Fruit by Brian Francis

god,” she whispered.
    “In the living room, watching TV .”
    “What’s in the news?” Uncle Ed asked when he walked in. He was wearing a Detroit Red Wings baseball cap and a red Hawaiian shirt.
    “Not much,” Nancy said.
    “Not much,” I said.
    “Where’s Christine?” Uncle Ed plopped down in the brown velour chair with a grunt.
    “In her room.”
    “Where’s your dad?”
    “Downstairs.”
    “What are you watching?”
    “Some movie.”
    “Wonder what that football score is now.”
    “Do you want to check?”
    “Maybe just for a minute.”
    It’s the same every Sunday. Uncle Ed always manages to get the television turned to whatever sports game is on that afternoon. And it never is “just a minute” because a half hour will go by and then my mother will call “Supper!” and he’ll look up, kind of surprised and say, “Is it dinnertime already?” But no one really minds if he gets the TV because it means he talks less.
    I was a bit nervous that he was going to bring upJanice Appleby, but he didn’t say anything to me. Sometimes, I feel bad about being embarrassed by Uncle Ed. I mean, it’s not his fault he’s the way he is.
    “You can’t get a leopard to change his spots,” my mom said once. We were all waiting for Uncle Ed to show up for dinner. He was forty-five minutes late and the chicken in the oven had shrunk to the size of a chickadee. “If only Ed wasn’t Ed, things might have turned out all right for him.”
    She always says that if Uncle Ed lost weight, he could find someone else to do his laundry.
    “Not just cooking and cleaning and things like that,” she said. “But someone to take care of him, too. Emotionally, I mean. Someone to say ‘Ed, you put down that fork,’ or ‘Ed, are you having sugar with your coffee or coffee with your sugar?’ God knows I’m tired of doing it. And I shouldn’t have to do it in the first place.”
    “Why didn’t Uncle Ed ever get married?” I asked her once.
    “Mother smothered him,” she sighed. “The sun just rose and set on Eddy, there was no doubt about that. Now look how he’s turned out. Can’t cook for himself. Can’t clean. Can’t even wash a towel. And not a wife in sight for miles. And then, of course, there’s the other thing.”
    “What other thing?”
    My mom looked at me hard. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just talking nonsense. But just promise me you’ll never let yourself become like him, Peter. I mean it.”
    I kept trying to think of ways to get out of my appointment with Dr. Luka, but it was a dead end. There was no way of getting out of it unless I died and I didn’t really see that happening any time soon.
    The night before my appointment, I decided I had no choice but to go with untaped nipples and keep my fingers crossed. Considering Dr. Luka was so old, it might not be too hard to confuse him, anyway.
    “Take my sweatshirt off? Dr. Luka, I just put it back on!”
    My appointment was at 4:30 p.m. so I had just enough time to come home, peel off the masking tape, and rub some of my mother’s skin lotion on my nipples.
    “You can’t shut us up this easily,” they said.
    “Take a hike,” I said.
    My mother ended up coming with us because she wanted to go to Zellers. You can only get to Zellers by making a left-hand turn, so she doesn’t get there too often.
    “I have to get a dozen glass ashtrays,” she said. “We’re making candle holders at the next U.C.W. meeting. I don’t know how you get a candle holder out of an ashtray, let alone twelve of them. However.”
    Having her with us made me more nervous, but she promised she wasn’t going to interfere.
    “You won’t even know I’m there,” she said.
    Mrs. Luka was on the telephone when we arrived. She waved a monkey arm at us and mouthed “Come in!”
    The office was hot and smelled like old people. It wouldn’t kill either of the Lukas to crack open a window once in a while.
    “Vell, how are you today?” Mrs. Luka said when