died!
Yes, she too has committed her transgressions, and has been duly punished. In her wild youth (which all took place before I got to know her) she had allowed herself to be bamboozled (which is to say, flattered and shamed simultaneously) into eating lobster Newburg by a mischievous, attractive insurance agent who worked with my father for Boston Northeastern, a lush named ( could it be better? ) Doyle.
It was at a convention held by the company in Atlantic City, at a noisy farewell banquet, that Doyle led my mother to believe that even though that wasn't what it smelled like, the plate the waiter had shoved in front of her corsage contained nothing but chicken a la king. To be sure, she sensed that something was up even then, suspected even as the handsome drunken Doyle tried to feed her with her own fork that tragedy, as she calls it, was lurking in the wings. But high herself on the fruit of two whiskey sours, she rashly turned up her long Jewish nose to a very genuine premonition of foul play, and-oh, hotheaded bitch! wanton hussy! improvident adventuress! -surrendered herself wholly to the spirit of reckless abandon that apparently had taken possession of this hall full of insurance agents and their wives. Not until the sherbet arrived did Doyle-who my mother also describes as in looks a second Errol Flynn, and not just in looks -did Doyle reveal to her what it was she had actually ingested.
Subsequently she was over the toilet all night throwing up. My kishkas came out from that thing! Some practical Joker! That's why to this day I tell you, Alex, never to commit a practical joke-because the consequences can be tragic! I was so sick, Alex, she used to love to remind herself and me, and my father too, five, ten, fifteen years after the cataclysm itself, that your father, Mr. Brave One here, had to call the hotel doctor out of a sound sleep to come to the room. See how I’m holding my fingers? I was throwing up so hard, they got stiff just like this, like I was paralyzed , and ask your father- Jack, tell him, tell him what you thought when you saw what happened to my fingers from the lobster Newburg. What lobster Newburg? That your friend Doyle forced down my throat. Doyle? What Doyle? Doyle, The Shicker Goy Who They Had To Transfer To The Wilds of South Jersey He Was Such A Run-Around. Doyle! Who Looked Like Errol Flynn! Tell Alex what happened to my fingers, that you thought happened- Look, I don't even know what you're talking about, which is probably the case: not everybody quite senses my mother's life to be the high drama she herself experiences- also, there is always a possibility that this story has more to do with imagination than reality (more to do, needless to say, with the dangerous Doyle than the forbidden lobster). And then, of course, my father is a man who has a certain amount of worrying to do each day, and sometimes he just has to forgo listening to the conversations going on around him in order to fulfill his anxiety requirement. It can well be that he hasn't really heard a word she's been saying.
But on it goes, my mother's monologue. As other children hear the story of Scrooge every year, or are read to nightly from some favorite book, I am continually shtupped full of the suspense-filled chapters of her perilous life. This in fact is the literature of my childhood, these stories of my mother's- the only bound books in the house, aside from schoolbooks, are those that have been given as presents to my parents when one or the other was recuperating in the hospital. One third of our library consists of Dragon Seed (her hysterectomy) (moral: nothing is never ironic, there's always a laugh lurking somewhere ) and the other two thirds are Argentine Diary by William L. Shirer and (same moral) The Memoirs of Casanova (his appendectomy). Otherwise our books are written by Sophie Portnoy, each an addition to that famous series of hers entitled. You Know Me, I’ll Try Anything Once . For the
Yes, she too has committed her transgressions, and has been duly punished. In her wild youth (which all took place before I got to know her) she had allowed herself to be bamboozled (which is to say, flattered and shamed simultaneously) into eating lobster Newburg by a mischievous, attractive insurance agent who worked with my father for Boston Northeastern, a lush named ( could it be better? ) Doyle.
It was at a convention held by the company in Atlantic City, at a noisy farewell banquet, that Doyle led my mother to believe that even though that wasn't what it smelled like, the plate the waiter had shoved in front of her corsage contained nothing but chicken a la king. To be sure, she sensed that something was up even then, suspected even as the handsome drunken Doyle tried to feed her with her own fork that tragedy, as she calls it, was lurking in the wings. But high herself on the fruit of two whiskey sours, she rashly turned up her long Jewish nose to a very genuine premonition of foul play, and-oh, hotheaded bitch! wanton hussy! improvident adventuress! -surrendered herself wholly to the spirit of reckless abandon that apparently had taken possession of this hall full of insurance agents and their wives. Not until the sherbet arrived did Doyle-who my mother also describes as in looks a second Errol Flynn, and not just in looks -did Doyle reveal to her what it was she had actually ingested.
Subsequently she was over the toilet all night throwing up. My kishkas came out from that thing! Some practical Joker! That's why to this day I tell you, Alex, never to commit a practical joke-because the consequences can be tragic! I was so sick, Alex, she used to love to remind herself and me, and my father too, five, ten, fifteen years after the cataclysm itself, that your father, Mr. Brave One here, had to call the hotel doctor out of a sound sleep to come to the room. See how I’m holding my fingers? I was throwing up so hard, they got stiff just like this, like I was paralyzed , and ask your father- Jack, tell him, tell him what you thought when you saw what happened to my fingers from the lobster Newburg. What lobster Newburg? That your friend Doyle forced down my throat. Doyle? What Doyle? Doyle, The Shicker Goy Who They Had To Transfer To The Wilds of South Jersey He Was Such A Run-Around. Doyle! Who Looked Like Errol Flynn! Tell Alex what happened to my fingers, that you thought happened- Look, I don't even know what you're talking about, which is probably the case: not everybody quite senses my mother's life to be the high drama she herself experiences- also, there is always a possibility that this story has more to do with imagination than reality (more to do, needless to say, with the dangerous Doyle than the forbidden lobster). And then, of course, my father is a man who has a certain amount of worrying to do each day, and sometimes he just has to forgo listening to the conversations going on around him in order to fulfill his anxiety requirement. It can well be that he hasn't really heard a word she's been saying.
But on it goes, my mother's monologue. As other children hear the story of Scrooge every year, or are read to nightly from some favorite book, I am continually shtupped full of the suspense-filled chapters of her perilous life. This in fact is the literature of my childhood, these stories of my mother's- the only bound books in the house, aside from schoolbooks, are those that have been given as presents to my parents when one or the other was recuperating in the hospital. One third of our library consists of Dragon Seed (her hysterectomy) (moral: nothing is never ironic, there's always a laugh lurking somewhere ) and the other two thirds are Argentine Diary by William L. Shirer and (same moral) The Memoirs of Casanova (his appendectomy). Otherwise our books are written by Sophie Portnoy, each an addition to that famous series of hers entitled. You Know Me, I’ll Try Anything Once . For the