Carson .”
“You are not a toy, all right? I’m not playing around here. You are it for me. You—what? What’s that look for?”
“I’m still trying to fathom the words hot young stud . Somehow hearing them used in reference to me seems like a contradiction. Or evidence that you need glasses.”
“Still in love with me, kiddo?” She held out a dollar.
I reached out to take it. “More and more each second of every day.”
“ Good answer,” she said, snatching it back at the last moment and laying back against the pillows on the couch. “You may now claim the Grand Prize behind Door Number Three.”
Mom was nuts about Beth; Dad actually spoke to her when she came by, which from him was the highest seal of approval, sober or not. Mabel was beside herself when Beth and I told her about our being together. “I knew it,” she said. “That first night she brought you over for dinner, I knew you’d grow up to be the guy for my Elizabeth. Does that sound weird or maybe a little sick? Saying that I knew a nine-year-old kid was the one she was destined to be with? Ah, screw it if it does. The timing could have been a lot worse than just a seven-year difference. You two could’ve been born forty or fifty years apart and never found each other. You’re so very lucky. Hey—maybe some of that luck’ll rub off on me, huh? That’d be nice....”
One night at dinner Dad remarked that Beth seemed like a decent girl and I should count myself lucky to have found her. Then he looked across the table at Mom and smiled, and my mother actually blushed.
I was stunned. For as long as I could remember, they’d never displayed any tenderness or affection for one another in front of me—as far as I cared to imagine, they’d never displayed any in private, either. They were Just Mom and Dad, the people who raised me and paid for my clothes and put a roof over my head and sent me to school and never missed a chance to remind me that everything I had was because of them. I knew that parents were just like any other couple, that there was love and affection and all of that, but these were my folks, for the love of God. My folks never talked about anything like this—hell, the only time anything more than the day’s trivialities were ever brought up was when Dad was on a drunk and shouting at the top of his lungs about the bills or the condition of the house or how the goddamn company was going to fuck over the union with the next contract.
But this little flirtatious display over the meatloaf...this was just weird . It made me nervous. And a little queasy.
Later—I guess it must have been two or two-thirty in the morning—I woke up with one of those middle-of-the-night cases of dry-mouth that make you think you’re going to die within seconds if you don’t get something to drink right now , and went downstairs to get a glass of juice from the fridge. The living room was dark as I passed by but it felt like someone was in there. Probably Dad. Again. They’d been screwing with his hours at the plant and, as a result, he hadn’t gotten back on anything close to a normal sleeping schedule yet. Most nights he’d toss and turn for hours until he woke Mom, who’d make him come down here and do his tossing and turning on the sofa. He was usually cranky as hell whenever this happened, so I walked very softly and decided not to turn on the kitchen lights. I drank my juice, quietly rinsed out the glass and set it in the sink, and was starting back toward the stairs when I heard Dad say, in a voice so tired and sad it froze me where I stood: “Did I ever tell you that when I was a kid, I wanted to raise chickens for a living?”
I couldn’t have been more anxious if I’d run into an armed burglar. Talks between Dad and me never ended well—one of us always wound up accusing the other of being too pushy or disrespectful or whatever—and the idea of getting into it with him at this hour, especially considering how upset he
“You are not a toy, all right? I’m not playing around here. You are it for me. You—what? What’s that look for?”
“I’m still trying to fathom the words hot young stud . Somehow hearing them used in reference to me seems like a contradiction. Or evidence that you need glasses.”
“Still in love with me, kiddo?” She held out a dollar.
I reached out to take it. “More and more each second of every day.”
“ Good answer,” she said, snatching it back at the last moment and laying back against the pillows on the couch. “You may now claim the Grand Prize behind Door Number Three.”
Mom was nuts about Beth; Dad actually spoke to her when she came by, which from him was the highest seal of approval, sober or not. Mabel was beside herself when Beth and I told her about our being together. “I knew it,” she said. “That first night she brought you over for dinner, I knew you’d grow up to be the guy for my Elizabeth. Does that sound weird or maybe a little sick? Saying that I knew a nine-year-old kid was the one she was destined to be with? Ah, screw it if it does. The timing could have been a lot worse than just a seven-year difference. You two could’ve been born forty or fifty years apart and never found each other. You’re so very lucky. Hey—maybe some of that luck’ll rub off on me, huh? That’d be nice....”
One night at dinner Dad remarked that Beth seemed like a decent girl and I should count myself lucky to have found her. Then he looked across the table at Mom and smiled, and my mother actually blushed.
I was stunned. For as long as I could remember, they’d never displayed any tenderness or affection for one another in front of me—as far as I cared to imagine, they’d never displayed any in private, either. They were Just Mom and Dad, the people who raised me and paid for my clothes and put a roof over my head and sent me to school and never missed a chance to remind me that everything I had was because of them. I knew that parents were just like any other couple, that there was love and affection and all of that, but these were my folks, for the love of God. My folks never talked about anything like this—hell, the only time anything more than the day’s trivialities were ever brought up was when Dad was on a drunk and shouting at the top of his lungs about the bills or the condition of the house or how the goddamn company was going to fuck over the union with the next contract.
But this little flirtatious display over the meatloaf...this was just weird . It made me nervous. And a little queasy.
Later—I guess it must have been two or two-thirty in the morning—I woke up with one of those middle-of-the-night cases of dry-mouth that make you think you’re going to die within seconds if you don’t get something to drink right now , and went downstairs to get a glass of juice from the fridge. The living room was dark as I passed by but it felt like someone was in there. Probably Dad. Again. They’d been screwing with his hours at the plant and, as a result, he hadn’t gotten back on anything close to a normal sleeping schedule yet. Most nights he’d toss and turn for hours until he woke Mom, who’d make him come down here and do his tossing and turning on the sofa. He was usually cranky as hell whenever this happened, so I walked very softly and decided not to turn on the kitchen lights. I drank my juice, quietly rinsed out the glass and set it in the sink, and was starting back toward the stairs when I heard Dad say, in a voice so tired and sad it froze me where I stood: “Did I ever tell you that when I was a kid, I wanted to raise chickens for a living?”
I couldn’t have been more anxious if I’d run into an armed burglar. Talks between Dad and me never ended well—one of us always wound up accusing the other of being too pushy or disrespectful or whatever—and the idea of getting into it with him at this hour, especially considering how upset he
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