Read Online Fathermucker by Greg Olear - Free Book Online

probably okay to call back, but before I can dial, Maude summons me again—“Daddy! Another Max & Ruby ! Another Max & Ruby !”—and I’m back to the basement, still in my towel, to play yet another new episode, or, rather, an episode they’ve watched a million times but not yet this morning (they didn’t finish the last one; it was rejected as too familiar). What can you do. At least those rotund rabbits are enhancing my children’s understanding of INTER- and INTRAPERSONAL DYNAMICS .
    Then Maude says she’s hungry—in her whine-infused accent—and I come upstairs to find a banana, and I’m just about to peel it when she starts wailing, and when I get back down, now wearing only boxer briefs, Roland is on top of her, and they’re wrestling on the sofa, what probably began as play fighting—both of them like physical contact; Maude like a power forward who bangs under the boards, Roland delighting in the tactile stimuli until all of the sudden it becomes too much and his faulty sensory processing systems overload—and I have no idea how this started, or who started it, or why, and it’s a good fifteen minutes before I can separate them and restore order, and by then, it’s too late to return Stacy’s call.
    While this is all happening the episode plays on a loop on the TV, the insidious theme song burrowing its way into the recesses of my brain:
    Max and Ruby . . .
    Ruby and Max.
    Max and Ruby . . .
    Ruby and Max.
    Max and Ruby . . .
    Ruby and her little brother Max . . .
    (The melody is almost as inventive as the lyrics.)
    T IME WAS, MY INTEREST IN MY APPEARANCE WAS MORE THAN cursory. Not that I was ever a clothes horse, but there was a certain artsy look I tried to cultivate. In New York, this was easy to achieve; I simply wore the customary East Village uniform: black shirts, black sweaters, black Doc Martens, (not black) jeans. However hackneyed the ensemble, my clothes communicated what I wanted them to communicate, namely, Please do not mistake me for a banker, stockbroker, or lawyer. When we moved up here, where no one would ever mistake anyone for a banker, stockbroker, or lawyer—even Gloria’s husband Dennis, who is a lawyer, dresses like a high school English teacher—I resolved to “go native,” as it were, and began wearing say it ain’t so colors. Black, after all, is for the clergy, and, for obvious reasons, I felt a priestly look would be inappropriate attire for someone who spent the lion’s share of his time with small children. When Roland was still an infant, I took a trip to Woodbury Common, the celebrated outlet mall, and splurged on new shirts, new jeans, new sneakers, new Doc Martens that were brown, not black; hanging all the bags on the handle of Roland’s Maclaren stroller until the damned thing threatened to topple over. Notwithstanding the stray online T-shirt impulse-purchase, I have not expanded my wardrobe since. For the last four years, I’ve pretty much punted on fashion. There’s just no point. We seldom go out, and what’s the use of blowing fifty bucks on a swanky DKNY shirt if the principal activity I’m engaged in while wearing it involves wiping someone’s ass? I have a pair of jeans that I wear every day. This is not an exaggeration—I wear the same pair of jeans every single day , only changing to sweatpants during the fortnightly washing. I think they’re stylish, these jeans, as they sort of look like what the dudes from The Hills wear in the Us Weekly layouts, but I have no real way of knowing, no touchstone of chic. What I do is, I pair those jeans with a T-shirt—I have a drawer stuffed with them, most procured from that vaunted boutique of cutting edge couture , Target—and if it’s cold, as it is today, I first throw on a lined long-sleeved white undershirt. In the summer, I substitute shorts for the jeans, and