white or black, the way you talk to me.â
âUhmmhmm!ââfervent noises of agreement from Hudeen. âWhat it is, this charm school?â Chandra wanted to know. She knew I was leveling.
I told her. She listened. Of course there are such places where you go to get coached for job interviews, how to walk, sit, carry on a conversation, eat.
âChandraââI told her to get away from the old black-white businessââitâs the current equivalent of the old finishing school.â
âFinished is right,â she said, but she was eyeing me shrewdly. âNo kidding?â
âNo kidding.â
Thoughtfully she spooned stuff into Margaretâand went to charm school, and got a jobâfor a while.
Who knows? She might make it yet. As the Howard Cosell of anchorpersons.
âTell Miss Ellen Iâll be downstairs,â I tell Hudeen.
âShe be down!â cries Hudeen softly, inattentively.
âChandra,â I say, âwhere is St. Louis?â
âWhat you talking about, where is St. Louis!â cries Chandra, eyeing me suspiciously.
âTell Doctor where is St. Louis!â says Hudeen, hardly listening.
âSt. Louis is on the Mississippi River between Chicago and New Orleans,â says Margaret, my daughter, Miss Priss, smartest girl in class, first to put up her hand.
âRight,â I say.
Theyâre all right.
âMy other daughter, she live in Detroit,â says Hudeen to the TV.
Two strange thoughts occur to me in the ten seconds it takes to spiral down the iron staircase.
One: how strange it is that we love our children and canât stand them or they us. Love them? Yes, for true. Think of the worst thing that could happen to you. It is that something should happen to your little son or daughter, he get hurt or killed or die of leukemia; that she be raped, kidnapped, get hooked on drugs. This is past bearing. Canât stand them? Right. When weâre with them, weâre not with them, not in the very present but casting ahead of them and the very present, planning tomorrow, regretting yesterday, worrying about money and next year.
Counselors counsel parents: Communicate! Communicate with your kids! Communication is the key!
This is ninety percent psycho-crap and ten percent truth, but truth of a peculiar sort.
I donât communicate with Tommy and he doesnât with me, beyond a single flick of eye, a nod, and a downpull of lip. If I sat Tommy down and said, Son, letâs have a little talk, it would curdle him and curdle me, and it should.
Imagine Dr. Sarah Smart, popular syndicated columnist and apostle of total communication, showing up one night and saying to her daughter, Letâs have a little talk. I hope daughter would tell Mom to shove off.
Second thought on last iron step: It occurs to me that, except for the drink I took after Donnaâs visit, I havenât had a drink or a pill for two years, except for the drink at the Little Napoleon on the way home.
I sit down. I am able to sit still and notice things, like a man just out of prison, which I am, and glad of it. I sit in a chair, feet on the floor, arms on the arms of the chair, and watch the reflection of the late-afternoon sun off the bayou. I had never noticed it before. It makes parabolas of light on the ceiling which move and intersect each other.
Iâve gotten healthy. For two years I was greenskeeper of the officersâ golf course at the Fort Pelham air base. They made use of my history as a golfer. But instead of worrying about putting and chipping, hooking and slicing, I ran a huge John Deere tractor with a gang of floating cutters fore and aft, raked the sand traps, swung down the rough, manned the sprinklers, kept the greens like billiard tables.
Hereâs the mystery: Why does it take two years of prison for a man to be able to sit still, listen, notice his children, watch the sunlight on the ceiling?
8. DIXIE MAGAZINE IS
Salman Rushdie
Ed Lynskey
Anthony Litton
Herman Cain
Bernhard Schlink
Calista Fox
RJ Astruc
Neil Pasricha
Frankie Robertson
Kathryn Caskie