Met her when they were both grad students in the same university. She was in the theater department and because she didn’t have as good a fellowship as he, worked in the town’s Woolworth’s. Met her in the school’s main cafeteria. Wasn’t going with anyone then, wanted to talk to someone now, walked over, had seen her before at the same big round empty table, or one of the ones right around it, eating from a bagged lunch and Thermos, liked her looks, not just her intelligent face but the long thick braid and dark sensible clothes and even her frayed canvas bookbag and the two serious modern novels and book of plays on the table the last time and what seemed like different books this time, had never seen her standing up so didn’t know how tall she was and what her legs and waist and rear end were like, told himself to be bold, sit down beside her and start talking, however inane the first things he says are, it’ll be okay, if she’s attracted to him, sat down and said “I don’t know, you were sitting alone. I was, I mean, and you too, of course, and excuse me for sitting down without being asked, if you were reading and not just eating I wouldn’t have, but I thought it’d be nice on such a nice day to talk to someone for a few minutes, do you mind?—though I don’t see what the nice day has to do with it. Probably a rainy or cloudy or very cold day, not that you’re going to get many very cold ones around here in winter. But one that draws you into yourself and where you’d be less likely to want to look out these enormous dirty windows, would even be a better reason to want to talk to someone and that person to want to talk to you, even if for both of you it’s someone you don’t know. I’m sorry, that couldn’t have made much sense, but I’ll get around to what I want to say eventually. Anyway, if you do—mind—just say the word and I’ll go,” and she said “No, fine, sit here, free country and so forth, and I’m not reserving or preserving,” and he said “‘Reserving’ I under stand, but ‘preserving’?” and she said “If you want to talk, you can’t do all the talking—those are the basic conversational rules, agreed?” and he said “Deal,” and stared at her and she said “Yes, so, what?” and he said “Well, I already talked too much, you said so and I agree with it, but if you don’t want to say anything just this moment, I’ll go on?” and she said “No, I have things to say, except my mouth takes a few more seconds than yours to start up,” and talked and he did and the conversation was fast, stimulating, lively and they laughed and after about a half-hour of it he wanted to see her standing up before he went any further with her and he said “Like a coffee or tea?” and she said “I brought some, hot cider,” tapping the Thermos, and he said “But you also wouldn’t like a coffee or tea?” and she said “I don’t want to seem health-nutty, but I don’t drink stimulants and I abhor all those decontaminated alternates,” and he said “Then something else?—here,” standing up, “come with me to the food line and choose whatever you want—my treat, since I’ve been chewing your head off—but not anything lavish, of course,” and she said “What could they have lavish in that kitchen midden? but honestly, right now I wouldn’t walk very well,” and he said “What’s wrong?” and she said “I have a limp,” and he said “Something really wrong with one of your legs, or just temporary?” and she said “Let’s simply say you’re anatomically close and there was and what I have is a relic of what existed and that right now that foot wants to recess,” and he said “So, your foot, not a leg, okay,” and got coffee and they talked more and later walked to the parking lot and she did have a bad limp and kept having to stop because she said “My relic’s rebelling, but you go on, though I won’t be able to catch up with you and you don’t know which one’s my car and I’m not sure where it is,” and she drove him home and he got her phone number and after she drove away he realized he’d forgotten to look at, or maybe for her sake with the limp he just wanted to keep his eyes off of, the bottom half of her, but from what he thinks he fleetingly saw when she got into the car, nothing was out of the ordinary there. She had a hole in her foot, wide as a quarter and deep as, well, a quarter standing on its edge. Maybe not that deep. The first time they made love, which was on the first night they went out—drove to San Francisco, had a fish dinner, walked around a block of elegant food and clothes shops in a building that had recently been a chocolate factory but was now called a square—she took off her sock while they were undressing—“You mind if I get right under the covers,” she said when he started kissing and fondling her, “I’m cold?”