Page 127 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 115

hoping, I guess, to change Doc. Anyway, to hear her tell it, Julie at
the age of two was praying for a baby brother.”
He slapped the arms of his chair.
“Then, of all things, some clairvoyant nuns told Julia she’d have
a baby and he would be God’s child. That,” he said, “that is when
you start to find out where the pressure is.”
“That baby was you.”
In the yard across the street, lines of shouting children ran circles
across the lawn with burning sparklers.
“Doc really elaborated on all this crappy family history when I
tried to discuss leaving Misery. That’s why Julia was so glad when
you said you’d come visit. She thinks you’ll be on her side. Your
poems really convinced her you’ve got the perfect vocation.”
“Uuuh.”
“Maybe you do. Maybe she knows.”
He lit his last cigarette, crushed the pack, and sent the smoke
swirling through the moon motes. “Anyway, I hitched down to Sauk
City, right after my pastor made me quit lifeguarding at the beach,
to see ‘Man of the Cloth,’ Arnie Roth, the only priest I trust. ‘Be
an adult,’ he said. ‘Tell them you’re not going back, tell them you’re
going where you want to go, to Madison, the Twin Cities, Chicago,
wherever. Transfer over to some Catholic university like Loyola.
This is between you and God, not mommy and daddy. Get away
from them and this dead tourist country.’”
“But your father wants everybody to do what they choose,” I
said.
“Doc?” he laughed, “he’s the original big noise from Winnetka.
With a bad case of moral amnesia. Anyway, after I left Arnie Roth, I
went straight to the drugstore. After what you saw at supper tonight,
you know my father is obviously an escapist. A man who was told by
his own father and mother that he had made his own bed and could
rot in it. Every Sunday without fail he closes the dairy bar and gets
dead drunk. Julia flits around him, still wearing the dress she wore
to church, trying to humor him. Normally he’s cynical, but Sundays
he’s unapproach able.”
The orange tip of his cigarette arced from his lap to his dark
mouth, glowed brighter an instant, then descended.

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