Across the wide Mississippi.
And yet never once having given a solitary thought to the cat we had called simply Cat at that time either, I do not believe.
Even alone in that empty house where so many memories died hard.
Although come to think about it I do not believe I ever once gave that cat a thought when I had the other cat that I could not decide upon a name for as well, actually.
Which is assuredly a curious thing to have done.
Or rather not to have done.
Which is to say to have not remembered that one's little boy had once not been able to decide upon a name for a cat while finding one's self in the very process of not being able to decide upon a name for a cat of one's own.
Well, perhaps it was not so curious.
There being surely as many things one would prefer never to remember as there are those one would wish to, of course.
Such as how drunk Adam had gotten on that weekend, for instance, and so did not even think to call for a doctor until far too late.
Well, or why one was not there at the house one's self, those same few days.
Being young one sometimes does terrible things.
Even if life does go on, of course.
Although when I say does go on, I should really be saying did go, naturally.
Having doubtless let any number of similar mistakes in tenses slip by before this, it now strikes me.
So that on any occasion at all when I have made such generalizations as if in the present they ought to have been in the past.
Obviously.
And even if it was nobody's fault that Lucien died after all.
Although probably I did leave out this part before, about having taken lovers when I was still Adam's wife.
Even if one forgets whether one's husband had become drunk because one had done that, or if one had done that because one's husband had become drunk.
Doubtless it may have been a good deal of both, on the other hand.
Most things generally being, a good deal of both.
And none of what I have just written having been what really happened in either event.
Since both of us were there, that weekend.
And could do nothing about anything, was all.
Because they move, too, Pasteur kept telling people.
Except later to make even more out of such guilts as one already possessed, of course.
And life did go on.
Even if one sometimes appeared to spend much of it looking in and out of windows.
Or with nobody paying attention to a word one ever said.
Although one continued to take still other lovers, naturally.
And then to separate from other lovers.
Leaves having blown in, or fluffy Cottonwood seeds.
Or then again one sometimes merely fucked, too, with whomever.
Time out of mind.
While next it was one's mother who died, and then one's father.
And one even took away the tiny, pocket sort of mirror from beside one's beautiful mother's bed, in which she and her image had both been equidistant from what lay ahead.
Although perhaps it was one's father, who had no longer wished her to perceive that distance.
Even if I have seen my mother's image in my own, in the one mirror in this house as well, incidentally.
On each of those occasions having always made the assumption that such illusions are quite ordinary, however, and come with age.
Which is to say that they are not even illusions, heredity being heredity.
Then again having never painted any sort of portrait of poor Lucien at all, on the other hand.
Though there is the framed snapshot of him in the drawer beside my own bed upstairs, of course.
Kneeling to pet Gato.
And he is obviously in my head.
But then what is there that is not in my head?
So that it is like a bloody museum, sometimes.
Or as if I have been appointed the curator of all the world.
Well, as I was, as in a manner of speaking I undeniably am.
Even if every artifact in it ought to have made me even more surprised than I turned out to be at not having thought about Magritte until I did, actually.
And so that even the very marker that Adam had promised to place beside the grave when I did not stay on for that had been in my head for all of those years before I went back, as well.
Without there ever having been a marker.
God, the things men used to do.
What do any of us ever truly know, however?
And at least as I started to say I certainly did finally understand what it was that had made me feel depressed.
Last Tuesday.
When all I had been doing was lying in the sun after the rain had stopped and thinking about cats, or so I believed.
Although to tell the truth I do not very frequently allow such things to happen.
By which I hardly mean thinking about cats.
What I am talking about is thinking about things from as long ago as before I was alone, obviously.
Even if one can hardly control one's thinking in such a way as not to allow anything that happened more than ten years ago to come into it.
Certainly I have thought about Lucien before, for instance.
Or about certain of my lovers, like Simon or Vincent or Ludwig or Terry.
Or even about as early as the seventh grade when I almost wanted to cry because I knew, knew, that Odysseus's dog could certainly catch that tortoise.
Well, and doubtless I have thought about the time when my mother was asleep and I did not wish to wake her and so wrote I love you with my lipstick on that same tiny mirror, as well.
Having intended to sign it Artemisia, except that I ran out of room.
You will never know how much it has meant to me that you are an artist, Helen, my mother having said, the very afternoon before.
But the truth of the matter being that I did not intend to repeat one bit of that just now, actually.
In fact when I finally did solve why I had been feeling depressed what I told myself was that if necessary I would simply never again allow myself to put down any of such things at all.
As if in a manner of speaking one were no longer able to speak one solitary word of Long Ago.
So that even if it were not until right at this instant that I were to first remember having written to Jacques Levi-Strauss, say, I would no longer put something like that down, likewise.
One scarcely having been able to write to Jacques Levi-Strauss or to any single other person unless it had been before one was alone, obviously.
Any more than Willem de Kooning could have been at one's studio to dictate such letters to begin with.
Or Robert Rauschenberg could have been there to correct their mistakes.
Or its, since there was really only the one letter.
With Xerox copies.
To all of those additional people.
Who were obviously still someplace, too.
Except that what I also realized in making such a decision was that it would certainly leave me with very little else to write about.
Especially if even in writing about such harmless items as pets I could still wind up thinking about meningitis, for instance. Or cancer.
Or at any rate feeling the way I did.
So that what I realized almost simultaneously, in fact, was that quite possibly I might have to start right from the beginning and write something different altogether.
Such as a novel, say.
Although there is perhaps an implication in those few sentences that I did not intend.
Well, which is to say that people who write novels only write them when they have very little else to write.
Any number of people who write novels no doubt taking their work quite seriously, in fact.
Although when I say write or taking, I should really be saying wrote or having taken, naturally.
Well, as I have only just explained.
But in either case doubtless when Dostoievski was writing about Rainer Maria Raskolnikov he took Rainer Maria Raskolnikov quite seriously.