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Show in my father's house/ 227 I fell asleep amid the drone of radio voices. The next thing I realized ray father had burst into the room. I could swell meat cooking. I looked at my arm: it was still broken. My father seemed in a vast hurry, very irritated. I was glad he hadn't come just for me. He embraced Aunt Helga who began to sob openly as he led her into my mother's bedroom. I lay back, anticipating my father's attention. No school for a day or two, everyone could sign my cast, and my father would stay to take care of me. Perhaps we would have time to talk. I stretched my legs, and felt hungry, smelling the meat. As it turned aut, it was only a bone after all. My mother brought a bowl of vegetable soup. "Where's Daddy?" I mumbled through the food. "Gone to the drugstore to get plaster for your cast." "What about Aunt Helga...and her baby?" "He says they'll be fine. The baby's heartbeat is strong." I thought of my father in Warren Drug where Danny and I had looked at comic books and magazines and licked our lemon ice cream cones. Just then he returned, bustling, bumping into furniture as though the room was too small for him. He took a roll out of a brown box. "Is that plaster, Daddy?" "No." "Why not?" "Daddy couldn't get plaster without going to the hospital, and that would mean questions he couldn't answer," he replied. I nodded, wondering why I hadn't thought of that myself. |