Women Drinking Benedictine (26 page)

It was to have been glorious. My mother saw her trip over the fifty-foot Tahquamenon Falls not as a stunt or a suicide run but as a quest—something she had searched for, something she wanted—and I could find no reason to stop her. This is not a story of my innocence. I knew exactly what she was doing. But like my mother says, it's all a question of where you're positioning yourself. Even with the roar of the rapids giving you a dry cotton mouth, your hands have to be clenched around the paddle; eyes straight ahead, leg muscles taut, but ready to go. And that's when you lean over, all your weight to one side, and ride straight into your fears.

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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The stories in this collection were originally published in the following:

Press:
“Three Fat Women of (Pittsburgh Just Visiting) Antibes”
New Letters:
“Women Drinking Benedictine”
Alaska Quarterly Review:
“We're in Meadville”
Red Rock Review:
“Me and Danno Booking 'Em Good”
River Styx:
“Figures on the Shore”
River City Review:
“This Month of Charity”
High Plains Literary Review:
“Awaken with My Mother's Dreams”

The author is grateful to Carnegie Mellon University and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for their generous support. And for ever-faithful friends-Gerry Costanzo, Mathilde Doubinsky, Keya Ganguly, Marty Karabees, Tim Haggerty, Chuck Kinder. And for Jim Zafris, who helped Nancy find the towel hanging on the fence in Rigny Usse.

Copyright © 1998 by Sharon Dilworth

Cover design by Steven Seighman

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