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Something Happened :: Хеллер Джозеф
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The children explode with laughter.
"You show me one doctor," says my wife, when she can be heard, "who'll say it's healthy to use such language in front of your own son and daughter."
"Name one we've seen who'd say it isn't."
"I thought you agreed," interjects my daughter cynically, "not to fight in front of us anymore."
"We aren't fighting," my wife responds automatically.
"I know," scoffs my daughter. "You were discussing."
"With emphasis," adds my son in friendly mockery.
All of us smile but my wife, who nibbles on her lip in distracted gloom. She is extremely uneasy.
"What's wrong?" I inquire softly.
She is silent a moment, seems burdened with a knowledge almost too enormous to express. "He's coming to the house," she blurts out sheepishly.
"Who?"
"Him."
"When?"
On the part of the rest of us, there is massive shock.
"Today."
"Today?"
"I invited him for lunch."
"You're crazy!"
"I'm getting out!"
"I don't want him."
"And I ," announces my wife in an expansive bellow of glowing self-congratulation, turning pointedly to gloat at each of us, "was making that up! Do you think," she continues in her rare flight of exultation, "I would expose a respectable man of the cloth to a gang of idiots like you?"
"Oh, Mom!" My daughter flings her arm around my wife's neck and hugs her from behind. "Mom, Mom, Mom. I just love her when she kids hike that. Don't you?"
"And so do I."
But it doesn't last, not on a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, unless all of us have already made plans, for Derek is waiting at home.
He is still there. He grows older every day.
"Can't she take him out some place?" my daughter objects. "He's always home."
And so is his quacking, ill-visaged, overweight nurse with her rinsed white hair and offensive scent of bath powder, whom I've ordered my wife to get rid of once and for all, even if we have to take care of him ourselves for a little while. (It might do us some good.) And the maid can go too, for all I care. (I can't feel at home when she's tiptoeing around.)
"Get a German, for Christ sakes," I barked at my wife. "Import a Dane."
"Where will I get them?"
"How the hell should I know? Other people do."
"I get embarrassed when my friends come over."
(So do we.)
"There's no need to," I tell my daughter gently.
"I knew you'd say that," she sulks in disapproval.
The children explode with laughter.
"You show me one doctor," says my wife, when she can be heard, "who'll say it's healthy to use such language in front of your own son and daughter."
"Name one we've seen who'd say it isn't."
"I thought you agreed," interjects my daughter cynically, "not to fight in front of us anymore."
"We aren't fighting," my wife responds automatically.
"I know," scoffs my daughter. "You were discussing."
"With emphasis," adds my son in friendly mockery.
All of us smile but my wife, who nibbles on her lip in distracted gloom. She is extremely uneasy.
"What's wrong?" I inquire softly.
She is silent a moment, seems burdened with a knowledge almost too enormous to express. "He's coming to the house," she blurts out sheepishly.
"Who?"
"Him."
"When?"
On the part of the rest of us, there is massive shock.
"Today."
"Today?"
"I invited him for lunch."
"You're crazy!"
"I'm getting out!"
"I don't want him."
"And I ," announces my wife in an expansive bellow of glowing self-congratulation, turning pointedly to gloat at each of us, "was making that up! Do you think," she continues in her rare flight of exultation, "I would expose a respectable man of the cloth to a gang of idiots like you?"
"Oh, Mom!" My daughter flings her arm around my wife's neck and hugs her from behind. "Mom, Mom, Mom. I just love her when she kids hike that. Don't you?"
"And so do I."
But it doesn't last, not on a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, unless all of us have already made plans, for Derek is waiting at home.
He is still there. He grows older every day.
"Can't she take him out some place?" my daughter objects. "He's always home."
And so is his quacking, ill-visaged, overweight nurse with her rinsed white hair and offensive scent of bath powder, whom I've ordered my wife to get rid of once and for all, even if we have to take care of him ourselves for a little while. (It might do us some good.) And the maid can go too, for all I care. (I can't feel at home when she's tiptoeing around.)
"Get a German, for Christ sakes," I barked at my wife. "Import a Dane."
"Where will I get them?"
"How the hell should I know? Other people do."
"I get embarrassed when my friends come over."
(So do we.)
"There's no need to," I tell my daughter gently.
"I knew you'd say that," she sulks in disapproval.