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Show Motherlunge a novel 84 Five days; I couldn't think about five days and all the thinking that comes with driving across the country, or the five days of not thinking, with my mother silent beside me. "What happens when I get there?" "I'll fly you back to the big city." Fly back. "Okay." I worked my jaw a bit, as if checking a post-fight injury. "What happens to her, then. You going to take care of her?" "We'll see," Walter said. "I don't know. I'll stay with her for a few days to see what to do. Goddamnit" With a pen I began to draw circles in the margins of the newspaper next to the headline Newborn Males' Testicle Woes Linked to Soy. "She hates the hospital," I said, and immediately wished I hadn't. "This really sucks, Dad." "Right. And it's all your fault." "I know!" I laughed gratefully. "She should never have had us kids!" "You're telling me." I pictured him grimacing, and his eyes-one blue and one brown-narrowing beneath his long eyelashes. Once upon a time, five days or thirty years ago, he would have been so handsome; even, I thought semi-creepily but not abnormally I suppose, my type of guy. "We pushed her over the edge, huh?" I went on. "Little babies on fat feet, toddling on toward the precipice and-" "Shut up," my father interrupted. "All the blame is mine and I'm not going to talk about it. Now shut up and say goodbye." |