mean, some
stuff
you won’t believe.”
“Really.” I ran through ten or twelve possible responses and said, “Great. That’s great.”
“These kids, most of them, they were really hapless.”
The word stopped me, and Tyrone gave me a victor’s grin. “Hapless,” he said. “As in, not possessing any hap.”
“Is that him?” Rina called from the back of the house.
“Is that
he,”
I corrected, mostly to get even for
hapless
.
“Yeah,” Rina said. “That’s him. Daddy, the guy who probably just scared you is Tyrone. Come on, I’m in my room.”
“After you,” Tyrone said.
I said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” and headed down the hall.
I hadn’t been inside the house for a while, since I usually picked Rina up outside when we had our afternoons together. It wasn’t that Kathy and I didn’t get along. We just didn’t seem to have much to say to each other, and after all we’d been through together, that made me sad. She was on her third replacement since the split, this guy Bill. Rina was right, there wasn’t really anything wrong with Bill’s nose, at least physically. The problemwith Bill’s nose was that he was sticking it into what I still thought of as my family.
I glanced into the master bedroom as I passed it, looking for, I don’t know, a plaid wool shirt or a brace of recently shot ducks. According to Rina, Bill was an enthusiastic hunter, a guy who could head out into the nuclear winter with a gun over his shoulder and kill his family’s radioactive meat. Whereas I’d go out and steal it, so I guess Kathy was moving up in the world.
The bedroom was reassuringly free of fresh game and it still looked pretty girly, and I felt my spirits rise. Bill hadn’t taken up residence yet. I felt marginally better about not having knotted Ronnie Bigelow’s hair in my fist and dragged her into Blitzen at the North Pole, which was what the part of me that’s probably most like Bill had wanted to do. I had an unfamiliar sensation of holding the moral high ground.
“We’ve found more than you can imagine,” Rina said at the door to her room. I put my arms around her and grabbed a peek over her shoulder at the bed, which was tightly made, without even the kind of wrinkles that would be caused by someone sitting on it, and there were two chairs pulled up in front of Rina’s computer. Some spring somewhere underneath my heart uncoiled a little, and breathing got easier.
“More than she even had for her paper,” Tyrone said behind me.
“Tyrone’s in my modern media class,” Rina said. “He did this amazing paper about lynching souvenirs. I’m frittering away my time doing little Elvises and he’s doing lynching, like,
merchandise
. Did you know that towns in the south used to sell postcards of lynchings and little nooses and miniature signs that said stuff like NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN THIS TOWN ?”
I said, “Huh.” Something more seemed to be called for, so I added, “How about that?”
Tyrone laughed. “Yeah. How about that?”
“Is that sick or what?” Rina said. “Like in the Middle Ages, with splinters of the True Cross, only even grosser.”
“Only one True Cross,” Tyrone said. “Lot of lynching trees.”
“But your stuff,” Rina said. “You’re not going to believe it. It’s like nobody’s
obscure
any more. Whoever you are, if you ever did anything anywhere, there’s whole cartons of stuff on you, and it’s all available.”
“If you know where to look,” Tyrone said.
“Oh, come on,” Rina said, and her dimples made a brief appearance. “You could have found it all.”
“In a year, maybe.”
“I hate to interrupt all this mutual validation,” I said. “But maybe you could show me something.”
“Sure.” Rina stepped aside to let me get to the computer. “Who do you want first?”
“Giorgio.”
“I knew it. What’s that word, you know, when things work together and it’s kind of an
stuff
you won’t believe.”
“Really.” I ran through ten or twelve possible responses and said, “Great. That’s great.”
“These kids, most of them, they were really hapless.”
The word stopped me, and Tyrone gave me a victor’s grin. “Hapless,” he said. “As in, not possessing any hap.”
“Is that him?” Rina called from the back of the house.
“Is that
he,”
I corrected, mostly to get even for
hapless
.
“Yeah,” Rina said. “That’s him. Daddy, the guy who probably just scared you is Tyrone. Come on, I’m in my room.”
“After you,” Tyrone said.
I said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” and headed down the hall.
I hadn’t been inside the house for a while, since I usually picked Rina up outside when we had our afternoons together. It wasn’t that Kathy and I didn’t get along. We just didn’t seem to have much to say to each other, and after all we’d been through together, that made me sad. She was on her third replacement since the split, this guy Bill. Rina was right, there wasn’t really anything wrong with Bill’s nose, at least physically. The problemwith Bill’s nose was that he was sticking it into what I still thought of as my family.
I glanced into the master bedroom as I passed it, looking for, I don’t know, a plaid wool shirt or a brace of recently shot ducks. According to Rina, Bill was an enthusiastic hunter, a guy who could head out into the nuclear winter with a gun over his shoulder and kill his family’s radioactive meat. Whereas I’d go out and steal it, so I guess Kathy was moving up in the world.
The bedroom was reassuringly free of fresh game and it still looked pretty girly, and I felt my spirits rise. Bill hadn’t taken up residence yet. I felt marginally better about not having knotted Ronnie Bigelow’s hair in my fist and dragged her into Blitzen at the North Pole, which was what the part of me that’s probably most like Bill had wanted to do. I had an unfamiliar sensation of holding the moral high ground.
“We’ve found more than you can imagine,” Rina said at the door to her room. I put my arms around her and grabbed a peek over her shoulder at the bed, which was tightly made, without even the kind of wrinkles that would be caused by someone sitting on it, and there were two chairs pulled up in front of Rina’s computer. Some spring somewhere underneath my heart uncoiled a little, and breathing got easier.
“More than she even had for her paper,” Tyrone said behind me.
“Tyrone’s in my modern media class,” Rina said. “He did this amazing paper about lynching souvenirs. I’m frittering away my time doing little Elvises and he’s doing lynching, like,
merchandise
. Did you know that towns in the south used to sell postcards of lynchings and little nooses and miniature signs that said stuff like NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN THIS TOWN ?”
I said, “Huh.” Something more seemed to be called for, so I added, “How about that?”
Tyrone laughed. “Yeah. How about that?”
“Is that sick or what?” Rina said. “Like in the Middle Ages, with splinters of the True Cross, only even grosser.”
“Only one True Cross,” Tyrone said. “Lot of lynching trees.”
“But your stuff,” Rina said. “You’re not going to believe it. It’s like nobody’s
obscure
any more. Whoever you are, if you ever did anything anywhere, there’s whole cartons of stuff on you, and it’s all available.”
“If you know where to look,” Tyrone said.
“Oh, come on,” Rina said, and her dimples made a brief appearance. “You could have found it all.”
“In a year, maybe.”
“I hate to interrupt all this mutual validation,” I said. “But maybe you could show me something.”
“Sure.” Rina stepped aside to let me get to the computer. “Who do you want first?”
“Giorgio.”
“I knew it. What’s that word, you know, when things work together and it’s kind of an
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