Duane's Depressed by Larry McMurtry

at the time, they each forgot their vows and ate several pieces of round steak, washing it down with beer.
    “If either of you are pregnant you oughtn’t to be drinking that beer,” Karla informed them sternly. “We have enough addicts in this family without producing any little alcoholic fetuses.”
    “Mom, don’t talk about things like that, it’s creepy,” Julie said. “I don’t even want my kids to know what a fetus is—they’re too young.”
    “We already know. Don’t you ever watch the Discovery Channel?” Willy asked.
    “A fetus grows in the uterus,” Barbi said, in her dark way. “And it’s sperm that makes them and sperm lives in the balls of the male.”
    “That’s right—I think I’ve already got some in my balls,” Willy said.
    “Balls,” Little Bascom said. “Balls, balls.”
    “Now see what you started,” Annette said to Karla. They had never been close.
    “Yes, but I started it for a good reason—so you won’t drink when you’re pregnant and produce some little baby that won’t never have good math skills,” Karla said. “Anyway, as soon as kids get big enough to watch television now they know all about the facts of life.”
    “And penises and vaginas too,” Willy said.
    “Daddy, stop him,” Julie said. “I don’t want him talking about dicks at the dinner table.”
    “Okay, Julie’s right, everybody shut up about the facts of life,” Duane said. “Anyway I need to talk to all of you about a decision I made today.”
    “Uh-oh, I knew this was coming,” Karla said. “I think we ought to get the children to bed before we get into this.”
    “Not on your life,” Duane said. “I particularly want the children to hear what I have to say.”
    “Oh sure, so you can brainwash them into believing that anything you do is just fine and dandy,” Karla said.
    “There’s free speech in this country—I have the right to say what I want to say to my own children and grandchildren, don’t I?” Duane demanded to know.
    Karla refused to answer, but there was a chorus from the crowd and the chorus was in favor of hearing what Duane hadto say. Rag, intrigued, turned down I Love Lucy and stuck her head out the pantry door so she could listen.
    “You can talk,” Karla said, reluctantly. “But then I get the last word, okay?”
    “Okay—but on condition you don’t interrupt me until I’ve finished,” Duane said. “I want you to shut up until I’ve said what I have to say. Then we can all talk it over.”
    “If you go off the deep end and start brainwashing my grandkids I guess I have the right to interrupt,” Karla said. “What kind of democracy is this, anyway?”
    “Shut up, Grandma, I want to hear what Grandpa has to say,” Willy said.
    “As for that, you ain’t too big to spank, young man,” Karla said.
    She looked severely at Willy, but then, noticing that everyone at the table was frowning at her, and realizing that Duane, with his gift for sweet reasonableness, was costing her whatever advantage she might have in the court of public opinion, Karla quickly shut up.

7
    “I GUESS SOME PEOPLE in town and maybe one or two people in this house were a little upset with me today because I decided to take a walk,” Duane began.
    “Right, Grandma freaked out,” Willy said.
    “Right, ’cause you went crazy,” Bubbles said.
    “You should have taken me. I like to walk and nobody ever lets me,” Barbi said.
    “I don’t walk, I run,” Sami said.
    Loni, the shy one, who rarely spoke, as usual kept her own counsel.
    “I didn’t go crazy, Bubbles,” Duane said. “You don’t have to be crazy just to want to take a walk.”
    “Yes, you do,” Bubbles insisted. “You want to walk away and leave us all to starve, that’s what my momma said.”
    “It was a joke, Bubbles,” Julie said, horrified that her own daughter would betray a casual comment she had happened to make.
    “You kids shut up, and you too, Julie,” Karla said. “Let Pa-Pa