A Mother's Love by Mary Morris Page B

the shape of my hips. I gazed at this body again as if it belonged to me once more, as if it were being given back, slowly, a little at a time.
    Putting on a robe, I went to the window and sat down at my work table with the collage—the desert at night, the Day-Glo stars. Picking up a pencil, I started to draw. But I felt as if someone were watching me, so I looked up. She was standing in her window, trim body pressed against the sill, her hair down to her shoulders. Perhaps her husband was coming to get the kids and she was watching for him. Perhaps a lover was coming to visit and she didn’t want him to ring the bell. Then I feared that she was desperate, planning to jump. I waved a finger at her. “No, no,” I whispered. Now she looked my way. I put the pencil down and for thefirst time our eyes met. I’m not sure how long we stared at each other in this way.
    It was Matthew who had brought me east. I probably would never have come if he hadn’t gotten the teaching job at a respectable center for photography and said he was moving to New York. He had just done his Hall of Fame project. He’d driven around the American West for months (sometimes I went along), taking pictures of all the Halls of Fame in America—the Greyhound Hall of Fame, the Corn Growers, football, cowboys, stuntmen, American plastics industry, the Furriers of North America.
    The pictures varied, but usually they included the front of the building and a major organizer or representative. For example, for the Greyhound Hall of Fame he had a famous breeder and a very old greyhound—a scrawny thing with splotchy fur that had once had a great racing career. The Furriers stood in elegant fur coats, caressing small, nervous beasts. He was offered the teaching job right after that show, though not much has happened in his career since that.
    We had been together for a little more than a year in Los Angeles. Before I met Matthew, I had been with many men. My father and Dottie and I moved back to California when I was sixteen, and while they thought I was going out with friends, I was sneaking in and out of the arms of strangemen on hilltops, in bungalows, on the beaches of Los Angeles. I was the perfect student. I got straight A’s. And at night I slipped out and smoked dope with the Mexican gangs on the Venice Boardwalk. It was a kind of fix, something I had to have, though I was always attached to the ones who drifted away.
    Then I met Matthew. I wasn’t drawn to him at first. We met at the art college where Dottie had sent me years before and where I returned to take courses from time to time. He was the second person—after Dottie—who’d taken an interest in my art. He commented on what he saw, telling me what he would change. How he thought I could improve a design. He made his suggestions simply, never pressing a point. Yet his instincts about my work were always right. We saw each other for weeks, often spending our time together at galleries and museums, before we went to bed.
    When we began seeing each other, he was punctual, always on time. Within five minutes of when he said he’d be there, the buzzer would ring. If he was late, he’d phone with an explanation. This was important to me, because I never wondered in the early months whether he would show, whether he planned to leave.
    But gradually, his behavior began to change and this tied me to him more and more. He arrived a little late. Ten minutes, half an hour. Then he’d show up on time. Then forty-five minutes late.There were always good reasons—a car breaking down, a client’s last-minute request. But I found myself at home, waiting to hear from him, afraid that he would not arrive. Fear began to rule my feelings. First I had wanted Matthew because I knew he would not leave me. Then I wanted him because I knew he would.
    When Matthew decided to move east, I told him I wanted to go with him. Nothing was holding me in