The horse barns have been torn down. The road down to the harbor is not so steep. There is a new grain elevator. And new suburbs that could be suburbs anywhere, which is what everybody likes about them. Nobody walks now; everybody drives. The suburbs don’t have sidewalks, and the sidewalks along the old backstreets are unused and cracked and uptilted by frost and disappearing under earth and grass. The long dirt path under the pine trees along our lane is lost now under drifts of pine needles and rogue saplings and wild raspberry canes. People have walked up that path for decades to see the doctor. Out from town on a special short extension of sidewalk along the highway (the only other extension was to the cemetery) and then between the double row of