excerpt
Our father, on returning home from work and seeing for the first
time the latest hairdo, would tactfully say nothing at all, appreciative
of the few days respite it afforded him. To brother Burt and me,
he’d wag a head and roll amused Celtic eyes—eyes, he’d remind, in
the event we’d forgotten — that had seen just about everything.
– Tony’s baloney, he’d guffaw. Baloney by Tony.
He was right, of course. These folic creations crumbled like sandcastles.
Exhausted rings unravelled, curls drooped as miserably as
the diseased limbs of trees. In a week or so my mother was again the
self she’d so desperately hoped to escape. The salon scent was circumvented
by a festering despair. It lingered stubbornly, a vagrant
after-dinner smell.
With the approach of Mother’s Day, in what had become family tradition,
my parents planned, on the Saturday preceding, an evening
of dinner and dancing. They would launch the celebration with
some Chinese food at the Honey Blossom Restaurant.
– Call for reservations, will ya? my mother asked. I’ve got to be at
Anthony’s soon.
Though the restaurant rarely filled its dozen wooden booths,
Mom always insisted on reservations. I think the gesture made her
feel like someone special, my call serving as official notice that the
two of them were stepping out.
I recognized the voice answering the phone. Ming’s white shirt
stained yellow at the armpits. The long, curled nail of his small finger
was sharp enough to hook a trout.
– Resa-way-shun? he screamed. You wanna make resa-way-shun
for Honey Bwossum?
Behind him I could hear the clamour of juggling woks, the swell
of an alien chatter.
Ming repeated each letter of our surname like a man calling a
bingo game.
– Come anytime you wike!
My father never learned how to swim, which did not disqualify him
during the war for an assignment aboard a Corvette. The idea was
Libros Libertad 