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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK50 Jack Fritschercurse on 99, because 99 always seemed to quit or get shipped, and my underwear would disappear with the disappeared boy, and I%u2019d be left with his jockstrap and stray socks.My dad sat down. %u201cI brought an ashtray,%u201d he said.%u201cWould you hand me those four books?%u201dHe handed over the Modern Library editions of Hemingway, Wolfe, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald. %u201cYou read too much, but I bet you%u2019ll be glad to get back to the good old routine,%u201d he said. %u201cThere%u2019s a lot you can say for regular hours and plenty of sleep.%u201dI didn%u2019t say it. I loved my father, but he had grown up on a farm before he married my mother, who insisted they live in a town. One set of my grandparents lived in an apartment. The other owned a barn.He made business with his cigarette, casting silently about for conversation. %u201cReally think I should go back with you. Yessir, that would be the life. Quiet. Regular. Like the farm.%u201dThis joke he always made I always played along with, because I loved him so much. What we had in common was growing less each year I was gone from the world. Sundays I wrote long letters. Wednesday mornings Annie Laurie ran down the stairs to the green mail box on the big porch, read my typed pages once, then immediately again to my father over the telephone at his work. They bragged to their friends and to my aunts and uncles that my letters were talky and full, but they could not begin to fathom what it was to be away, as they always said, studying to be a priest.%u201cHere%u2019s the last of your underwear and socks.%u201d Annie Laurie put them on the bed. %u201cI soaked them in practically straight bleach to get them white. What%u2019s the matter with those nuns who do your laundry?%u201d%u201cIt%u2019s top secret,%u201d I said. %u201cWe don%u2019t tell anyone what goes on there.%u201dThrough the back of my mind raced the laundress-nun with her note in German that poor literal Father Gunn had read aloud in the refectory, asking if the boys would please stop blowing their noses in the sheets.%u201cYou make it sound like there%u2019s some big mystery,%u201d she said.I took the laundry from the bed. %u201cGuess what?%u201d I said. %u201cThere is. Dad%u2019s going back with me.%u201d%u201cMe too,%u201d she said. %u201cAll that rest you%u2019ll get.%u201d%u201cAw, Mom, they%u2019d quick put you to work with the nuns in the laundry.%u201d%u201cA beautiful woman like me?%u201d%u201cEver heard of Cinderella?%u201d I said.%u201cYour mother as a nun? A German one at that? As if there%u2019s a shortage of Irish nuns.%u201d