Fathermucker by Greg Olear Page A

a fellow-traveler in the desert who grouses about the heat and bums water from your canteen.
    Neither Maude nor Emma is responsible for Haven’s agony, thank God. What happened was, he dropped the toy he was playing with—an oversized plastic Thomas engine that bleeps and chuffs and plays the irritating theme song they’re two they’re four they’re six they’re eight ; at home, he doesn’t have toys like that, so it’s a playdate novelty—on the floor, and was spooked by the noise shunting trucks and hauling freight when it hit the polished hardwood. Rather than redirect him by introducing a new red and green and brown and blue toy, or a new activity, a new anything, or just ignoring his blatant attention-grab, Gloria’s reacted in the worst possible way, which is to say, like Jackie Kennedy in Dealey Plaza.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Haven?” she cries, cradling him in her arms (the tableau of mother and woman-haired child suggests a pietà, only with a midget Jesus wearing a hipster Nirvana T-shirt). “Oh, it’s so awful that that happened. You must be so upset!”
    Even Maude and Emma, who are closer to three than four, regard Our Lady of the Sorrows with puzzlement. Even the preschoolers know that Gloria, like the plastic surgeon who did Heidi Montag’s boobs, is blowing things way the fuck out of proportion.
    Before Gloria begins rending garments, Jess, who has two kids and therefore understands the Parenting 101 concept of redirection, intervenes. “Maybe it’s time to have a snack. Who wants some cookies?”
    This snaps Haven out of his sympathy ploy. At once he stops with the histrionics, breaks away from his Mater Dolorosa ’s tentacles, and follows Jess into the kitchen, a spring in his step, leaving me alone in the great room with the forgotten Thomas train and Gloria. She arches her eyebrow and gives me a sly grin. “So . . . McDonald’s?”
    Rather than defend my choice of restaurant—in three weeks, I’ll be thirty-seven goddamn years old; do I really need to justify my decision to have an Egg Fucking McMuffin?—I fib. “I needed more coffee.”
    â€œThey have coffee?”
    â€œThey have coffee. It’s pretty good.” I give the Thomas train a kick. “Not as good as Dunkin’ Donuts, but better than Starbucks.”
    This is a mistake. Although New Paltz has a McDonald’s, a Burger King, a Subway, a Blimpie, and the two aforementioned coffee places, our many and vocal radical-Leftist citizens, veritable Jedi knights in their opposition to Evil Empires, are particularly outspoken about their contempt for chains of any kind. Chains, you see, are the bonds of our corporate oppressors.
    â€œI get my coffee at Mudd Puddle,” Gloria says. “Fair trade.”
    â€œMcDonald’s has fair trade coffee,” I tell her. I don’t know if this is the case—it’s probably not; McDonald’s would buy coffee beans picked by orphaned Sumatran child prostitutes if it were half a cent cheaper a bushel—but I’m banking on the fact that she won’t know enough or care enough to call my bluff. My stratagem works.
    â€œI’ll have to keep that in mind,” she says.
    â€œThey have Apple Dippers, too. Pre-packaged, pre-sliced apples. You know. For the kids.”
    â€œHaven, honey, no mouth. No mouth!”
    Her pride and joy has Ecce Homo returned, cookie in hand, but it’s one of his long tresses that has found its way into his hungry maw. I’ll cut his hair when he wants to cut it , Gloria’ll tell us, although it’s pretty clear to me that he’d at least appreciate a trim. He’s forever blowing his stray hairs away from his nose or pushing them out of his face or putting them in his mouth and slurping on them, like he’s doing now. Sometimes my crotchety neighbor, Bill—a divorced man in his late fifties who still