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with them, it was only in order to be able to study them as if they were natural history museum exhibits. Captain Ahab couldn't be blamed completely for this. That I wasn't worried about finding someone—this wasn't normal, according to the magazines. Even Anna Castleton had turned away from men only because they had proved to be so rotten.
    The way I felt now, I wasn't really interested in any aspect of life. Not in the least bit. Perhaps I really would live at home, my mother and I growing older, more set in our ways, graduating to higher degrees of oddness. Yet what would become of me when my mother grew too old to support us both? Abnormal. I tried to imagine myself decked in a purple fez, smoking a cigarette in a long ivory holder, sipping absinthe or crème de menthe and actually speaking to people—having what is known in books as "conversation." Murmured voices, the sound of brittle chatter across a ruby-lit nightclub. Yet my imagination couldn't pick up the words.
    There were so many ways to fill up a day, let alone a life. I didn't see how I could possibly cram anything—anyone—else into my hours. For example, one afternoon I spent three hours reviewing the contents of a sweepstakes brochure that came in the mail. It took hours to figure out the rules of the sweepstakes; apparently one had to purchase an item of jewelry for $4.99 before the entry form could be considered valid. Though I knew I'd never enter, I felt obliged to read about each item of jewelry: elegant "love" ring with genuine diamond; Pegasus pendant with genuine ruby and swirl of faux diamonds; Princess Di's famous sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring; the Diamond Wedding Cross, Symbol of Eternal Unity. The descriptions were written in a style as interesting to me as my feminist crit. courses had once been.
    In May I received a letter from Ray. He had been looking for me all semester, and had asked Yale for my address but they refused to give it out. As a last resort he decided to write to me in care of my old address, and the letter was forwarded.
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    All spring I had been gardening with a frenzy: the small fenced-in backyard hadn't been touched in years. On her days off my mother sat in the yard in a screened-in tent house from Sears—insects bit her even when no one else was bothered— and watched me at work. I spent hours in the sun, stooped over the splotchy faces of pansies, puffy foxgloves, inebriated day lilies, glossy as honey, quivering with palsy. The flowers trembled in the salt air. My fingers were raw, I refused to wear gloves and my hands were permanently veined with dirt.
    "Go ahead," my mother said. "Call him. You haven't spoken to anyone besides me in months."
    "I don't like him," I said. "He makes me feel like he's going to throw me into a coffin and walk around on top of it." But I called him up and asked him to dinner; he was ready to come out that night, but I told him to wait until the weekend.
    For his visit I made chili and corn bread and a salad; I supposed I really had been cut off for quite a while. I found myself going out of my way to dress up, make the dinner elegant. When my mother came home from work we went out to the yard to sit in the tent house. This was our ritual almost every night. I had a beer and she had a concoction made from soda, pina colada mix, and sometimes ice cream. So far she hadn't questioned me about what I wanted or planned to do. I knew she was glad to have me here. We sat in the light of the citronella candle—even inside the screen house insects somehow managed to bite her—and listened to the crickets and barking of dogs down the road. The aroma of the raspberry bushes in the yard and the sour potato smell from the potato fields a half-mile away filled the night air.
    At eight o'clock we ate our salad; Ray was supposed to have come at seven. My mother decided to eat her chili. "You and Ray can eat alone," she said.
    "Ma, I don't even like this human," I said.
    "Well, what did you ask