Lucinella by Lore Segal

Author:Lore Segal [Segal, Lore]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-61219-258-1
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2012-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

For young Lucinella, in her room at the head of the stairs, getting dressed is an intellectual act and her new housecoat the statement of an aesthetic principle undermined by another side of a different argument. Its silk being pure is a virtue sine qua non—young Lucinella would never wear any artificial put-on—but its being silk, and for breakfast, embarrasses her. Moreover, she has cut the phony golden button off and hasn’t found an honest one to keep her held together.

In her despair young Lucinella leans her head into her hands and smiles. She laughs out loud as her dilemma shapes itself into an anecdote. She needs someone to tell it to.

Young Lucinella comes down the stairs holding the front edges of her housecoat in a fist to cover her bosom. She stands in the kitchen door. “Does anyone have a pin or a piece of string?”

“Good morning, Lucinella,” Zeus and I say.

“How did you know it’s me?” she mumbles.

“What?” Zeus inclines his head.

“What’s the use of my new housecoat?” says young Lucinella, who exposes the comic turns she discovers in her mind the way a prettier flirt flashes a knee or unbuttons a breast, with the same shy, brave hope of connecting her eyes with another’s, preferably male, if not, mine will do, and in case neither of us is going to return her smile (in which case she hopes we will be so good as not to notice she has offered it) she bends to pick up the passing college cat and hides her long nose in its fur. She presses a passionate cheek against the fiercely struggling body, which bends into a U and bites her on the nose.

“Look at the time!” I say.

“You’re leaving?” cries young Lucinella, and rises too. She dumps the cat.

“I have to go and write my opening statement for the symposium tonight.”

“Don’t you want breakfast?” Zeus asks young Lucinella, who raises her eyes to where his eyes are looking pleasantly at her, and flees up the stairs close on my heels.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.