by
Jeffrey Eugenides
(editor)
Again he thought of Hilda. He thought of her wiry, pasty limbs and the way she had of snorting. Sometimes when they were watching the television she ’d suddenly want to sit on his knee. She’d get worse as she grew older; she ’d get scrawnier; her hair, already coarse, would get dry and grey. He enjoyed the evenings when she went out to the Club or to her friends the Fowlers. And yet he wasn’t being fair because in very many ways she did her best. It was just that you didn’t always feel like having someone on your knee after a day’s work.
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