REV ROAD - PART THREE CHAPTER SEVEN

April Johnson Wheeler

watched her husband’s face withdraw

The cigarette broke and shredded in her fingers;

she let it drop into the ash tray and used both hands to grip the telephone

It was weak with hate,

like all the other abortive letters

lying very still under the still water for a long time,

like a patient in therapy

The only real mistake, the only wrong and dishonest thing

was ever to have seen him as anytging more than that

by telling easy agreeable lies

of her own

earnest and sloppy and

full of pretension

From a distance,

all children’s voices sound the same

How golden the sunlight shone on his hair

and his laugjing face

she felt she ought to study thm for a long time, to commit them to memory

as a ways man’s feet ought to look

April pretended to think it was unbearably funny too,

though she hadn’t heard the first part

And then, hating herself for it

she began acting like a baby

so few as to allow no possible

elaborations or distortions of meaning

that if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true

it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone