Me and My Baby View the Eclipse (23 page)

“See?” Margaret says gravely.

“That's
amazing
,” Raymond says.

Sharon, watching them, thinks she will die. But Raymond leaves before the boys get home, and Margaret doesn't mention him until the next afternoon. “He was nice,” Margaret says them.

“Who, honey?” Sharon is frying chicken.

“That man who was here. Who was he?” Margaret asks again.

“Oh, just nobody,” Sharon says. Because it's true. Her affair with Raymond Stewart is over now as suddenly and as mysteriously as it began. Sharon aches with loss. When she tells Raymond, he'll be upset, as she is upset, but he'll live, as she will. He'll find things to do. He has just been given the part of Ben in the Shady Mountain Players production of
The Glass Menagerie
, for instance, a part he's always wanted. He'll be okay. Sharon plans to say, “Raymond, I will never love anyone in the world as much as I love you.” This is absolutely true. She loves him, she will love him forever with a fierce sweet love that will never die. For Raymond Stewart will never change. He'll grow older, more eccentric. People will point him out. Although their mothers will tell them not to, children will follow him in the street, begging him to talk funny and make faces. Maybe he'll have girlfriends. But nobody will ever love him as much as Sharon—he's shown her things. She knows this. And oh, she'll be around, she'll run into Raymond from time to time—choosing Leonard's new business cards, for instance, when Leonard gets another promotion, or making up the Art Guild flier, or—years and years from now—ordering Margaret's wedding invitations.

Lee Smith
is the author of fifteen works of fiction, including
Oral History, Fair and Tender Ladies
, and
Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger
. She has received many awards, including the North Carolina Award for Literature—and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; her novel
The Last Girls
was a
New York Times
bestseller as well as winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in North Carolina.