Presto, rows and rows of listings, in neat little boxes, each box a portal to dozens of imagesâenough to keep Roland busy until itâs time to go to school. The flip side of Aspergerâs: if heâs doing something he finds âinterest,â as he puts it, heâll amuse himself for hours. Sitting down, his ass halfway off the chair, he falls under the spell of the photographs of dining rooms and master baths, eat-in-kitchens and finished basements, and I leave him in peace.
R OLAND PLUGGED IN TO C LEVELAND , M AUDE IN THE BASEMENT with her animated bunny chums, I have a moment to relax. Iâm sprawled on the bed, a beached starfish. All I want to do is surrender to the Sandmanâs call itâs a Sand woman , not a Sandman, and not a call but a siren song, sheâs Salome dancing the dance of the seven veils, half-naked and writhing on a pole, her heart-shaped ass plainly visible behind the gossamer, primped in a gesture of promise, anything I desire, anything at all, to lure me to the Land of Nod, but I canât, because if I fall asleep now, only to wake ten, eleven, twelve minutes later, the fatigue will be worse , if thatâs possible; the aching in my bones will intensify, the dull headache cavalry stampeding in the space behind my eyes will magnify, the nausea will become unbearable, and I cannot fathom how anyone, surgeon, midwife, mother offering newborn child her chapped nipple, can function under such dire conditions without breaking down and falling apart sooner or later I canât go on I must go on I will go on but I do understand, with hi-def clarity, the efficacy of sleep deprivation as a method of torture, the hard-on it gives Dick Cheney, because if I were an al-Qaeda operative at Gitmoâme, Josh Lansky, how I feel at this precise momentâand some G-man in mirrored shades entered the oubliette and promised me twelve hours of undisturbed sleep if I named names, names would be named, habib ; every last name I knew, one long litany of guttural utterances, of Abduls, Muhammeds, and Ibrahims, of Osamas, Khalids, and Anwars, and when every last morsel of so-called intelligence was extracted from my weary head, I would lay it on the pillow, or the cold, pig-blooded cement floor, and Allahu Akbar resume relations with Salome the Sandwoman, who after all is not unlike one of the virgins promised me in my thwarted martyrdom, and I would sleep soundly and without remorse, al-salatu khayru min an-nawm be damned.
Two minutes later, the patter of tiny feet, and I feel Maude standing by the side of the bed.
âDaddy,â she asks, with almost comic politeness, her voice containing a slight Continental lilt, âwould you please help me pyoo-pee?â
Thus continues the shitty morning.
Friday, 8:42 a.m.
T HE USUAL CHAOS, GETTING THEM INTO THE CAR . C HECK THAT, the minivan : an â07 Honda Odyssey, Bali blue, leased before fall of Lehman and the global economy and therefore overpriced at $389 a month, MOMS ROCK! bumper sticker just below the left rear tail-light (as if driving a minivan were not sufficiently emasculating), the whole of the floor from cockpit to hatch strewn with Cheerios, Late July cheese crackers, Veggie Booty, cold French fries, old gum, desiccated pieces of bagel and crusts of bread, straw wrappers, lollipop wrappers, gum wrappers, yellow-and-orange cheeseburger wrappers, the dried-out husks of juice boxes and Poland Spring bottles, spent Diet Coke cans, used napkins, used Kleenex, used baby wipes (used on dirty faces, not dirty behinds), used socks (Old Navy or Circo, snowflaky in their stubborn inability to find a match), pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, Chuck E. Cheese tokens, mud, sand, pebbles, rocks, crumpled pages from Lego catalogs and real estate leaflets, torn-off pages of the original copy of A Field Guide to American Houses , forgotten Happy Meal toys, lost Lego bricks, and countless smaller particles of indeterminate origin, and
R OLAND PLUGGED IN TO C LEVELAND , M AUDE IN THE BASEMENT with her animated bunny chums, I have a moment to relax. Iâm sprawled on the bed, a beached starfish. All I want to do is surrender to the Sandmanâs call itâs a Sand woman , not a Sandman, and not a call but a siren song, sheâs Salome dancing the dance of the seven veils, half-naked and writhing on a pole, her heart-shaped ass plainly visible behind the gossamer, primped in a gesture of promise, anything I desire, anything at all, to lure me to the Land of Nod, but I canât, because if I fall asleep now, only to wake ten, eleven, twelve minutes later, the fatigue will be worse , if thatâs possible; the aching in my bones will intensify, the dull headache cavalry stampeding in the space behind my eyes will magnify, the nausea will become unbearable, and I cannot fathom how anyone, surgeon, midwife, mother offering newborn child her chapped nipple, can function under such dire conditions without breaking down and falling apart sooner or later I canât go on I must go on I will go on but I do understand, with hi-def clarity, the efficacy of sleep deprivation as a method of torture, the hard-on it gives Dick Cheney, because if I were an al-Qaeda operative at Gitmoâme, Josh Lansky, how I feel at this precise momentâand some G-man in mirrored shades entered the oubliette and promised me twelve hours of undisturbed sleep if I named names, names would be named, habib ; every last name I knew, one long litany of guttural utterances, of Abduls, Muhammeds, and Ibrahims, of Osamas, Khalids, and Anwars, and when every last morsel of so-called intelligence was extracted from my weary head, I would lay it on the pillow, or the cold, pig-blooded cement floor, and Allahu Akbar resume relations with Salome the Sandwoman, who after all is not unlike one of the virgins promised me in my thwarted martyrdom, and I would sleep soundly and without remorse, al-salatu khayru min an-nawm be damned.
Two minutes later, the patter of tiny feet, and I feel Maude standing by the side of the bed.
âDaddy,â she asks, with almost comic politeness, her voice containing a slight Continental lilt, âwould you please help me pyoo-pee?â
Thus continues the shitty morning.
Friday, 8:42 a.m.
T HE USUAL CHAOS, GETTING THEM INTO THE CAR . C HECK THAT, the minivan : an â07 Honda Odyssey, Bali blue, leased before fall of Lehman and the global economy and therefore overpriced at $389 a month, MOMS ROCK! bumper sticker just below the left rear tail-light (as if driving a minivan were not sufficiently emasculating), the whole of the floor from cockpit to hatch strewn with Cheerios, Late July cheese crackers, Veggie Booty, cold French fries, old gum, desiccated pieces of bagel and crusts of bread, straw wrappers, lollipop wrappers, gum wrappers, yellow-and-orange cheeseburger wrappers, the dried-out husks of juice boxes and Poland Spring bottles, spent Diet Coke cans, used napkins, used Kleenex, used baby wipes (used on dirty faces, not dirty behinds), used socks (Old Navy or Circo, snowflaky in their stubborn inability to find a match), pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, Chuck E. Cheese tokens, mud, sand, pebbles, rocks, crumpled pages from Lego catalogs and real estate leaflets, torn-off pages of the original copy of A Field Guide to American Houses , forgotten Happy Meal toys, lost Lego bricks, and countless smaller particles of indeterminate origin, and
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