couldn’t begin to explain without years of therapy, her pain fills me with a quiet, relentless rage.
“I miss your father,” she says.
“I miss him too.”
“Do you?”
“I missed him while he was still alive.”
She nods. “He was never comfortable expressing himself. But he loved you very much.”
“Not like he loved you.”
She smiles and massages the back of her neck. Upstairs, Phillip and Tracy have finally, mercifully finished, and a welcome quiet fills the room.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t have your old room,” she says. “I thought Paul and Alice could use some privacy. They’ve been trying to conceive, you know.”
“Wendy mentioned something.”
“That sofa bed is fine for sleeping, but it’s simply not built for procreation. The springs creak like a couple of fighting cats. You can hear it throughout the house.”
“I don’t suppose I can stop you from telling me why you know that.”
“Your father and I made love on every bed in this house.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, I found an ovulation test kit in the wastebasket in the hall bathroom, so I’m thinking these are key nights for Alice.”
Mom never had any use for discretion, never even had the sense to fake it. She habitually went through our drawers and coat pockets, inspected our sheets, listened in on our phone calls, and read Wendy’s diary so often that we started composing entries just for her to find.
Mr. Jorgenson, my phys ed teacher, still says I can’t call him Ed, even after I had a three-way with him and Mike Stedman, who swears the whole genital herpes thing was just a nasty rumor started by his ex-girlfriend who was pissed at him for sleeping with me and Ed.
Liz Coltrane gave me these awesome pills that make you vomit after every meal, so I don’t have to use my finger anymore. It’s much more civilized, and I can finally grow my nails again. Thin and manicured! Win-win!
I know incest is wrong. I just figured I’d do it once to see what all the fuss was about. But now Paul wants to do it with me all the time and it’s starting to get creepy. It would have been so much easier with Judd, if only he wasn’t gay.
Mom believed that intrafamily secrets were unhealthy, and because of that, we spent the better part of our childhood lying our asses off to her.
When I was twelve years old, she unceremoniously handed me a tube of KY Jelly and said that she could tell from the laundry that I’d begun masturbating, and this would increase my pleasure and prevent chafing, and if I had any questions, I should feel free to come to her. My siblings did joyous spit takes into their bowls of chicken soup, and my father grunted disapprovingly and said, “Jesus, Hill!” He uttered those two words so often that for a long time I thought Jesus’s last name was actually Hill. In this particular case, I was unsure if it was masturbation my father condemned or the relative merits of discussing it over Friday-night dinner. I fled upstairs to sulk and didn’t stop hating her even after discovering, a short while later, to my eternal chagrin, that she’d been right about the lube.
Chapter 11
8:25 a.m.
A shower in the morning is an imperative for the Foxman men, whose bed-head is legendary in this region. Our pillow-bent curls, sculpted by scalp oils, stand up in large, coiled clumps, making us look like electrocuted cartoon characters. The problem is that the water boiler cannot accommodate so many showers at the same time, and within minutes, the water goes from hot, to lukewarm, to chilled. Adding to the confusion, Tracy and Alice are both blow-drying their hair while Wendy is microwaving frozen waffles for the kids, so the circuit breakers trip, knocking out half the power in the house, including the basement lights.
You would think the home of a former electrician would be wired better, but it’s a classic case of the cobbler’s children going barefoot. Having been in the “trade,” as he called it,
“I miss your father,” she says.
“I miss him too.”
“Do you?”
“I missed him while he was still alive.”
She nods. “He was never comfortable expressing himself. But he loved you very much.”
“Not like he loved you.”
She smiles and massages the back of her neck. Upstairs, Phillip and Tracy have finally, mercifully finished, and a welcome quiet fills the room.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t have your old room,” she says. “I thought Paul and Alice could use some privacy. They’ve been trying to conceive, you know.”
“Wendy mentioned something.”
“That sofa bed is fine for sleeping, but it’s simply not built for procreation. The springs creak like a couple of fighting cats. You can hear it throughout the house.”
“I don’t suppose I can stop you from telling me why you know that.”
“Your father and I made love on every bed in this house.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, I found an ovulation test kit in the wastebasket in the hall bathroom, so I’m thinking these are key nights for Alice.”
Mom never had any use for discretion, never even had the sense to fake it. She habitually went through our drawers and coat pockets, inspected our sheets, listened in on our phone calls, and read Wendy’s diary so often that we started composing entries just for her to find.
Mr. Jorgenson, my phys ed teacher, still says I can’t call him Ed, even after I had a three-way with him and Mike Stedman, who swears the whole genital herpes thing was just a nasty rumor started by his ex-girlfriend who was pissed at him for sleeping with me and Ed.
Liz Coltrane gave me these awesome pills that make you vomit after every meal, so I don’t have to use my finger anymore. It’s much more civilized, and I can finally grow my nails again. Thin and manicured! Win-win!
I know incest is wrong. I just figured I’d do it once to see what all the fuss was about. But now Paul wants to do it with me all the time and it’s starting to get creepy. It would have been so much easier with Judd, if only he wasn’t gay.
Mom believed that intrafamily secrets were unhealthy, and because of that, we spent the better part of our childhood lying our asses off to her.
When I was twelve years old, she unceremoniously handed me a tube of KY Jelly and said that she could tell from the laundry that I’d begun masturbating, and this would increase my pleasure and prevent chafing, and if I had any questions, I should feel free to come to her. My siblings did joyous spit takes into their bowls of chicken soup, and my father grunted disapprovingly and said, “Jesus, Hill!” He uttered those two words so often that for a long time I thought Jesus’s last name was actually Hill. In this particular case, I was unsure if it was masturbation my father condemned or the relative merits of discussing it over Friday-night dinner. I fled upstairs to sulk and didn’t stop hating her even after discovering, a short while later, to my eternal chagrin, that she’d been right about the lube.
Chapter 11
8:25 a.m.
A shower in the morning is an imperative for the Foxman men, whose bed-head is legendary in this region. Our pillow-bent curls, sculpted by scalp oils, stand up in large, coiled clumps, making us look like electrocuted cartoon characters. The problem is that the water boiler cannot accommodate so many showers at the same time, and within minutes, the water goes from hot, to lukewarm, to chilled. Adding to the confusion, Tracy and Alice are both blow-drying their hair while Wendy is microwaving frozen waffles for the kids, so the circuit breakers trip, knocking out half the power in the house, including the basement lights.
You would think the home of a former electrician would be wired better, but it’s a classic case of the cobbler’s children going barefoot. Having been in the “trade,” as he called it,
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