Anyway, he comes home, and I’m watching Judge Judy. He stays a few hours and comes home, and I’m doing what I always do. He’s retired but he still goes to the shop on Mondays to see if he can make a little trouble. And guess what? The next day is Monday, so Albie goes to work. They give her a hug, and they say a little something to Kenny, and you can see how much he’s changed in just a day. But we see them at church the next morning, and one by one, people go over. Albie gives them fifty dollars, and they go to dinner or a movie. I tell her, you and Kenny, go some place, any place. These days, they got retards doing everything.” My sister isn’t Shakespeare, but she’s a good f-ing sister.Īnd I do what my sister tells me. There’s a retard on television, or there used to be. “There’s bad retards and not so bad, and there’s retards you wouldn’t know were retards if you didn’t ask. “There’s all kinds of retards,” she says. So I tell her, and she’s the oldest, so she tells me not to worry. She asks me, what’s the matter? And I tell her about the paint but she can hear it in my voice. She’s like something the government should put on a satellite. It’s got a color that’s kind of half-peach, half-parchment, and guess what? It’s my sister. After this morning I can live with anything.” So we’re looking at a sheet from Home Depot, it’s got white, it’s got pale white, bright white, off white, every kind of white. The dining room is peach, and Albie loves it, and I hate it, and the living room is parchment, and guess what? I love it, and Albie hates it. We’re saying we’ve got the kitchen to paint, so we might as well paint the dining room, so we might as well paint the living room too. I’m saying it, and Albie’s writing it, and we’re looking at what we’re doing and we’re laughing, of course. We’re crying, and Chris is crying, and after a while, there isn’t any point, so we hang up and go to the kitchen and make a list. I’m on the phone, he’s on the phone, me, him, me, him. Stop crying, I say, but I’m crying when I say it, and Albie, he never stopped crying. When this baby comes, we’ll give you whatever help, whatever money, whatever anything. I’m noticing every breath as I take it, and I’m telling her, you think you know, but you don’t know. There’s no point in starving, I say finally, and while he’s eating the breakfast I make, I’m calling from the phone in the living room, and the line’s busy, and it’s busy again, and then I’m talking to Chris, and I’m saying, “Chris,” and she’s saying, “Ma,” and I’m breaking up in places I never knew I had. It’s been that way a long time and it’ll stay that way a long time more. So I tell him, so? So, the baby’s going to look funny? So, the baby’s going to act funny? So, the baby’s going to grow up and be a kid that people notice at the shopping mall? Aren’t you tough enough? Aren’t you man enough? I’m breaking up inside while I’m saying this, but I’m saying it because men get to work when they want and rest when they want and cry when they want. He says it like this time he can’t stop crying he’ll never stop. So who has it any different? “ The amnio was positive.” He says it like it’s my fault.
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You take what God gives you and do what you can. I tell Albie he can cry, and then I tell him he can stop. You let him cry at funerals, weddings, all the other stuff.
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But you say what you have to say.Īnd you let your man cry. “Call Chris,” he says, but I tell him, how can I you broke the f-ing telephone.Įxcuse me. What’s he doing that for? I’m asking until he turns and says he can’t tell me he can’t tell anybody. I’m halfway down the stairs when I remember, it’s July, it’s hot, so it can’t be the furnace. BAM! BAM! BAM! I’ve been telling Albie for two years. “Oh Chris,” I hear him say, and I’m lying there, I’m thinking, Oh Chris what? I’ll split if I don’t find out. Get it downstairs so I don’t have to hear (which will never work in a thousand-million years because I’m lying there listening to Albie as he listens to Chris). You think the baby could be breech? You think the baby could be something else?”) Mother of God! I’ll give her a kick if she calls me again. “I felt a kick, I felt it here, I felt it there. (She’s forty but it’s her first, so she’s acting like she’s twenty, she’s acting like she’s three.
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Albie, I say, get up and get it because it’s our daughter Chris and she’s going to ask me about the baby. Right?īut one day, we’re upstairs, we’re lying in bed because it’s Saturday and it’s July and everybody else is out mowing grass, but we’re retired so what do we care? We’re lying there, and the phone rings. You think you’re married, you’re married to Albie forty-two, what is it, forty-three years, so at least you know Albie.