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Show Motherlunge a novel 63 Joseph twisted toward Dorothy, and his back gave an audible pop. He sighed an ancient sigh. "I think-did you go two or three times, Dot?" She didn't answer; with laboratorial concentration she was reaching for the stack of magazines piled on a table under the wall phone. Joseph turned back to me. "Then we met, and..." he set the dish in the drying rack, "New Hope. It was meant to be." "He's a Gemini," Dorothy said sitting down again at the kitchen table. "So you were a client?" I knew that was what you called the people who came to New Hope for meals. When I was in high school, Rowan had made me volunteer there, too. I lasted eight months, fueled by the image of myself providing succor to the needy and by the satisfying physical strain of my mute repetitions with the stew ladle. Of course the appeal wore off. I found it annoying to be told by the clients-senior citizens, homeless, people with serious challenges in the areas of self-management and personal hygiene-to cheer up. Wasn't that my line, after all? "I was a client, mostly," Joseph said. "But I help out, too, when I can. I do some maintenance. They pay me." "Alcoholic?" Joseph noddedi "So I have to ask: Got any more beer?" We did, and he and I each had one while we finished the dishes, and Dorothy stayed at the table and alternated between reading Us and petting General's soft, furrowed brow. Joseph and I calculated that we had gone to high school together. Later, we moved to the living room and finished the beers. Dorothy went to the bathroom and stayed there. After a while, Joseph slid down on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table, gazing at his worn hiking boots in a concerned, pastoral way. |