Diane Williams - Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

But about the child’s later life, how did she fare?

The child showed her picture to her mother.

“And where is her head?” her mother said. “I see legs!” she pointed. “Shoes.”

It was just a few words, but more than the child needed to consider.

The child was handed more paper.

And so was invented a kind of brute — a brunette with longish hair, who must love her enemies — who acts responsibly.

“One second!” I said — for everything can go cold in a day or hot. For a man like me, there’s an on-and-off bulb that does the deciding.

I had to find a red, little glowing button — that I was able to find — that was on a timer switch, to get more light on. The furniture — like worn-out stumps sticking up — had turned into shadows.

I could then see her better — the woman I had settled upon to have intermittent leisure with — Evangeline. How clean she was and how calm. I saw clearly the receptacle for logs by the fireplace filled with firewood that I knew to be far too fine for a fire.

It takes some ability to get close to the extraordinary in life, and I was at the peak of my ability back then.

Back then, Evangeline had informed me that her eldest son, having survived into adulthood, had returned to the States.

I heard the click upon his entry and saw the jump of the flat door.

The boy’s girlish mother — who could look secretive with plans wherever you put her — withdrew and then she reappeared.

She glanced affectionately at the boy.

Why was I afraid? Earlier she had informed me he was one of the kindest and one of the most thoughtful boys in all the world.

She carried an appliance in from the kitchen that I did not recognize, and she put it on the credenza.

Such an omen. I have asked myself what darker purpose is being served when a magician pulls his rabbit out of the hat.

I felt a tap on my back, in the middle of my back, as I hurried away, past the woman and her son, with apologies.

I had the long, uneven road to drive.

Evangeline showed up in her sporty car, where I live, on the morning of the following day.

There was something wonderful in this — it’s the whole point of the story.

And we had become good friends, occasionally, for normally about an hour and a half at a time.

She said, “I am not blaming you.”

My father came down the stairs, my mother, too.

Evangeline was addressing me lovingly.

Mother said, “She was married to Jerry! She’s talking nonsense.”

Dad said, “I didn’t think you wanted us to see her.”

My kitchen, where I went off to, has an island range and the beauty of this island is difficult to convey, but pesty problems can seem irrelevant when I am in the vicinity of my Viking.

I was thinking Evangeline had had her say, that she could depart now with a light heart.

When I returned to the foyer, my father was holding the newel-post, my mother — in her short, striped robe with her bare legs — was going back up the stairs.

Evangeline — and I was very moved by this — was still waiting for me and I wondered if I would rise to my own occasion.

Then my mother shouted, “They’re going to clean the air conditioners first!” The Best Air van had arrived.

Eventually, Evangeline gave up with some hostility and she drove herself home.

In the meantime, I got a few payments recorded, made out bank deposits, and checked cash accounts. I think I’ll be an ideal ally for somebody someday. This belief is borne in magic.

Am I not like the vanishing bead? Presto!

Place me inside of any paper cup. In due course I am in my own pocket, when I cap — carry through, or when I conclude.

In the words of people who frequently repeat themselves — he is told fair words of devotion, sitting in a room decked out in antique red velvet.

Then he is miles away, say — getting a kick out of a pleasant night in a boat on sea water.

He is eating Vienna rolls with a member of the opposite sex near a roadside chapel, having a flirtation.

His recovery of an old debt reverses a disappointment. He will buy a new V-necked cardigan!

There must be something in fortune-telling. He will get tickets to the theater and only mildly suffer the experience.

This good luck was not the last, but the lucky are not always wise and he can well stand some more of it.

“Is this what you don’t want?” Miss Natchez asked.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“Pam!” a man said. “I have this here, if you’d like to look at it.”

Pursuing him into the next room, the woman saw some other shoppers tipped into their places.

The man attended to Pam, and Miss Natchez helped out with Pam also.

They recommended something they talked her into.

* * *

Pam washed her face and her upper body at her bathroom sink when she returned home.

Better to have a full tub bath.

She unlocked the chain around her neck, disengaged herself from it, and its links spilled and then stacked themselves inside of a dish.

She gave out one of her short-hand, pitched yells when she fell short of the tub, much like a tossed child, flying through space, because of the fact that somebody didn’t prefer her.

You have people nowadays — the men in general, who were helping the woman — and that which they should not disturb, she had put into a crate.

She put a yellow-flowered plant into the crate.

The men’s names were embroidered on their shirt pockets, but truly, there was no need to address one or another of them. A question could just be asked of one — without use of a name.

The pockets of their garments were needleworks with thread in bright white. But for Marwood, somebody had devised an orange and mustard-yellow embroidery.

The woman was standing a step aside and didn’t have much to contribute, but she looked at a man — at what he was making ready to take — and she held her hands with her palms turned away from her body with her fingers spread, as if she had dirtied herself.

At the curb, the woman’s car was an Opel, and the hood was up, and the door to the car was out, and what was its color? It was a butterscotch and a man, up to his elbows, was under the hood. Now and again he’d go back into the car and try the starter engine. Ted — that was that one.

It could be lovely, the woman was thinking. It was already lonely and there were mountains and mosses and grasses and violent deaths nowadays, and injuries and punishments, and the woman finds the merest suggestion of cheerful companionship and carousal — a bit too dramatic.

The heavily colored area — it became a shade dingier — after I knocked over her decanter and there was the sourish smell of the wine.

I saw Mother reaching toward the spill, but the time that was left to her was so scant as to be immaterial.

The little incident of the accidental spill had the fast pace of a race, hitherto neglected or unknown.

“Go home!” Mother said. And I didn’t look so good to her she said. “How dare you tell me what to do — when you threw me away! You threw your brother away, too!”

Within a month, Mother was dead.

I inherited her glass carafe with its hand-cut, diamond-and-fan design, which we now use on special occasions.

We do well and we’ve accomplished many excellent things.

“Don’t do it that way!” I had cried. My daughter had tried to uncork a bottle of wine, but since I thought it was my turn, I took it from her.

Here are other methods I use to apply heavy pressure: I ask her where she is going, what does she want, how does she know and why. She should increase her affectionate nature, be successful and happy. Mentally, she must show me she has that certain ability to try.