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mallorys_cameraDelivered Max to the Rotarians.
Nothing like a group of sleek Pebble Beach Rotary Club fat cats at six in the morning to make me long to run screaming for a Makarov and matching class warfare kit. The very rich need hybrid vigor and thus they run these wilderness leadership camps for the children of the struggling middle class. You have to be nominated. Then your mother has to twist your arm to make you go. "It will look good on your college applications," I ranted. And it will.
I’d been dreaming of a picnic at a military base when I bolted awake. The dream’s been hard to shake. There’d been a child, she’d been crying. Her father – crew cut, lean muscular forearms – had been explaining, "She’s having a hard time coping with my promotion. I’m a captain now." I woke up thinking, they take care of their own but it’s not clear to me what that means.
While Max was visiting the Merchant Marine Academy, Nathan had been spending a week at Annapolis. I hadn’t realized till last night that the reason Max wanted to interview at the Merchant Marine Academy was because Nathan was doing the Annapolis thing. They’ve been best friends and rivals for six years now.
"So. Annapolis?" I asked Nathan. The boys were sprawling in front of some Playstation basketball game, plates of ravioli balanced on their laps.
"Maybe the ROTC," laughed Nathan.
"He doesn’t want to be some upper classman’s bitch for a year," said Max.
Now Max is talking about the Naval ROTC. They bat around the idea of becoming pilots.
"I hope you boys realize that in 10 years the United States is going to be in permanent occupation of the territory formerly known as Saudi Arabia," I told them. "To keep the gasoline flowing. A military career is not the risk-free occupation it used to be, say, back in the Cold War days."
"Mom," said Max.
"So, Patrizia," Nathan asked, "have you been enjoying the all-Reagan-all-the-time television coverage?"
"You bet," I said. "I’ve always wondered how long it takes for grass to grow up around coffins."
I felt sick. An incipient cystitis. I never get bladder infections, but here I had one. At the store I’d been running out to the bathroom every twenty minutes, and utterly distracted with customers. June has been a slow month. It was supposed to boom. Thousands of people were supposed to have been out strolling Cannery Row and here there were only isolated pockets of meandering vacationers. Sales are down $1000 from last month at this time. When you have cystitis, the last second that you pee is exquisitely, almost orgasmically, intense – a pleasure/pain thing. Like most of my life.
"I got my report card, Mommy," prattled Robin, "and it’s really good! I passed everything."
Uh oh, I thought. He hasn’t called me anything but "Mom" in quite some time now.
I looked. A+ in Spanish with an enthusiastic note from the Bolivian instructor – "His accent is like a native speaker’s!" Barely adequate grades in just about everything else except science and social science (oddly fused) where he got a D.
My heart just plummeted. The kid is so bright! I mean, honestly – yes, I’m his mother; yes, I’m biased, but I know from smarts. Robin has them. Robin may be smarter than me and I have a pretty high regard for my own intelligence, however useless to the evolutionary lotto of survival my intelligence may be.
Kitchen, a fucking mess. Dishes appeared not to have been done in three days. Garbage overflowing, dogs rooting around in it. Ancient grease and splatters encrusting counter tops and the secret places under stove burners. Ben off playing with the Carson & Barnes Circus since six o’clock that morning. A man’s got to have a hobby. Still, I’d just come back from working eight hours in the store. I wanted to watch Law & Order reruns. That’s my hobby.
Instead I started cleaning the kitchen.
"So, it’s a good report card, huh, Mommy?" asked Robin ingenously.
"Robin, you know very well it’s a horrible report card. You’re so smart! I don’t understand it."
"Smarter than Max?" asked Robin.
"Different from Max," I said. "He thinks more in a straight line. You think more like me."
"How’s that?"
"We jump around a lot," I said.
The kid isn’t ten years old yet and he’s devouring Stephen King novels. He’s twenty single-spaced type-written pages into his own vampire novel and you know what? It’s actually good. The kid has a gift for dialogue.
Suddenly I feel so overwhelmed.
Nothing like a group of sleek Pebble Beach Rotary Club fat cats at six in the morning to make me long to run screaming for a Makarov and matching class warfare kit. The very rich need hybrid vigor and thus they run these wilderness leadership camps for the children of the struggling middle class. You have to be nominated. Then your mother has to twist your arm to make you go. "It will look good on your college applications," I ranted. And it will.
