The Sun in Your Eyes by Deborah Shapiro Page A

said so. It was in her eyes. Just a flicker of a flash. I probably should have been nervous, too. It’s only right to be nervous in the face of something so cosmic. I can see you making a face, but it’s no joke. With Linda, it’s completely cosmic. It just fucking is.
    When we got back to L.A., my wife (mah wife, yessir) set this writer friend of hers on me. I talked a whole lot to this lady and now I think I’m going to regret it. She reminds me of a matchstick. A twig, flat, flat, flat, and then up there at the top is her ignitable mind. I liked her intensity at first. Sort of clarifying, the appeal of someone who has your number. But then it got exhausting. She’s going to make a fool of me. She’s got this bright disdain. That’s her lens, and Linda and I are soft and ridiculous through it. Well, fine. We are soft and ridiculous. But not where it counts. I know where it counts. Here’s what I wonder. Does Patti Driggs ever feel anything when she listens to music? Anything other than a drive to explain it away? I don’t think she needs music to show her who she is. I don’t think she needs it to get through. I don’t think, for her, it’s like fucking, or even like a fucking cigarette. Gosh, you know there’s this health-nut drug dealer my manager is pals with and he’s always on me to quit smoking. He’ll come over with a loaf of yeast-free bread, some bottle of weird juice, and a bag of psilocybin mushrooms. But oh, those cigarettes have got to go, man! All right, now you can make your face.
    Please take it easy, Del. Call or write when you can.
    Yrs for yrs,
    Jesse
    I had never seen a letter of Jesse’s and I didn’t know why but out of all of it—the description of his wedding to Linda, his acute, knowing read of Patti Driggs—it was that “Gosh” of his that really brought him to life for me.
    â€œOh, I know,” said Lee. “You should hear Aunt Delia talk. It’s all ‘Gosh!’ and ‘Golly!’ It’s like no matter how fucked up things got, she never stopped being a well-mannered Southern belle. Maybe that’s what’s fucked up about her.”
    â€œHow is she fucked up, exactly?”
    â€œPretty much like the rest of the Parrishes were. In and out of places since she was seventeen. Substance abuse. Depression. Manic depression. They were all alcoholics, you know, on Jesse’s mother’s side. It’s kind of unbelievable. Like it’s almost too on the nose or something. I knew my father’s father shot himself when my dad was a kid. But I didn’t know how Southern Gothic it all was. Do you know what the family did? They had a party. Every year his mother’s mother threw herself a lavish birthday celebration at their home. But by home I mean mansion. This big white house on a lake among the pine trees. They would put up a tent for the evening—all elegant. So my grandfather kills himself and my great-grandmother just goes ahead and has her party as planned. Jesse and Delia were out there in their finest, watching everyone, their mother included, get progressively more hammered, until one of the servants came to take them inside to get ready for bed. Delia told me she and my dad didn’t know it was suicide until they were grown. Hunting accident, they were told. Delia is the only one left now. I never met any of the others. It doesn’t even seem real to me. But sometimes my father barely seems real to me. Which I guess is the whole point of this, right?”
    She pulled over and though no official signage marked the spot where we’d stopped, it was obvious where we were.
    â€œHow did you know where this was?” I asked.
    â€œEducated guess.”
    The shoulder began again after dropping off precipitously. To the right, the road bordered a high wall of blasted rock. To the left and behind us, a guardrail curved along a steep ravine above the stream