Michael Malone - Weebly

disturbed (more precisely, dissolved) Mrs. Troyes, who
had said of her first affair, "I never knew where Hugo
left off and I began," and had said of her marriage, "Oh,
Blanchard could read me like a book, he always told
me I was his favorite book." Bereft of anyone to read
and so make sense of her, she could now while at home
keep in touch with herself only by listening to operas
and watching television. She watched it, she believed,
far too much and was ashamed of herself for doing so.
For years she had made resolutions to quit entirely, to
cut back, to watch only after dinner, to watch only
documentaries, only PBS. But the truth was, and she
had never confessed this even to Tracy Canopy, she
watched more and more. She watched during the day.
She watched soap operas daily. They provided her with
a wide circle of people in whose operatic dramas she
immersed herself, to whose tenacious wrestle with life
she attached her own quiet existence. She liked to
worry about these women on television. Their problems
seemed much more deserving than her own boring
concerns, just as Jonathan Fields's health (which was
excellent) appeared to her to require far more solicitous