That night, to avoid tantrums on the part of any of the adults or children in the house, the compromise was that Landon would build a pillow fort in the living room and sleep in there, and I’d tell him a bedtime story. I lay down on the floor partly under the coffee table with […]
Sunday afternoon we got good news from the motel where Remo was staying: they’d have vacancy starting in the morning. Around the time Landon, Ziggy, and me were doing our best to eat the rest of the donuts (while they were still fresh, of course), Janine started making noise about Landon needing to sleep in […]
Claire, it turned out, did expect us all to go to church. You might think she’d be down on church after having married a preacher who then cheated on her and dropped her like a hot potato when he found out she was terminally ill…? But I had a feeling she’d want us to go, […]
Janine came home while we were sitting in the kitchen. Ziggy excused himself to bed and Janine took his place at the table. “Here.” I got up and retrieved a tea cup for her, and then poured some from the pot. “How was work?” “All right.” She accepted the cup somewhat warily. “It’s okay,” I […]
That night Ziggy and I were lying in bed in Landon’s room while waiting for Janine to come home. It had been an exhausting day and we really hadn’t done anything. Just dealing with other people’s emotions all day was enough to wear us out, I guess.
So this is how I met my nephew Landon. Sitting in the waiting room of a hospital. Remo had driven Janine home to have a nap while Ziggy and I stayed at the ER. By the time we got there Claire had been insisting that we not fuss over her, but in that way that […]
I sat down at the kitchen table. Remo poured me some coffee and Ziggy poured in the cream and pushed the cup toward me. I wrapped my fingers around it. “You look shell-shocked, kiddo,” Remo said. “What the fuck was that all about?” I tried drinking the coffee to see if anything would start to […]
Didn’t she know? Didn’t she know?! Hadn’t someone told her? Wasn’t it obvious? It’s really hard to get your thoughts in order when you’re choking on raisin toast and your mother’s condemnation.
Round two came after I was properly dressed–by rock musician standards, I mean–and the scent of coffee from downstairs became too strong to resist. It was chilly, so I put my leather jacket on over my flannel shirt. “I’ll go first,” Ziggy suggested.
Ziggy crept out of the bed in the morning with the words, “Gonna scope out the shower situation.” I stayed under the covers. In the morning light, I could see pine trees through the small window. It took me a minute to remember where we were. I mean, I knew we were in my sister’s […]