“Well, it’s hard to make myself fix stuff at home for free, when I can do the same thing for other people for money.”
“Shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot.” Maybe he was just slapping his knee due to the coughing fit that laughing at his own joke had sent him into. I hoped so. He finished with a long hraaak! and leaned sideways to slobber over the side of his lawn chair. “Goddam doctors.”
I bet they kept trying to tell him he needed to stop smoking, the mad fools.
I opened the door. Forest, Loveheart, and Sunnyjoy ran out. “Have fun, kitties, there’s a lot of nice tires to go under just up the street,” I said.
I scooped the mail up from the floor in front of the slot—just the electric bill, which I pigeonholed, and a BankAmericard thing that I buried in the trash so Mom wouldn’t see it and apply.
I looked at the clock. Mom would be at Mister Peepers at least another hour and a half. I dialed Kathy’s number, and she picked up on the first ring. “Just checking in and letting you know I’ll be there tonight,” I said.
“I saw you coming out of Dad’s place. How is he?”
“Exactly the same as ever,” I said. “He’s adding an evening shift Fridays and Saturdays because some new people are reopening the Ox. And Angie has a new boyfriend, a banker that rides a motorcycle.”
“Hey, tell her to give me a call and tell me all about it, ’kay?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Have a quiet evening, Karl. You take care.”
“You, too.”
Funny the way people could be. From the day Kathy, Philbin’s older daughter, had bought the franchise for the McDonald’s out by the interstate, old Philbin had refused to speak to her. But he’d offered, before she did it, to mortgage the drugstore to give her a stake to launch her own downtown burger stand. He wasn’t mad that she was competing with him—it was that it was McDonald’s.
Everyone in town always told Philbin, to his face, that his hamburgers were better than McDonald’s. They were, too, bigger and greasier and with buns from some bakery up in Toledo, and the onions and tomato were all locally grown in the summer, and Dick and Mrs. P didn’t cook them into hockey pucks, and they were just better, all kinds of ways.
Just the same, the people who said they loved Philbin’s hamburgers, whenever they chose to go out for a burger, took their kids to McDonald’s, because that’s where the kids wanted to go, and the French fries were better, because McDonald’s changed the grease in their deep fat fryer now and then.
Maybe Philbin needed to change his grease more often. Or advertise on national TV. Or give away cheap toys, or wear a clown suit. Or else, maybe just plug in a time machine and take the whole place back to 1956. Everything must’ve seemed pretty promising back then, with new décor and two little girls running in and out.
Hell, 1956 had seemed so promising, Mom and Dad had gone and had me. I guess things don’t always turn out.
I pasted Mom’s IOU into my account book and refig ured the total. $2,937.41. One way and another, since ninth grade I had been making about six grand a year, most of it in off-the-books stuff like yardwork and ad sales and carrying sofas. That worked out to Mom having taken about half a year out of three, or one out of every six dollars I’d made.
That was a little comforting. Looked at that way, she wasn’t any worse than paying taxes would have been, and no more useless.
I was balling my fists and breathing hard. I closed up the account book and decided I was entitled to a hot shower. Also to a house that didn’t smell like a damn litter pan, and a whole year of being normal. But the hot shower was the one I was pretty sure I could get.
I pulled my McDorksuit out of the dryer and put it on a hanger in my closet. I scoured myself down till I was pretty much pink skin on bones, enjoying the hot water and the Ivory Soap. At least this was something that was all mine. The cats had
“Shoemaker’s kids always go barefoot.” Maybe he was just slapping his knee due to the coughing fit that laughing at his own joke had sent him into. I hoped so. He finished with a long hraaak! and leaned sideways to slobber over the side of his lawn chair. “Goddam doctors.”
I bet they kept trying to tell him he needed to stop smoking, the mad fools.
I opened the door. Forest, Loveheart, and Sunnyjoy ran out. “Have fun, kitties, there’s a lot of nice tires to go under just up the street,” I said.
I scooped the mail up from the floor in front of the slot—just the electric bill, which I pigeonholed, and a BankAmericard thing that I buried in the trash so Mom wouldn’t see it and apply.
I looked at the clock. Mom would be at Mister Peepers at least another hour and a half. I dialed Kathy’s number, and she picked up on the first ring. “Just checking in and letting you know I’ll be there tonight,” I said.
“I saw you coming out of Dad’s place. How is he?”
“Exactly the same as ever,” I said. “He’s adding an evening shift Fridays and Saturdays because some new people are reopening the Ox. And Angie has a new boyfriend, a banker that rides a motorcycle.”
“Hey, tell her to give me a call and tell me all about it, ’kay?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Have a quiet evening, Karl. You take care.”
“You, too.”
Funny the way people could be. From the day Kathy, Philbin’s older daughter, had bought the franchise for the McDonald’s out by the interstate, old Philbin had refused to speak to her. But he’d offered, before she did it, to mortgage the drugstore to give her a stake to launch her own downtown burger stand. He wasn’t mad that she was competing with him—it was that it was McDonald’s.
Everyone in town always told Philbin, to his face, that his hamburgers were better than McDonald’s. They were, too, bigger and greasier and with buns from some bakery up in Toledo, and the onions and tomato were all locally grown in the summer, and Dick and Mrs. P didn’t cook them into hockey pucks, and they were just better, all kinds of ways.
Just the same, the people who said they loved Philbin’s hamburgers, whenever they chose to go out for a burger, took their kids to McDonald’s, because that’s where the kids wanted to go, and the French fries were better, because McDonald’s changed the grease in their deep fat fryer now and then.
Maybe Philbin needed to change his grease more often. Or advertise on national TV. Or give away cheap toys, or wear a clown suit. Or else, maybe just plug in a time machine and take the whole place back to 1956. Everything must’ve seemed pretty promising back then, with new décor and two little girls running in and out.
Hell, 1956 had seemed so promising, Mom and Dad had gone and had me. I guess things don’t always turn out.
I pasted Mom’s IOU into my account book and refig ured the total. $2,937.41. One way and another, since ninth grade I had been making about six grand a year, most of it in off-the-books stuff like yardwork and ad sales and carrying sofas. That worked out to Mom having taken about half a year out of three, or one out of every six dollars I’d made.
That was a little comforting. Looked at that way, she wasn’t any worse than paying taxes would have been, and no more useless.
I was balling my fists and breathing hard. I closed up the account book and decided I was entitled to a hot shower. Also to a house that didn’t smell like a damn litter pan, and a whole year of being normal. But the hot shower was the one I was pretty sure I could get.
I pulled my McDorksuit out of the dryer and put it on a hanger in my closet. I scoured myself down till I was pretty much pink skin on bones, enjoying the hot water and the Ivory Soap. At least this was something that was all mine. The cats had
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