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Conjecturing
- Northwestern University Press
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59 CONJECTURING Suppose I hadn’t stumbled over “dirigible” and had won the spelling bee, and suppose I hadn’t caught the chicken pox the day of the baton twirlers’ tryouts and lay in bed reading Gone with the Wind, my gleaming baton idle on the pillow, and if not for my uncle’s funeral I’d have auditioned and been Ophelia, driven mad with longing and frustration. Suppose instead of a demure good night, I’d murmured to the man who walked me home, Why not come in for a drink? And if only I hadn’t mailed that bilious letter, and all those times I spoke too hastily, what if I’d held my tongue, and when I kept a diffident silence, had spoken? Suppose, that morning, I hadn’t picked up the phone. What was that click? his wife said. Would everything have turned out differently? Ah, the mistakes, the remorse, the sore, raw delectations of regret, the glorious life I might have led, the succulent successes, the bold triumphal poems I might have written. ...