Frankie moved some food from my plate to his, and my parents got on his case instead of mine. He always complains that I get away with everything. Well, there are two sides to that wooden nickel.
I was unnaturally quiet for most of the meal, which wasprobably a mistake, because it threw off the entire family equilibrium.
Mom and Dad had begun a conversation about what sort of carpeting to put down in our unfinished finished basement. You have to understand that my parents live to bicker. You could stick them at the beach and they’d argue whether the ocean was bluish green, or greenish blue.
They rarely argued over dinner, though, I think because when you eat, your blood rushes from your brain to your stomach, putting you at a strategic disadvantage, because how are you going to come up with the real zingers when your brain isn’t at full power?
Like I said, it started as a discussion, and then it began heating up to the point where I would usually throw in some wisecrack. When I didn’t, the discussion suddenly evolved into an argument.
“We already agreed it should be Berber!” Mom says.
“I never agreed to anything! The carpet in the basement should match the rest of the house.” It’s escalating to the point where food is flying out of their mouths while they talk. Frankie just shakes his head, Christina’s reaching for her journal, and I start thinking about dog collars, maybe because dogs are on my mind after being at Crawley’s. When dogs bark too much, you can put on special collars, so each time the dog barks, it squirts out a funky smell. It doesn’t really teach dogs not to bark, but it distracts them long enough to make ’em forget they were barking.
I decided to let the carpet argument build just a bit more, then dropped my fork on my plate loudly. “Jeez! What’s the big deal? Put down a hardwood floor and each of you can buy a rug.”
“Watch that fork, you’ll break the plate!” Mom says.
“What? Are
you
gonna pay for a wood floor?” Dad grumbles.
“My friend’s got a wood closet to keep away bugs,” says Christina.
“That’s cedar,” Mom explains.
“We oughta build a cedar closet,” says Dad.
And that was that. The conversation lapsed into an endless stream of other topics, and I went back to pushing my food around my plate. They never noticed I had stopped the argument, just like they didn’t notice I wasn’t eating. Sometimes the Schwa had nothing on me.
“What do you think he’ll make us do?” the Schwa asked as we walked as slow as we dared from school to Crawley’s the next afternoon.
“I really don’t want to think about it.” Truth was, I spent most of the night thinking about it. I could barely get my homework done, which is not all that unusual, but this time it wasn’t because of TV, or video games, or my friends. It was because all I could think of were the many forms of torture Crawley could devise. I once had a teacher who said my imagination was about as developed as my appendix, but I don’t agree, because I came up with a whole bunch of possibilities of what Crawley could do. He could make us clean his dog-fouled patio with our toothbrushes—they do stuff like that in the army, I hear. He could send us on dangerous errands to Mafia types where we might get whacked, because anyone
that
rich in Brooklyn has gotta know a few of those guys. Or what if he wanted us to move the bodies he’s got locked up in a cellar beneaththe restaurant? At three in the morning, when you’re tossing in bed, it sounds almost possible, proving that my imagination is alive and well, or, I guess I should say, alive and sick.
“I think we’re gonna wish we were arrested,” I told the Schwa.
The restaurant only had a few customers at this hour of the afternoon. We identified ourselves to the maître d’, who I guess doubled as Crawley’s doorman for what few visitors he got.
“Ah,” said the maître d’oorman, “Mr. Crawley is expecting you. Follow
I was unnaturally quiet for most of the meal, which wasprobably a mistake, because it threw off the entire family equilibrium.
Mom and Dad had begun a conversation about what sort of carpeting to put down in our unfinished finished basement. You have to understand that my parents live to bicker. You could stick them at the beach and they’d argue whether the ocean was bluish green, or greenish blue.
They rarely argued over dinner, though, I think because when you eat, your blood rushes from your brain to your stomach, putting you at a strategic disadvantage, because how are you going to come up with the real zingers when your brain isn’t at full power?
Like I said, it started as a discussion, and then it began heating up to the point where I would usually throw in some wisecrack. When I didn’t, the discussion suddenly evolved into an argument.
“We already agreed it should be Berber!” Mom says.
“I never agreed to anything! The carpet in the basement should match the rest of the house.” It’s escalating to the point where food is flying out of their mouths while they talk. Frankie just shakes his head, Christina’s reaching for her journal, and I start thinking about dog collars, maybe because dogs are on my mind after being at Crawley’s. When dogs bark too much, you can put on special collars, so each time the dog barks, it squirts out a funky smell. It doesn’t really teach dogs not to bark, but it distracts them long enough to make ’em forget they were barking.
I decided to let the carpet argument build just a bit more, then dropped my fork on my plate loudly. “Jeez! What’s the big deal? Put down a hardwood floor and each of you can buy a rug.”
“Watch that fork, you’ll break the plate!” Mom says.
“What? Are
you
gonna pay for a wood floor?” Dad grumbles.
“My friend’s got a wood closet to keep away bugs,” says Christina.
“That’s cedar,” Mom explains.
“We oughta build a cedar closet,” says Dad.
And that was that. The conversation lapsed into an endless stream of other topics, and I went back to pushing my food around my plate. They never noticed I had stopped the argument, just like they didn’t notice I wasn’t eating. Sometimes the Schwa had nothing on me.
“What do you think he’ll make us do?” the Schwa asked as we walked as slow as we dared from school to Crawley’s the next afternoon.
“I really don’t want to think about it.” Truth was, I spent most of the night thinking about it. I could barely get my homework done, which is not all that unusual, but this time it wasn’t because of TV, or video games, or my friends. It was because all I could think of were the many forms of torture Crawley could devise. I once had a teacher who said my imagination was about as developed as my appendix, but I don’t agree, because I came up with a whole bunch of possibilities of what Crawley could do. He could make us clean his dog-fouled patio with our toothbrushes—they do stuff like that in the army, I hear. He could send us on dangerous errands to Mafia types where we might get whacked, because anyone
that
rich in Brooklyn has gotta know a few of those guys. Or what if he wanted us to move the bodies he’s got locked up in a cellar beneaththe restaurant? At three in the morning, when you’re tossing in bed, it sounds almost possible, proving that my imagination is alive and well, or, I guess I should say, alive and sick.
“I think we’re gonna wish we were arrested,” I told the Schwa.
The restaurant only had a few customers at this hour of the afternoon. We identified ourselves to the maître d’, who I guess doubled as Crawley’s doorman for what few visitors he got.
“Ah,” said the maître d’oorman, “Mr. Crawley is expecting you. Follow
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