—and pointed out the hole to him and said “This is my limp raison for baying . excuse me, I thought that’d be funnier than it came out sounding. Anyhow, I thought you wouldn’t, when you glided your lips up and down my body, which I hope you’ll do, want to discover it on your own and possibly get frightened. You did show unusual restraint or disinterest in not further pursuing the question of its existence. I got my foot trampled by a truck and this little crater is where they had to operate to save it.” At first her hole mortified her, she said, but she showed how used to it she got by sticking her forefinger in about half an inch and he said “Stop, take it out, and please don’t ever do that when I’m here or you might never see me again,” and she said she’ll cover it with a Band-Aid in bed or always keep a sock on if it really repulses him so much and he said “One or the other, but maybe you should. Blood, shit, gore, I don’t know why, but nothing like that makes me squeamish when it’s on someone, and I can probably stick my hands in all of it. Just holes like what’s left in the neck after a tracheotomy and the ones where someone’s skull’s been drilled to get at the brain or the two or three I’ve seen where all that’s left of the eye is the socket it was in.” She was conventionally pretty, didn’t do anything it seemed to take care of her body so it was kind of flabby, wasn’t a good lovemaker. She wanted lots of things done to her she’d read in Kama Sutra—type books but wouldn’t do anything to him except suck his earlobe halfheartedly for a few seconds or massage his shoulders, not even hold his penis. She berated him if he came before she did and he was through for the time being. “Hey, you have obligations,” and he’d say “Not when nature says no, for look at my fucking prick.” “Bastard,” she’d say, and he’d say “The only time you curse or are anything but gentle and understanding is when this happens; well, it shuts me down completely, so I’m going to sleep,” and she’d say “Go on, sleep, you motherfucker, and if it so happens, don’t wake up,” and he’d think if it wasn’t so late and he wasn’t so tired and he had a car to drive back to his place he’d get the hell out of there pronto and never come back, but in the morning she’d apologize, say something like “I must be hormonally out of joint or just sex-crazed when I get so close to liftoff and then have to abruptly stop, not that I’m blaming you—as you say, ‘nature,’” and be nice again and stroke his arm and say “If you want to, make love to me any way you wish and complete it when it’s most spontaneous or pleasurable for you to, but I’ll never act that way again.” But the abortion. He lived in a single room in a professor’s home with his own private entryway that couldn’t because of some fire regulation be locked and she’d show up lots of times, knock on his locked door—it could be two in the morning, once it was four—and say something like “I’ve been driving around for hours listening to radio music and late-night shows from as far away as Chicago—it must be almost daybreak there—and suddenly I felt lonely, do you mind?” or “Excuse me, Gould, don’t come to the door if you’re too sleepy to or you have a woman in there, but can you tolerate some company? Because of something scary [or ‘disturbingly erotic’] I read I wanted to be nestled in bed with someone and you’re the only man I’m balling these days. I know I must sound pathetic, even the use of that uncharacteristic ‘balling,’ which only hip simpletons say, so if you want just tell me ‘go away.’” They drove to San Jose for cheap Mexican dinners, San Francisco for cheap Japanese and Chinese dinners, over the mountain to Pescadero Beach to read and look for polished stones and grill hot dogs or hamburger steaks, did a number of things together for about three months, all in her car—he totaled his a month before
he met her and was now riding a borrowed one-speed bike—and then he said, he’d thought of saying it for weeks, then thought Hell, why not, this is how I think she expects me to be, up-front and on the level: “This thing between us, it’s not working, don’t you agree?” and she said “It is for me; we should give it some more time,” and he said “Well, it isn’t for me, that’s a fact,” and she looked sad and said “What is it, you’re not attracted to me?” and he said “It’s not that so much; in fact, not at all,” and she said “It’s not only my looks you don’t like but my body,” and he said “No, you’re quite pretty and exceptionally smart; it’s true—but whose is?—your body’s not that of an acrobat’s or ballerina’s, but you’re not heavy or flat-chested or with enormous thighs, and even if you were—” and she said “You also don’t like that I limp so badly,” and he said “Now that I can tell you doesn’t bother me one bit; in fact, I find how fast and much you get around courageous, or maybe that’s a word you hate, and if it is, I—” and she said “You would never touch or even look at my foot,” and he said “Why should I touch it—I mean, what’s that supposed to prove? And I’ve looked at it plenty, I think, the few times you left it uncovered—in the shower once, or twice, but not to stare at it; simply because it was in front of my puss so I looked, and so what?” and she said “Have you noticed, or the water could have been spraying too fast, that the hole closed?” and he said “Good, that’s wonderful, and I haven’t noticed, I’m sorry,” and she said “It hasn’t, but that just shows how much you’ve looked, though one day it might,” and he said “I hope so, I know how much the whole thing disturbs you,” and she said “You’re not spiritually or physically involved with me—forget intellect; that never counts for much after the first few minutes. But that’s what you’re saying—and emotionally too—that you don’t feel at all deeply toward me,” and he said “Maybe something like that,” and she said “Then why didn’t you come out with it months ago and we could have cut the whole stinking thing off from the beginning?” and he said “Because I didn’t know then and I’m still not precisely sure what it is that isn’t working and maybe never did,” and she said “So what am I to do? I’m precisely attracted and involved with you in all the ways you say you aren’t, even your intellect—that’s supposed to be for laughing, but you’re not—and perhaps enough for us both,” and he said “You know it doesn’t work that way,” and she said “Then this is the last time?” and he said “Though I hate to be, and I never was before, the one to say it to anyone, and maybe that’s the wrong thing to say, but yes, I think it’s best, if it’s okay with you, since the last thing I want to do is hurt you in any—” and she said “It isn’t okay, and you are hurting, and what you said before was not only the wrong thing but a rotten thing to say, so what do you say to all of that?” and he said “You know what I mean,” and she said “I not only know but I knew and correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s that there’s nothing I can say or do to stop it, isn’t that true?” and he said “I guess so,” and she said “Then okay, it’s over, I don’t feel the relief yet but I suspect that’ll come in due time; but you know, I’d hate going home alone, especially when I’d expected to stay, and worse, sleeping alone after hearing this, so would you object very much if I spent just one more night here?” and he said “It’s not a good idea,” and she said “Good idea, no idea—please, a prisoner’s last request—laugh laugh—and I won’t be asking for a last meal,” and he said “Good, that’s funny, and if staying here’s really what you want, all right. Though it’s very unlikely—I’m not sure, but is that what you meant by your last meal?—that we won’t make love,” and she said “That’s not what I want. And listen, I think my fondest memory of us—I can’t recall it exactly, but I think one of us was sick, so it must have been you, since I was the one who really enjoyed it—is when we just held each other through the entire night. I kept waking up and we were still face-to-face holding each other,” and he said “I don’t remember that,” and she said “I have it in my journals and will gladly show it to you if you want,” and he said “I believe you.” They made love. She always slept with no clothes, he too, and just being near her in bed—she’d made no move to him, seemed to be on her back with her eyes closed—gave him an erection. He didn’t think it was a good idea to make love and stuck it between his thighs, but it sprung out and hit her leg and she grabbed it for maybe the second or third time since he’d known her, said something he didn’t get all of but with “baby bonnet” and “smooth lil’ doll” in it, and so on. Then she got on top and said “I’m a-gonna abuse you, Señor Phallus, make you weep chili peppers, you bastardo, for the future rather than the past—how’s that for hopelessly imitation swagger?—but do new things to you I’ve never done, since this one’s supposed to be the finale and there are many things we pathetically haven’t tried,” and rode up and down on him a few minutes, he was sure they’d done that before, but his stomach began to ache so he grabbed her waist and started to slide her off and she flattened herself out on him, spread her legs and arms out as if she was going to do a belly flop off a high dive and he thought “Goddamn, what now?” for he’d popped out of her and she didn’t put him back, and scratched his shoulders and buttocks and legs and he said “Evelyn, that hurts,” but then thought it doesn’t hurt that much but let her think it did, maybe it’ll help her later in some way, and he said “Yes, this is memorable sex,” and she said “You’ve never talked once during it, but I’m glad, frivolous as what you said is.” Then she jiggled a bit and came, he was still out of her and he thinks not even semi-erect, and she said “Want me to minister to it in some way, I’ve still lots of kick and hot wind left,” and he said “No, I’m just sleepy and have been practically all day, that’s the only reason. Nothing to do with you—it was great.” He let her hold him as she fell asleep and then he turned over on his side. In the morning he pretended to sleep while she got out of bed and washed and dressed, then said “Oh, you up?” and got dressed and made the bed and put on his jacket and she said “Can’t I have a cup of coffee—for the road?” and he said “I’m sorry, thought you wanted to get out of here,” and made it, they read yesterday’s newspaper while they had coffee and toast, then he walked her to her car. She started crying the moment she got in it and he said “Don’t, please,” and indicated with his hand for her to wipe the tears away and she opened the window and said “I bet if I had a normal foot and no limp and hole we’d still be seeing each other or this wouldn’t be the last time—maybe only the penultimate one; say, how about it being that, Gould—please?” and he said “You really put me in a position,” and to himself, She’s probably right, he wouldn’t give her up till something better came along or till he saw it was getting too risky sticking with her and that when he finally had to break it off it would hurt her even worse than it has today, and she would be a different person too without that limp and hole, not so sullen and abject and self-pitying and whatever