Page 123 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 111

“Thank you, Ryan. It was from my hope chest.”
“This is the last of it too,” Doc said. “Four place settings.”
“I had only eight,” Julia explained. “One was broken years ago
when we moved to this house, almost on our Wedding Day.”
“Julia broke the other one herself,” Doc said.
“It’s an English tradition,” Mike told me.
“When a child gets married,” Julia smiled like a curator, “one
is supposed to break his plate, symbolizing he may not come back.
When our Julie got married, I broke her setting.”
“She’s not coming back,” Doc said. He took abrupt interest in
me. “What do you do, son, besides go to the seminary in Ohio? You
have to be more than a priest to get into this house.”
“Ryan is sort of a free-lance writer,” Mike said.
“He means I’ve broken all my lances ha ha for free.” I tried to
put them off.
“Actually, Ryan is fairly well known in the Catholic press.”
Julia fluttered. “I read your religious poems. The ones the priests
printed.”
“Mimeographed,” Doc said.
“They were lovely,” Julia finished.
“Ryan has sold at least a dozen short stories, but he’s really good
at interviewing missionaries for feature articles about cannibalism
in the African church, and there’s his radio drama called Mister and
Missa Luba.” Mike enjoyed embarrassing me while he needled his
parents.
“It’s such a comfort,” Julia said, “to know a close friend of
Michael is such a good influence on him.”
“God knows he could use it,” Doc said, squeezing more lemon
across his finnan haddie. He sucked his fingers.
“That’s enough, Doc,” Mike said.
Julia offered me the basket of rolls.
“Were you busy at the office today, Doctor?” I made conversation.
Julia’s eyes widened in her stare at Mike.
“With all the tourists,” I said, “you maybe do a lot of emergency
dental work.”
“Doc, that is, the Doctor, doesn’t like to talk about business at
home,” Julia said. “I’m sorry, Ryan.”

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK