Or, if you stretched your imagination a little, a straw.

Jessie stuck it in her mouth, trying to hold the crooked folds together with her teeth. When she had it as firmly as she thought she was going to get it, she began feeling around for the glass again.

Stay careful, Jessie, Don’t spoil it all with impatience now!

Thanks for the advice. Also for the idea. It was great-I really mean that, Now, however, Id like you to shut up long enough for me to takemy shot. Okay?

When her fingertips touched the smooth surface of the glass, she slid them around it with the gentleness and caution of a young lover slipping her hand into her boyfriend’s fly for the first time.

Gripping the glass in its new position was a relatively simple matter. She brought it around and lifted it as far as the chain would allow. The last slivers of ice had melted, she saw; tempus had gone fugiting merrily along despite her feeling that it had stopped dead in its tracks around the time the dog had put in its first appearance. But she wouldn’t think about the dog. In fact, she was going to work hard at believing that no dog had ever been here.

You’re good at unhappening things, aren’t you, tootsie-wootsie?

Hey, Ruth-I’m trying to keep a grip on myself as well as on thedamned glass, in case you didn’t notice. If playing a few mind-gameshelps me do that, I don’t see what the big deal is. just shut up for awhile,okay? Give it a rest and let me get on with my business.

Ruth apparently had no intention of giving it a rest, however. Shut up.” she marvelled. Boy, how that takes me back-it’s better thana Beach Boys oldie on the radio. You always did give good shut up,Jessie-remember that night in the dorm after we came back from yourfirst and last consciousness-raising session at Neuworth?

I don’t want to remember, Ruth.

I’m sure you don’t, so I’ll remember for both of us, how’s that for adeal? You kept saying it was the girl with the scars on her breasts thathad upset you, only her and nothing more, and when I tried to tell youwhat you’d said in the kitchen-about how you and your father hadbeen alone at your place on Dark Score Lake when the sun went out in1963, and how he’d done something to you-you told me to shut up.When I wouldn’t, you tried to slap me. When I still wouldn’t, yougrabbed your coat, ran out, and spent the night somewhere else-probablyin Susie Timmel’slittle fleabag cabin down by the river, the one we usedto call Susie’s Lez Hotel. By the end of the week, you’d found some girlswho bad an apartment downtown and needed another roomie. Boom, asfast as that… but then, you always moved fast when you’d made upyour mind, Jess, I’ll give you that. And like I said, you always gavegood shut up.

Shu-

There! What’d I tell you?

Leave me alone!

I’m pretty familiar with that one, too. You know what hurt me themost, Jessie? It wasn’t the trust thing-I knew even then that it wasnothing personal, that you felt you couldn’t trust anyone with the storyof what happened that day, including yourself. What hurt was knowinghow close you came to spilling it all, there in the kitchen of the NeuworthParsonage. We were sitting with our backs against the door and our armsaround each other and you started to talk. You said, “I could never tell,would have killed my Mom, and even if it didn’t, she would have lefthim and I loved him. We all loved him, we all needed him, they wouldhave blamed me, and he didn’t do anything, not really.” I asked you who didn’t do anything and it came out of you so fast it was like you’dspent the last nine years waiting for someone to pop the question. “Myfather,” you said. “We were at Dark Score Lake on the day the sun wentout.” You would have told me the rest-I know you would-hut thatwas when that dumb bitch came in and asked, “Is she all right?” As ifyou looked all right, you know what I mean? Jesus, sometimes I can’tbelieve how dumb people can be. They ought to make it a law that youhave to get a license, or at least a learner’s permit, before you’re allowedto talk. Until you pass your Talker’s Test, you should have to be a mute.It would solve a lot of problems. But that’s not the way things are, andas soon as Hart Hall’s answer to Florence Nightingale came in, you closedup like a clam. There was nothing I could do to make you open up again'.although God knows I tried.

You should have just left me alone! Jessie returned. The glass of water was starting to shake in her hand, and the makeshift purple straw was trembling between her lips. You should have stoppedmeddling! It didn’t concern you!

Sometimes friends can’t help their concern, Jessie, the voice inside said, and it was so full of kindness that Jessie was silenced. I lookedit up, you know, I figured out what you must have been talking aboutand I looked it up. I didn’t remember anything at all about an eclipseback in the early sixties, hut of course I was in Florida at the time, anda lot more interested in snorkeling and the Delray lifeguard-I had themost incredible crush on him-than I was in astronomical phenomena. Iguess I wanted to make sure the whole thing wasn’t some kind of crazyfantasy or something-maybe brought on by that girl with the horrible burns on her bazooms. It was no fantasy. There was a total solar eclipse in Maine, and your summer house on Dark Score Lake would have been right in the path of totality. July of 1963. Just a girl and her Dad,watching the eclipse. You wouldn’t tell me what good old Dad did toyou, hut I knew two things, Jessie: that he was your father, which wasbad, and that you were ten-going-on-eleven, on the childhood rim ofpuberty…and that was worse.

Ruth, please stop. You couldn’t have picked a worse time to startraking up all that old-

But Ruth would not be stopped. The Ruth who had once been Jessie’s roommate had always been determined to have her say every single word of it-and the Ruth who was now Jessie’s headmate apparently hadn’t changed a bit.

The next thing I knew, you were living off-campus with three littleSorority Susies-princesses in A -line jumpers and Ship “n” Shore blouses,each undoubtedly owning a set of those underpants with the days of theweek sewn on them. I think you made a conscious decision to go intotraining for the Olympic Dusting and Floor- Waxing Team right aroundthen. You unhappened that night at the Neuworth Parsonage, you unhappened the tears and the hurt and the anger, you unhappened me. Oh, westill saw each other once in awhile-split the occasional pizza and pitcherof Molson’s down at Pat’s-hut our friendship was really over, wasn’tit? When it came down to a choice between me and what happened to youin July of 1963, you chose the eclipse.

The glass of water was trembling harder.

“Why now, Ruth?” she asked, unaware that she was actually mouthing the words in the darkening bedroom. Why now, that’swhat I want to know-given that in this incarnation you’re really apart of me, why now? Why at the exact time when I can least affordbeing upset and distracted?

The most obvious answer to that question was also the most unappetizing: because there was an enemy inside, a sad, bad bitch who liked her just the way she was-handcuffed, aching, thirsty, scared, and miserable-just fine. Who didn’t want to see that condition alleviated in the slightest. Who would stoop to any dirty trick to see that it wasn’t.