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Show Motherlunge a novel 201 "It's only-.." I looked at the clock on Pavia's nightstand "-it's only four in the afternoon." "She's at work! How come you're not?" "Well, she would be, but she's out of town. Business trip." I had rehearsed this. Walter coughed some more, ending in a disgusted-sounding Jesus Christ. "I'll give her a message," I told him. Now Eli was awake, too, and he reached through the bars of the crib to tweeze Xavier's toes with his thumb and forefinger. "What's the message?" My father coughed. Presumably the matted cilia in his lungs shrugged, convulsed. "Judith died!" Walter finally shouted. "Okay?! Goodbye." He hung up. I moved Eli's hand off of my thigh and dialed my father back. He answered on the first ring. His voice was thick and low. "Yeah?" "Dad. How? I'm sorry." "Got sick," he said. "Complications of pneumonia." "When?" "Last night," he said. "Hospital. I was there." "You were there?" I asked. I pictured his long back, bent over in a chair next to her bed in a greenish room. He would have wanted to smoke. He would have wanted not ; S to be there, once again, watching the weaker sex succumb. "How come?" I asked. My father tried to take a deep breath, coughed, and then was quiet. "I askedtfbr your sister just now," he said finally. "She knew Judith better. She could have told you. That would have been fine." |