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The Motel Room My mother had taken off the shirt-waist dress she had to wear to classes and slipped on bellbottoms to walk from the Baptist college to town. It could’ve been the ride he offered her to the drugstore in his shark-finned ‘58 Impala. It could’ve been the date he claimed to have later that night with a woman whose black hair fell to her waist, or it could’ve been the stiff cowboy hat she’d seen only on television. It was the Fourth of July, and most of the students had gone home. It could’ve been because he didn’t know about Ovid’s “Echo and Narcissus,” or because he didn’t go on his date with the racy woman; it could’ve been because he waited instead on his porch until after dark she passed again with a sailor. It couldn’t be because two days later he took her with a six-pack to a motel room for their first date, or because her stepmother sent her down from Chicago to Birmingham for her step-grandparents’ wedding anniversary, or because, while there, she had secretly enrolled in college, or because she had no one left but my father to please. 62 ...

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