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Show Motherlunge a novel 82 Be good to your mother. She is a good person and she loves you. Peece to you all. Joseph The next day, Pavia gave her hair a hot oil treatment, took a long shower, then called Walter. "Daddy," she said when he answered, and then he said something back and she laughed a real laugh. Pavia paced the apartment with the phone to her ear, tapping the walls rhythmically with her knuckles as she went. I sat at the table reading the paper and missing the TV. Pavia was telling Walter about Dorothy-tanked, crashed, broke, I heard my sister saying-and then she was saying less, as Walter was talking. In the newspaper, cops and firemen handed out toys to needy children. The President, god's proxy, blessed our country. Black ice was responsible for deaths of holiday travelers; critics picked their early Oscar favorites; a capsized ferry resulted in the death of sixty Bangladeshi wedding celebrants. Then in real life Pavia was standing next to me, pushing the phone into the side of my head and saying, "Dad wants to talk to you." I sat back in the kitchen chair. "Hi," I said. My father coughed for a while. "Same to you. Merry fucking Christmas." |