else, for her whole psyche seems to be postulated on that foot, and the sex last night was the best he’s had with her so far, even if he didn’t ejaculate—at least she was up there and trying out things and acting free, but he said “Look, sometimes the guy leaves, sometimes the girl, that’s the way it is, so I’m saying I’ve been deep in the dumps about it too,” and she said “With me, it’s always the guy, though there haven’t been a whole lot of them,” and he said “Funny, because with me—well, not always and I’m sure, by a much wider margin and not just because you’re a woman, not always with you too,” and she said “That’s true. Though of course I could be lying there because I don’t want you to think I’m an utter loser and thus reduce my chances of ever getting together with you again, but you’ll never know unless you call me,” and she started the car and he walked away. When he heard it pulling out of the spot he turned around and waved but couldn’t tell if she saw him. She called two months later and he said “Hi, how are you?” and she said “Not so great. I aborted our fetus two days ago,” and he
said “Oh my goodness, God, I’m sorry, why didn’t you tell me before this?” and she said “You wouldn’t have cared,” and he said “Not so, I would have done something,” and she asked what, and he said “I don’t know, helped you with the abortion—money if you needed it—taken you to the doctor to have it, things like that,” and she said “You wouldn’t have wanted me to keep the baby and then married me, right?” and he said “Marriage? Why would you want to be married to me? I have almost no money; I don’t really know where I’m going after this year. I’m not ready for it by any measure, and a kid?—oh come on,” and she said “You’re a nice guy, intelligent, personable, have decent looks and in good clothes you’d be very presentable, and plenty of other things, and for me personally, particularly how I feel about you. I felt a lot, and it’s obvious I believe in you a lot too, and for some reason it also seemed you’d be a terrific father, loving, caring—” and he said “Maybe I would. They say good uncles make for good fathers, though I have no nieces or nephews, so why’d I say that?” and she said “You’re being clever, trying to take me out of my misery, and it was funny,” and he said “No, I said it seriously, so I must, as another one of my paternal virtues, be losing my marbles,” and she said “Anyhow, it wasn’t a real abortion, so there was no money involved, unless you want to help me make up for the three hours’ work I missed; I would have missed more but I stuck it out on the floor for as long as I could. Can I come over and talk?” and he said “Not right now; and there’s no one here, that’s not why. But ‘on the floor’ where?” and she said “Woolworth’s. I first found out I was pregnant when my period was late,” and he said “You mean you got suspicious,” and she said “So I got a test at a pharmacist’s—after other signs had appeared—and when it turned out positive I took something someone gave me—a drink to induce the abortion or miscarriage or anything you want to call it,” and he said “And it worked like that?” and she said “Not the first time. So I took it again and then realized—it’s supposed to take a day or so—that I had to be at work behind the counter, so like an idiot I went. I needed the money,” and he said “You should have called me,” and she said “And then it started happening—terrific cramps—maybe from the first time I took it, or the second, or both, but I had to go to the bathroom real bad and was also discharging,” and he said “Blood?” and she said “When I later looked in my underpants, everything. So I went, I was a mess before I even sat on the toilet, and the rest of it just swooshed out of me there. I tried to check what sex it was, didn’t have a clue from what I could observe of it, and flushed it down. An ignominious way to go, wouldn’t you say? Now I wish I had saved it, given it a backyard burial, but that wouldn’t be so good. Dog might dig it up and eat it, or worse, walk around with it and drop it at my feet as if he’d caught and killed it,” and he said “It’s no joke; it must have been terrible and physically painful for you; I’m sorry,” and she said “I felt sick after but told myself I wasn’t going to let this send me home—why should I lose good pay? Good? The lousy cheapskates but after a few hours I told them I had the flu, and left. I hope that won’t be the last time I get pregnant,” and he said “Why should it be? Look how easily you conceived this time? We went out for how long, a couple of months?” and she said “More than three, but it’s not as if we did it just once,” and he said “Anyway, you’re fertile. You took precautions and you still got pregnant, which either means, and I doubt you’d do this—you’re too much of a perfectionist—” and she said “Me? Not me. Miss Unperfectnik. But regarding what?” and he said “Your IUD device. About putting it in right,” and she said “The ‘D’ is for ‘device,’ and the device is always in, didn’t you know?” and he said “Sort of. But my point is that you had to have put it in right originally, being what I think you are—” and she said “The doctor does that, and then takes it out if you need a new one or it expels on its own or it’s irritating you,” and he said “But it didn’t expel, did it?” and she said “No, it’s still in there and feels fine,” and he said “But anyway, that you’re so fertile that you got pregnant despite the device. So at least you now know you can conceive, and against one of the most uncompromising obstacles, which has to be of some relief to you, unless it’s happened before,” and she said “It hasn’t, this was a first, and the good you see in it with that relief thing is too premeditatedly positive a notion for me—think right and ye shall be all right, and that sort of baloney—and I’d think for you too. Because you, do you feel any relief in knowing you can help conceive? Nah, you’ve probably got a chorus line of knocked-up women behind you,” and he said “Not that I know of,” and she said “So I’m your first, huh? Well, that’s something; you’ll always remember me. But some women I’ve heard of, and in their twenties, have had just one conception disruption like mine and were never able to conceive again. Doctors couldn’t explain it. It’s as though all their repro organs went down the toilet too, or wherever their predelivery took place—doctors’ offices’ waste containers, in trash bags out the window or in the incinerator. It would be horrible to imagine that this little guy of mine I flushed down was it, the very last of my unilluminated lonely line, since, I think I told you, I’m siblingless and so are my parents on both sides,” and he said “I’m sure it wasn’t,” and she asked why and he said “Just, I’m sure, because you’ll be at your procreative peak for years—why wouldn’t you be? you’re just that age. Meanwhile, if you’re not feeling well, anything I can do for you?” and she said “You won’t like this, I’m positive, but could you come see me? You can even sleep with me if you wish, not to make me pregnant. I’m not about to do one of those predictable bits: immediately after losing it, try to make up for it by getting another. No, it’s simply that I’m feeling extra sad today over losing it—” and he said “You wouldn’t have kept it, would you?” and she said “Probably yes; I’m hypocritically opposed to abortion, in addition to my fears that this was my last huzza. I also don’t have any present company to speak of—not even to speak to—so you’d be welcome,” and he said “You know that wouldn’t be any good,” and she said “You have another steady already?” and he said “If you must know, I haven’t had sex or, to be vulgar, even a handjob with anyone since you, and not because I haven’t wanted to. Just haven’t met anyone or anyone where it went that far.” She said “I could always come to your room if you still haven’t a car and it’d just be one last shot. I’m not exciting you with this chatter? It’s not doing a thing to you?—be honest,” and he said “No; I’ve got an erection, but what’s that? I don’t want to say I also get them when cats jump in my lap or I’m holding a particularly heavy book there for a few minutes. I’m sorry for what happened to you, I wish I could have done better by you, I don’t know what the hell didn’t happen with me in relation to you, but it didn’t and that’s all I can say,” and she said “Okay, I like that honesty, and I thought you’d want to know about baby Gil—they have gills, you know; and about our getting together a final time, I felt I ought to at least give it a whirl. I wish you felt the same for me as I do for you,” and he said “I wish that was so too,” and she said “But you don’t,” and he said “I suppose not,” and she yours?” He still hadn’t had sex since he was last with her, but he’d reject the offer, tactfully, saying “No, thank you, I’m all tied up with work these days, but that’s very kind of you.” And if she pleaded? How would she plead? “Please, cut the bull, I just want to get fucked, it has nothing to do with you except you’re the only guy I know around here that way—wear a mask, even, what do I care?—all I want is your goddamn penis in me and then you can buzz off and never come by or call again, and I won’t contact you again either.” Or nicer, politer, but he’d reject it no matter what, and she’d never plead and he doubts she’d ask. But here’s something: what if she had come up to him last November right around the time of the abortion and said “I want to have your baby I’m pregnant with, will you go along with me?” He would have asked, what does she specifica
lly mean will he go along with her, and she would have explained, and he would have said “No, because the truth is I don’t want to live with anyone I might have to support or take care of in any way and I also don’t want to be responsible for a child—I don’t have the money or time.” Suppose she’d then have said “All right, then I want to have the baby but not with you; you don’t have to see me again or the baby ever, not even in the hospital after it’s born. But will you at least give me your moral support—your financial support I promise never to ask you for and will even sign an affidavit regarding that—and say you don’t mind my having it? I just want the child to know its father wasn’t against its birth, even if he wasn’t strongly for it either, and then just leave it to the future for you two to work that little issue out.” He would have said “Okay, sure, have it, I don’t see any problem—I’ll in fact come see you and it sometime, and maybe even in the hospital, if I’m still in the area and you wouldn’t mind. And if I ever make any money