the political situation in Israel?
Who is Golda Meir? I asked him, not because I truly wanted to know but because I couldn’t think of another way to tell him that he was boring you children to death on that festive occasion. Your father, who never liked to be interrupted, puffed up with rage.
How can you not know who Golda Meir is? he shouted at me. Why don’t you read the paper?
I don’t have time, William, I told him.
I’ll bet you couldn’t find Israel on a map, he said. You’re a stupid woman, Morgan. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
In the ensuing silence I continued to dish up the Christmas pudding, ladling the brown sauce over each portion and passing them along, though the tears were flooding down my face. I felt all your eyes on me, even the littlest ones seated on the bench behind the table and the baby in her high chair with the grease from the pope’s nose dripping down her chin. I couldn’t bear to look at your faces all turned my way, while the plum pudding, forgotten, cooled in your bowls. I was afraid what I’d see in your expressions was agreement.
And later that evening, it somehow pained me to see the balsam tree heavy with tinsel in a corner of the living room and the cheap new trinkets lying beneath it and the coloured lights out on Harry Lang’s blue spruce and the frozen white and indigo night, picturesque beyond the windows as a greeting card. And your father, seeing me already in my nightgown at nine o’clock on Christmas evening, demanded, What’s this?
I have a headache, William.
Oh,
another
one, he came back sarcastically. However, when he finally retired to bed just before midnight, he whispered softly, a little repentantly, in my ear, Merry Christmas, Morgan, but I pretended to sleep.
October 27
Dear girls,
…Are you taking your medications, Mrs. Hazzard? Dr. Pilgrim asked me the night your father fell. He placed his hand on my shoulder as though I were a child and not a quarter-century older than he. Sometimes these crises make us forget, he said. You must preserve your health. Mr. Hazzard will need your support if he’s to recover.
And so I’ve been faithful in taking my dozen pills each morning with a glass of orange juice. Lazix for fluid retention. Vasotec for blood pressure. Digoxin for tachycardia. Aspirin to thin the blood. Zantac for stomach ulcer. Robaxisol for pain from bone breaks. Isomex to build the bones. Ocuvite to nourish the eyes. Indocin for arthritis. A potassium binder. A multivitamin. A calcium supplement.
Since your father’s fall, I find I choke on the pills. My throat contracts, rebels, coughs them back up at me. They begin to dissolve, bitter as hemlock on my tongue. I try again, pour down more juice. Large as stones, they lodged yesterday in my esophagus, clinging like barnacles to the dark, humid walls, resisting the rush of fluid. And it seemsto me that, if my body is so dysfunctional, if these pills are all that keep my heart beating, my blood flowing freely, my femur from snapping like a wishbone, wouldn’t it be better to give up on the machine altogether?…
October 28
Dear girls,
…Dr. Pilgrim is in fact a hobby sheep farmer. Whenever we went for our appointments, your father was always full of questions about the extent of his acreage, the size of the sheep herd, the success of the spring lambing, the quality of the wool each year, the price fresh mutton would fetch. I wish he’d invite me out there someday, Morgan, he used to say longingly, I’d love to go. And the more I think of it, the more I believe your father had grown to love Dr. Pilgrim like the son Morris never turned out to be…
Dear girls,
…As your father continues to sleep, I’m uncertain what to make of his apparent tranquility. For surely his soul is imprisoned within his lifeless body, with no voice now that he’s mute, so that it can converse only with itself and that, I think, must be a difficult dialogue indeed…
October 29
Dear girls,
…Yesterday, on my
Who is Golda Meir? I asked him, not because I truly wanted to know but because I couldn’t think of another way to tell him that he was boring you children to death on that festive occasion. Your father, who never liked to be interrupted, puffed up with rage.
How can you not know who Golda Meir is? he shouted at me. Why don’t you read the paper?
I don’t have time, William, I told him.
I’ll bet you couldn’t find Israel on a map, he said. You’re a stupid woman, Morgan. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
In the ensuing silence I continued to dish up the Christmas pudding, ladling the brown sauce over each portion and passing them along, though the tears were flooding down my face. I felt all your eyes on me, even the littlest ones seated on the bench behind the table and the baby in her high chair with the grease from the pope’s nose dripping down her chin. I couldn’t bear to look at your faces all turned my way, while the plum pudding, forgotten, cooled in your bowls. I was afraid what I’d see in your expressions was agreement.
And later that evening, it somehow pained me to see the balsam tree heavy with tinsel in a corner of the living room and the cheap new trinkets lying beneath it and the coloured lights out on Harry Lang’s blue spruce and the frozen white and indigo night, picturesque beyond the windows as a greeting card. And your father, seeing me already in my nightgown at nine o’clock on Christmas evening, demanded, What’s this?
I have a headache, William.
Oh,
another
one, he came back sarcastically. However, when he finally retired to bed just before midnight, he whispered softly, a little repentantly, in my ear, Merry Christmas, Morgan, but I pretended to sleep.
October 27
Dear girls,
…Are you taking your medications, Mrs. Hazzard? Dr. Pilgrim asked me the night your father fell. He placed his hand on my shoulder as though I were a child and not a quarter-century older than he. Sometimes these crises make us forget, he said. You must preserve your health. Mr. Hazzard will need your support if he’s to recover.
And so I’ve been faithful in taking my dozen pills each morning with a glass of orange juice. Lazix for fluid retention. Vasotec for blood pressure. Digoxin for tachycardia. Aspirin to thin the blood. Zantac for stomach ulcer. Robaxisol for pain from bone breaks. Isomex to build the bones. Ocuvite to nourish the eyes. Indocin for arthritis. A potassium binder. A multivitamin. A calcium supplement.
Since your father’s fall, I find I choke on the pills. My throat contracts, rebels, coughs them back up at me. They begin to dissolve, bitter as hemlock on my tongue. I try again, pour down more juice. Large as stones, they lodged yesterday in my esophagus, clinging like barnacles to the dark, humid walls, resisting the rush of fluid. And it seemsto me that, if my body is so dysfunctional, if these pills are all that keep my heart beating, my blood flowing freely, my femur from snapping like a wishbone, wouldn’t it be better to give up on the machine altogether?…
October 28
Dear girls,
…Dr. Pilgrim is in fact a hobby sheep farmer. Whenever we went for our appointments, your father was always full of questions about the extent of his acreage, the size of the sheep herd, the success of the spring lambing, the quality of the wool each year, the price fresh mutton would fetch. I wish he’d invite me out there someday, Morgan, he used to say longingly, I’d love to go. And the more I think of it, the more I believe your father had grown to love Dr. Pilgrim like the son Morris never turned out to be…
Dear girls,
…As your father continues to sleep, I’m uncertain what to make of his apparent tranquility. For surely his soul is imprisoned within his lifeless body, with no voice now that he’s mute, so that it can converse only with itself and that, I think, must be a difficult dialogue indeed…
October 29
Dear girls,
…Yesterday, on my
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