Thing, thing, thing, thing--but what other word...
Thing, thing, thing, thing--but what other word was tolerable? They could not be forever in bondage to this fucking thing! For five years he had been waiting for just such a letter--it had to comeEvery night in bed he begged God to deliver it the following morningAnd then, in this amazing transitional year, 1973, the year of Dawn's miracle, during these months when Dawn was giving herself over to designing the new house, he had begun to dread what he might find in the morning's mail or hear each time he picked up the phoneHow could he allow the unexpected thing back into their lives now that Dawn had ruled out of their lives forever the improbability of what had happened? Leading his wife back to herself had been like flying them through a five-year stormHe had fulfilled every demandTo disentangle her from her horror, there wasn't anything he had omitted to doLife had returned to something like its recognizable proportionsNow tear the letter up and throw it awayPretend it never arrived
Because Dawn had twice been hospitalized in a clinic near Princeton for suicidal depression, he had come to accept that the damage was permanent and that she would be able to function only under the care of psychiatrists and by taking sedatives and an anti-depressant medication--that she would be in and out of psychiatric hospitals and that he would be visiting her in those places for the rest of their gucci hobo livesHe imagined that once or twice a year he would find himself sitting at the side of her bed in a room where there were no locks on the doorThere would be flowers he'd sent her in a vase on the writing desk; on a windowsill, the ivy plants he'd brought from her study, thinking it might help her to care for something; on the bedside table framed photographs of himself and Merry and Dawn's parents and brotherAt the side of the bed he himself would be holding her hand while she sat propped up against the pillows in her Levi's and a big turtleneck sweater and wept"I'm frightened, SeymourI'm frightened all the time He would sit patiently there beside her whenever she began to tremble and he would tell her to just breathe, slowly breathe in and out and think of the most pleasant place on earth that she knew of, imagine herself in the most wonderfully calming place in the entire world, a tropical beach, a beautiful mountain, a holiday landscape from her childhoodand he would do this even when the trembling was brought on by a tirade aimed at himSitting up on the bed, with her arms crossed in front of her as though to warm herself, she would hide the whole of her body inside the sweater--turn the sweater into a tent by extending the turtleneck up over her chin, stretching the back under her buttocks, and drawing the front across her bent knees, down over her legs, and beneath her feetOften she sat chanel quilted handbag tented like that all the time he was there"You know when I was in Princeton last? I do! I was invited by the governorHere, to Princeton, to his mansionI had dinner at the governor's mansionI was >twenty-two--in an evening gown and scared to deathHis chauffeur drove me from Elizabeth and I danced in my crown with the governor of New Jersey--so how did this happen? How have I wound up here? You, that's how! You wouldn't leave me alone! Had to have me! Had to marry me! I just wanted to become a teacher! That's what I wantedTo teach kids music in the Elizabeth system, and to be left alone by boys, and that was itI never wanted to be Miss America! I never wanted to marry anyone! But you wouldn't let me breathe--you wouldn't let me out of your sightAll I ever wanted was my college education and that jobI should never have left Elizabeth! Never! Do you know what Miss New Jersey did for my life? It ruined itI only went after the damn scholarship so Danny could go to college and my father wouldn't have to payDo you think if my father didn't have the heart attack I would have entered for Miss Union County? No! I just wanted to win the money so Danny could go to college without the burden on my dad! I didn't do it for boys to go traipsing after me everywhere--I was trying to help out at home! But then you arrivedYou! Those hands! Those shoulders! Towering over me with your jaw! This huge animal I hermes vintage couldn't get rid ofYou wouldn't leave me be! Every time I looked up, there was my boyfriend, gaga because I was a ridiculous beauty queen! You were like some kid! You had to make me into a princessWell, look where I have wound up! In a madhouse! Your princess is in a madhouse!"
For years to come she would be wondering how what happened to her could have happened to her and blaming him for it, and he would be bringing her food she liked, fruit and candy and cookies, in the hope that she might eat something aside from bread and water, and bringing her magazines in the hope that she might be able to concentrate on reading for even just half an hour a day, and bringing clothes that she could wear around the hospital grounds to accommodate to the weather when the seasons changedAt nine o'clock every evening, he would put away in her dresser whatever he'd brought for her, and he would hold her and kiss her good-bye, hold her and tell her he'd be seeing her the next night after work, and then he would drive the hour in the dark back to Old Rimrock remembering the terror in her face when, fifteen minutes before visiting hours were to end, the nurse put her head in the door to kindly tell MrLevov that it was almost time for him to go
The next night she'd be angry all over againHe had swayed her from her real ambitionsHe and the Miss America Pageant had put her off her programOn she went and he couldn't chanel jewelry necklace stop herWhat did any of what she said have to do with why she was suffering? Everybody knew that what had broken her was quite enough in itself and that what she said had no bearing on anythingThat first time she was in the hospital, he simply listened and nodded, and strange as it was to hear her going angrily on about an adventure that at the time he was certain she couldn't have enjoyed more, he sometimes wondered if it wasn't better for her to identify what had happened to her in 1949, not what had happened to her in 1968, as the problem at hand"All through high school people were telling me, 'You should be Miss America' I thought it was ridiculousBased on what should I be Miss America? I was a clerk in a dry-goods store after school and in the summer, and people would come up to my cash register and say, 'You should be Miss America' I couldn't stand itI couldn't stand when people said I should do things because of the way that I lookedBut when I got a call from the Union County pageant to come to that tea, what could I do? I was a babyI thought this was a way for me to kick in a little money so my father wouldn't have to work so hardSo I filled out the application and I went, and after all the other girls left, that woman put her arm around me and she told all her neighbors, 'I want you to know that you've just spent the afternoon with the next Miss America' I thought, 'This is all so white prada bag si