.2.

November 1954

The last words of John’s introduction to his study of the blind poet—ones Elaine had typed before her departure for New York, stayed with her the whole time. Perhaps not verbatim—but anyhow, as the cab turns into Hemlock Street they repeat once more, as food rejected by the stomach does, all chewed up into acidic little bits:I have often regretted . . . the choice of a subject . . . which gave so little play to the gracious sentiments of generous appreciation . . .

Ridiculous! The truth is he shares with his chosen subject a great pleasure in being peevish, ungrateful, and most especially ungenerous. Moreover, Elaine doesn’t think much choice was ever involved—there’s an elective affinity between the two Johns.

Now, looking up at the small and isolated suburban house from where she stands in the roadway, paying off the cabbie who’s driven her from the station, Elaine wonders: Who am I coming home to—and why? Why not simply keep going somewhere—anywhere!—else? The thought of some mad meter reading for a two-hundred-mile ride up to the Canadian border. . . and asylum, makes her smile internally,acidically . . . ulcerously.

The two-buck fare from the station—including tip!—will be noted and filed in the hushed repository of her husband’s highly efficient memory—and eventually it’ll be. . . held against me. Because he’s a parsimonious soul, is John—No! Not so—a grave misnomer: he’s a goddamn miser, a puritan to his core, who, far from suffering their straitened circumstances as his wife does, positively. . . relishes them.

His judgmental presence has, she feels sure, swelled in her absence to fill the entire house. The front room is all his head—his lips are Dalí cushions. His rear end squidges against the back wall of the kitchen. Fuseli’s artist is moved by the grandeur of similarly enlarged and fragmentary limbs. . . to despair. And even if she didn’t know her husband as well as she does