Mary waited out in the Omni, declaring that, where my family was concerned, she’d prefer to remain an enigma. Whatever that meant.
I went in and found Dad asleep on the chaise.
Don’t get the wrong idea. Yeah: it’s the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday in the eighties. But Dad was sixty-seven at the time, retired from his legal practise seven years earlier when he’d got larynx cancer. Fun fact: the bugfix on that was to remove the whole thing, then experimentally replace it, to some degree, with a redundant tendon from his wrist. He was now speaking off the cuff.
Bah, yourself.
Of course, he sounded like Fred Krueger. Or, if you like, Jack Klugman. So, being a mouthpiece without a voice, he retired early. He had, thinking about it, finally entered slackerhood. So it’s a family tradition, I guess. I just get things over with quickly.
Anyway: I stole his MasterCard. I’m evil that way.
Back to the Omni and back to the campus. And in and signing up and done. I’m back in school. Worst mistake I ever made.
I suppose it’s not that bad, really. I’m alive and writing books, which is all I ever really wanted in the first place. But, whatever doesn’t kill you doubles back to strafe at you on a second run; you don’t really have to suffer to write, but it does make the cynicism look a lot like humour somehow.
Dad always said I was a funny, funny kid. Probably because I stole thousands of dollars from him to ruin my life. Funee.