I’d been dreaming of a picnic at a military base when I bolted awake. The dream’s been hard to shake. There’d been a child, she’d been crying. Her father – crew cut, lean muscular forearms – had been explaining, "She’s having a hard time coping with my promotion. I’m a captain now." I woke up thinking, they take care of their own but it’s not clear to me what that means.
While Max was visiting the Merchant Marine Academy, Nathan had been spending a week at Annapolis. I hadn’t realized till last night that the reason Max wanted to interview at the Merchant Marine Academy was because Nathan was doing the Annapolis thing. They’ve been best friends and rivals for six years now.
"So. Annapolis?" I asked Nathan. The boys were sprawling in front of some Playstation basketball game, plates of ravioli balanced on their laps.
"Maybe the ROTC," laughed Nathan.
"He doesn’t want to be some upper classman’s bitch for a year," said Max.
Now Max is talking about the Naval ROTC. They bat around the idea of becoming pilots.
"I hope you boys realize that in 10 years the United States is going to be in permanent occupation of the territory formerly known as Saudi Arabia," I told them. "To keep the gasoline flowing. A military career is not the risk-free occupation it used to be, say, back in the Cold War days."
"Mom," said Max.
"So, Patrizia," Nathan asked, "have you been enjoying the all-Reagan-all-the-time television coverage?"
"You bet," I said. "I’ve always wondered how long it takes for grass to grow up around coffins."
I felt sick. An incipient cystitis. I never get bladder infections, but here I had one. At the store I’d been running out to the bathroom every twenty minutes, and utterly distracted with customers. June has been a slow month. It was supposed to boom. Thousands of people were supposed to have been out strolling Cannery Row and here there were only isolated pockets of meandering vacationers. Sales are down $1000 from last month at this time. When you have cystitis, the last second that you pee is exquisitely, almost orgasmically, intense – a pleasure/pain thing. Like most of my life.
"I got my report card, Mommy," prattled Robin, "and it’s really good! I passed everything."
Uh oh, I thought. He hasn’t called me anything but "Mom" in quite some time now.
I looked. A+ in Spanish with an enthusiastic note from the Bolivian instructor – "His accent is like a native speaker’s!" Barely adequate grades in just about everything else except science and social science (oddly fused) where he got a D.
My heart just plummeted. The kid is so bright! I mean, honestly – yes, I’m his mother; yes, I’m biased, but I know from smarts. Robin has them. Robin may be smarter than me and I have a pretty high regard for my own intelligence, however useless to the evolutionary lotto of survival my intelligence may be.
Kitchen, a fucking mess. Dishes appeared not to have been done in three days. Garbage overflowing, dogs rooting around in it. Ancient grease and splatters encrusting counter tops and the secret places under stove burners. Ben off playing with the Carson & Barnes Circus since six o’clock that morning. A man’s got to have a hobby. Still, I’d just come back from working eight hours in the store. I wanted to watch Law & Order reruns. That’s my hobby.
Instead I started cleaning the kitchen.
"So, it’s a good report card, huh, Mommy?" asked Robin ingenously.
"Robin, you know very well it’s a horrible report card. You’re so smart! I don’t understand it."
"Smarter than Max?" asked Robin.
"Different from Max," I said. "He thinks more in a straight line. You think more like me."
"How’s that?"
"We jump around a lot," I said.
The kid isn’t ten years old yet and he’s devouring Stephen King novels. He’s twenty single-spaced type-written pages into his own vampire novel and you know what? It’s actually good. The kid has a gift for dialogue.
Suddenly I feel so overwhelmed.
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Re: Jumping around a lot
Date: 2004-06-12 11:39 am (UTC)They are so brainless at this age. The papers that do make it home are crumpled into uselessness. They seem unable to connect the test score to the grade. Or realize that some things have to be started before the due date.
Emielia hasn't gotten 'real' grades yet. She's quite satisfied with 'grade level' 3's (which next year are 'B's when I know she can do 4's just by concentrating, just concentrating(!) on the task. Her father, the teacher is much less concerned about these things. But I'll rant on about the day that she KNEW she had a test on State capitals and REFUSED to study.
Hope the cystitis lets go of you quite soon, here. Yuk.