The Hours

Fool, Mary thinks, though she struggles to remain charitable or, at least, serene. No, screw charity. Anything’s better than queers of the old school, dressed to pass, bourgeois to the bone, living like husband and wife. Better to be a frank and open asshole, better to be John fucking Wayne, than a well-dressed dyke with a respectable job.

Fraud, Clarissa thinks. You’ve fooled my daughter, but you don’t fool me. I know a conquistador when I see one. I know all about making a splash. It isn’t hard. If you shout loud enough, for long enough, a crowd will gather to see what all the noise is about. It’s the nature of crowds. They don’t stay long, unless you give them reason. You’re just as bad as most men, just that aggressive, just that self-aggrandizing, and your hour will come and go.

They settle into another silence, one that is neither intimate nor particularly uncomfortable. Here she is, then, Clarissa thinks; here is the woman from Richard’s poetry. Here is the lost mother, the thwarted suicide; here is the woman who walked away. It is both shocking and comforting that such a figure could, in fact, prove to be an ordinary-looking old woman seated on a sofa with her hands in her lap.

And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway anymore; there is no one now to call her that. Here she is with another hour before her.

“Come in, Mrs. Brown,” she says. “Everything’s ready.”