State of Grace Read Online Free PDF Page A

better than God himself.”
    “I do,” Father says. “You’re my pretty darling dreaming girl and I was with you at your hour of birth and know all about you.” And he looks at me so sadly disappointed, with a bleak cheer and a meek look. He brushes his long fingers against my cheek, removing, he intimates by gesture, a bit of sleep from my eyelashes. “What’s your liberty worth, bringing us both to sorrow?”
    I look hungrily at the basket of fruit which is, for somereason, in the motel room on the window sill, crowding the Venetian blinds. Father brought it. The sort of thing you give to dim relations or people in sick chambers. Bananas, apples, grapes, pears, oranges, all injected with coloring, lying dumpled in their bed of paper grass.
    Also included is a bottle of champagne. Father doesn’t drink himself, but he will open it for me.
    We are sitting in Fred’s Sunnyside Motel. Outside, Fred is examining his collection of air plants, which are hanging everywhere.
    Father says, “The truth removes the need for freedom.”
    “Oh yes, Daddy, I agree.”
    “What could you be looking for, darling, to go away from me?”
    I’m brief. “I’ll tell you, Daddy, I was looking for love.”
    He’s looking at me so kindly, but he’s weary from the long train ride. One eye closes, but the severed one remains and wanders over me with a vague and sleepy touch. If only I knew now what I knew so long ago … And what could one expect from one’s own father’s gazing? It’s the touch of a shadow on the papered walls of the mind. He shakes his head so slowly, I know that I could capture it on film and I fumble for the camera which is all I’ve brought along. Just me and my broken camera for I’ve come into this room ownerless as a newborn babe. I had to brush my teeth with mine own finger, I had to trim my nails on the concrete wall, and I’m sitting here in my underwear, for all my little washables are hanging to dry on the shower rod.
    Oh, he looks at me so generously. If I could only get this on film! The development of trysts. One could make a fortune, once the processes were perfected. I have my camera but there’s fungus in the lens—parabolas of muttony fur both hidden and revealed—which comes from living in the damp, too close to the sea. I still carry it about with me, hoping helplessly that it might correct itself. Even the filmin it is no good. It’s dated. I was duped. BUY ME FIRST, I’M RIPE . I always do. I have a conscience. I bought it from a failing store, from a failing little man, all blond in the face and the head from his liver, shaking like an aspic as he bagged my purchases. Six rolls and a 35mm used Yashika and all of it useless. The moment I walked out of the store, that film was past its prime and wouldn’t print a buttered muffin. And from what I haven’t heard, this happens all the time.
    Next door, a toilet flushes and there’s a giggle and a rustle. We’ve seen them both, from Number 6, two grinning teens, wearing the same outfits, goofy Geminis. What a job in these places, just to keep the plumbing in repair!
    Father steps up very close to me. I feel the chill from his frozen eye and he says, “You’ll only do harm here, sweet. This is a terrible town, a town of waste and hate. I saw it immediately. Something is going to go wrong here. I can see the expectation on their faces. Why did you stop here?”
    “I was going to go on.”
    “You were waiting for me.” Father puts his hand on my hair. “I took care of you. You were such a lovely child. I used to wash and brush your hair. You always asked me to brush your hair. Would you like me to do that now?”
    “I was waiting to go on,” I say.
    “You come back with me. There’s no place to go on to. It’s all happened. They’re all dead, our little family, all gone.” He strokes my hair. He wraps it around his fist. “We only have one life,” he says tonelessly.
    “I haven’t had mine yet.”
    “You’re my sweet