Read Online What’s Happening? by John Nicholas Iannuzzi - Free Book Online Page B

kitchen, content with the warmth effulging from the other rooms, not deeming themselves worthy enough to enjoy a luxurious life. Those rooms were reserved for friends and other worthy people.
    The way Mother said “dear” annoyed Rita. It was hollow, and Rita wasn’t deceived by this false show of sweetness. Had Mother called her a Village tramp, Rita might believe her. This sweetness was contrived and phony. Mother was too busy with the house and bridge games ever to have many real emotions.
    â€œRandy,” Mother called to her young son. “RANDY.” The yell sent a shiver up Rita’s back.
    â€œRandy. Will you come to dinner …”
    Randy was a hulking boy of thirteen, with glasses, a bent nose, thick fleshy lips, and crooked teeth. Mother loved her poor little Randy more because of his imperfections. He was Mother’s favorite plaything and lover. Often, Rita had been revolted while sitting watching television at home, Mother in a shabby house dress and curlers in her hair, Randy lying on the floor like a bloated oxen in pajamas, when suddenly, about bed time, the boy would begin to hug and kiss his Mother. Randy knew that Mother liked to be told he loved her, and he would play his cards to the full to stay up late to watch another T.V. program. Rita felt sorry for Mother; Father was usually out and Mother alone. But these scenes with Randy were repulsive. Father, when he was out, was usually with another woman. Why shouldn’t he be? Rita asked herself, considering the benefits of staying at home with his wife, her mother—the benefits of staying at home with a cretinous woman of forty, who felt firm only with the love of a child; a woman beyond whom adult love lay as a barren island; a woman who didn’t know enough to get out of bed in the morning to get her husband’s breakfast; a woman who wasn’t woman enough to keep herself attractive for him; a woman who still enjoyed the childish gossip that she had enjoyed when she was eighteen; who got a kick out of smutty little tawdry jokes; and who coyly flirted when she was out with the “girls” on the town. Randy was the only human with whom Mother could feel at ease emotionally, and even this would change when Randy was old enough to go out with friends at night. Rita thought that Mother would soon have to realize that one had to be capable of love to be capable of being loved and that love wasn’t something stocked up in a magazine, toy, or candy store. Love had to be understood and nourished for itself; in this house, Rita thought, they were lucky their bodies were nourished, much less their souls.
    â€œCome on, Randy, sit down,” Mother urged lovingly, looking at him intently, admiration rippling her mouth. “Your soup is getting cold.”
    Randy sat and Mother sat.
    â€œOooszp … oooszp,” Father sounded, drawing in his broth.
    God, how Rita had learned to love quiet! She writhed inside with each spoonful Father sucked in. She hated everything about this place,—she loathed it, she despised it. So as not to hear Father’s sucking, Rita concentrated on hating and loathing. Hate, she thought as she looked at the other people at the table bent over their soup, was a rather beautiful, meaningful emotion, reserved for things once loved. A lover hates with passion his lover who has spurned his love. Things can be disliked, loathed, resented, sickening, despised; without love there is either indifference or dislike. But hate gives rise to love, and love to hate, and each can become the other by a hairline change. Lovers should always be encouraged if their partners hate them in anger, for then they are truly loved.
    The “ooszp … ooszp …” tore through Rita’s concentration. She stared hopelessly into the lines etched on the surface of her soup. With her mouth set firmly after each opening, and a hand squeezing the napkin in her lap, she forced herself to eat