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VIVIAN / David Ray Vivian Nowlen didn't show up for the high school reunion nor is that picture framed of her at her perfect age just becoming a woman with her lovely freckles, standing at her ironing board ironing the blouse she wasn't wearing nor was that picture ever taken by a boy who peeked through gold to find her his dream woman at the edge of town, her house fringed with weeds. Through a pin's convenient hole that God had left he learned she also bathed, in a grey washtub with handles he would gladly lift and was rosy as, he later learned, Renoir's women were. Perhaps Renoir went to a twenty year reunion of his models and some showed up and another didn't perhaps the favorite never did, whom someone took for his own wall and ironing board. The Missouri Review ยท 27 ...

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