Read Online Falling Sideways by Kennedy Thomas E. - Free Book Online

Fred, you won’t have to do a thing.
    Turning up Strøget, the Walking Street, she decided that if Magasin’s outdoor café was still open, she would stop for a cappuccino— no , for a glass of wine—and do some thinking. But it was not open. So—to hell with it!—she pushed through the side doors of Magasin and rode the escalator down to the basement café and ordered a glass of merlot.
    She lit a cigarette and found herself thinking about the pope. It was his fault that she couldn’t have a puppy. Fred was all locked up in guilt. Martin Luther was right. The Catholics had it all wrong. Guilt and shame. Kneeling and bowing the head—bowing for what? the butcher’s knife?—and beating the breast. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! Ow my tit, ow my tit, ow my most battered tit!
    And that story about the guilt wheel in the heart that some damn priest had told Freddy when he was a boy. If you do a bad thing, the guilt wheel starts to turn and its sharp edges cut into the tender skin of your heart and the blood of shame and pain spills from the cut. But the more bad you do, the duller the edges get, so finally you can’t even feel the pain anymore. You just sin and sin and sin and you don’t feel a thing.
    Sounds like a plan to me, Freddy.
    He had liked that. He didn’t want the guilt, and he’d come a long way from it, she thought, but still it was the guilt that made him fold into himself and cut him off and fear being engaged with others. If you were engaged with someone, you might do something wrong, something to hurt them. When you were alone, there was no one to hurt but yourself. Not even a puppy!
    It’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s that he doesn’t dare. She was certain of that. It had to be that. If it wasn’t that, she didn’t know him at all, and if she didn’t know him after all these years, why then …
    He had done so much better when the children were little, when they needed him. Such a loving father. But his expectations were so great and his disappointments, too. When the children didn’t do what he saw as best for them, then the guilt got cooking, and it was his fault, and there it was again.
    Sometimes she wanted to shake him, shock him. Freddy, you’re your mother’s son! You’ve got an Italian heart, not an Irish one. You’re not Catholic, you’re an amorist! A hedonist! No wonder your mother cheated on your father! Who could stand to live with all that guilt and piety? It’s enough to make a sinner of anybody!
    But of course, she wouldn’t say that. Such words were not spoken or even insinuated.
    She lit another cigarette and signaled for another glass of wine, which the waiter brought with a dazzling smile, a tall, slim boy with tight black pants pinching his delightful ass. Tight at the front, too. Nice thick wad to wrap your palm around. Oh, to have Fred’s prick in me again! But all he thought about these days was his disappointment with Jes.
    “That boy has greatness in him, Kis,” he had told her once.
    “Who needs greatness? Let him live and be happy. All a person really needs is a little love in his life, Fred.” ( Or her life , she didn’t add, but he heard it anyway.)
    “Want me to try Viagra, Kis?”
    “No! What if you get a heart attack? Anyway, it only works if you have the desire—I read all about it—and if you have the desire, why in the world would you need Viagra? This is all mental, Freddy.”
    “Since when are you such an expert on everything?”
    “I know a few things, Freddy. It’s the Sermon on the Mount that matters about the church, about any church that calls itself Christian. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that we should love our neighbors. That’s what matters. Not all that guilt and sin, but love. That’s what Jesus said.”
    “In fact, Jesus did not say that in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, it is from the Old Testament. God to Moses as reported in Leviticus. And in the same chapter, God instructs Moses that