beyond what keeps me bordering on poverty, and again if you don’t mind, I’ll contribute to its upkeep.” Because he was beginning to want children, two of them, though not necessarily by the same woman. In fact, probably by two women, since he feels the courts would go after him for child support quicker if he had two by the same woman in one state. But he just wanted to say, or this was mostly it, “Yes, I’m a father,” and doesn’t think he’d be embarrassed at saying “And no, I was never a husband,” for he was already twenty-eight and the way he was going he didn’t think he’d have enough income in the next ten years to have kids any other way and he didn’t want to wait till he was forty or so to have his first one, if he’d be able to afford to have it even then. She sent him two tickets in May to the graduate theater department play she did the lighting for and had a small role in—“In case you want to bring a friend, gal or guy, but I’d love for you to see what I’ve done stagewise and am pretty proud of—not my acting: that’s always been bad.”—but he didn’t go. About a year later he got a letter from her mailed to his graduate department and forwarded to him. She’d left school, never got her masters, was back in Mass., had given up theater altogether and was now working as a housekeeper and applying to the American Studies programs of several grad schools, none in Cal., and rest assured: not because, as she’s heard, he’s still there. “After you didn’t attend the play I lit and acted passably in I tried out on myself lots of times what I’d say if we bumped into each other: ‘You’re not interested in what I do, then you’re not interested in me, and no doubt vice v. for both of us (after all, it was a big mirror I was doing this to, though it actually doesn’t hold true from me to you, but anyway), so nice knowing ya, Bucko, and take a flying leap!’ so then why’m I writing? Not to knock you. Probably to say that if I had bumped into you I never would have said those things: no guts, flair or bravado and I simply ain’t the censorious type. I also thought you might want to know why you never bump into me anymore or see me thermosing in the main caf, perhaps to give you additional liberty if you’ve been trying to steer clear of me the past year. As for Cal., I’ve had my fill of that empty self-absorbed state and don’t know how anyone can go through four nominal seasons without wearing an overcoat and galoshes or their equivalents and still call himself a healthy-headed human being.” She hoped he was well, and despite everything she’s said here she still thinks of him fondly, “Believe me. The only person I bear a grudge against is myself.” He wrote back saying he’d left grad school too but wasn’t planning to apply to any other kind of program no matter how enticing another fat stipend seemed—he just wasn’t a student, something he knew since first-year grade school, so he’d continue to work at what he was persistently pursuing so unsuccessfully and see if he got lucky enough and also a miracle occurred, where it eventually came out half okay. As for housekeeping, he was doing lots of it these days, as he was living with an extremely indolent, indefatigably sybaritic woman—“picture the most famous odalisque picture you can picture and you’ll picture her, except she has pigtails and bangs—and her rambunctious, untidy son from her first husband. Did that sound as if I’m her current one? I’m not, nor does she plan to remarry or rekid by anyone, so who knows how long, considering my ballooning penchant for pahood and dandling and so on, I’ll be living with her and grooming her sumptuous home. You’ll also be surprised, since I don’t think you ever thought of me as hardworking and resourceful, that for dough I have three jobs, as this woman and boy are essentially living off me and the monthly pittance her ex sends for the kid every other month: artist model around ten clockwatching hours a week, substitute teacher in several high schools till the state board boots me out when it learns I haven’t the ed credits I said I did, and my main labor: thirty working hours a week at a Woolworth’s in the area but not the one you slaved at, and mostly doing stock, and I didn’t mention that place to bring back bad memories for you. I’m tremendously sorry for what you had to go through alone a year ago and how terribly I behaved and I hope you’ve forgiven me or will sometime soon.” She didn’t answer his letter and he never wrote her address down, thinking she’d write back and he’d get it then, and a few years later he tried recalling her last name when he met someone her age from the same town she grew up in, but couldn’t. He tried describing her, it didn’t work, so he said “Maybe this will help you remember her. She had a large open hole in her left foot, I think, or maybe it was the right, from an accident in childhood, she said—a car or truck ran over it. It was about the size of a quarter and was on the top part of her foot—what do you call it? the instep—a hole so wide and deep I swear you could almost see flesh and bone in it, so something you would have noticed if she wore sandals with thin straps or was barefoot,” but this woman, who looked as if she was getting sick because of his description, kept shaking her head no.
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