Read Online Straight Man by Richard Russo - Free Book Online Page B

it that my daughter is on a first-name basis with the same contractor who worked me like one of his own laborers and pocketed my checks without ever encouraging the tiniest intimacy? And when did my younger daughter start using the phrase “fucked up” in my presence? And, most important, why would Julie want a replica (however perfect) of her parents’ house?
    “Does this mean that if I ever tire of living in my own fucked-up house I can come live with you?” I asked. To which my daughter put her hands on her slender hips, a dead ringer for her mother in this posture, truth be told, and said, “Oh, Daddy, you don’t have to get all pissy. You know what I meant.”
    Pissy?
    “Besides,” she said with a grin, “the houses won’t be identical. Ours is going to have a pool and Jacuzzi.”
    It doesn’t though. At least not yet. They’ve put off the construction of these for now. Lily has informed me of this, as if to convince me that there’s nothing to worry about, that Russell and Julie are more sensible than I’ve given them credit for being, the house itself notwithstanding.
    But when I chug up to the mailbox and survey their house, there are signs of desperation that transcend the shrunken mound of earth alongside the half-dug hole. That they’ve run out of money and the bank’s confidence rather precipitously is everywhere evidenced. Thewinding driveway remains unpaved, the lot unlandscaped, the windows unshuttered. A piece of bright blue tarp flaps over the chimney hole like a flag. Their house sends a chill through me, the fear rendered more personal by the resemblance of their house to Lily’s and mine. I have two thoughts in rapid succession, the second coming before I can dispel the first. The first is: My God, they aren’t going to make it. The second thought is that, in some deeper sense, I’m looking not at their house but rather at my own, and this causes me to recall Teddy’s question to my wife as I watched from the kitchen window. Did she think I was going to be all right, was what he’d wanted to know. Or at least I think that was what he was asking.
    A car that I’m aware has been following me up the long hill catches me here at its crest. I trot into my daughter’s drive to let the car pass. But whoever it is has slowed down in what appears to me comic concern for my safety. When whoever stops, blinker blinking, I realize it’s Julie, who toots me out of the way and then waves for me to follow her up the drive. The last thing I want is to visit her and Russell, but I’m stuck, so I do as I’m told. Actually, I’ve run farther than I planned, so maybe resting up before I head back isn’t such a bad idea.
    “You didn’t look like you were going to make that hill,” my daughter says when I trot up. She hands me a small sack of groceries from the trunk and slams it.
    “I’m going to be fifty this summer,” I remind her, panting. “One of these days you’re going to find me alongside the road.”
    Julie usually chides my morbid humor, but she’s caught sight of my nose. “Good lord, Daddy!”
    I know this girl, so when she raises a delicate index finger with its carefully sculpted and brightly lacquered nail to touch the purple nostril that my run seems to have further expanded in my lower peripheral vision, I’m quick enough to catch her slender wrist. The rapid circulation of my blood has the nose pounding in time with my pulse, and even the gentlest of touches is, at this moment, a pretty terrifying prospect. “Please,” I warn her.
    She promises not to, but she can’t help leaning in close and making me turn so she can inspect the injury more closely under the porch light. “Yuck” is her final word on the subject, and I can tell how muchshe’d like to probe the wound with her long-nailed pinkie. “What is there about something revolting that makes you want to touch it?” she wonders out loud.
    What indeed? What would William of Occam say? There’s a simple