4
“THAT WAS DELICIOUS, Mom,” I said. “Thanks.” I stood and began removing the dinner plates.
“What on earth are you doing?” asked my father.
“Clearing the table.”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Sure. Fine.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No. Not at all.”
“You need a loan?”
“Oh, Bert,” said my mother. “Maybe he just wants to help out.”
“It is possible,” I said, “that I’m growing up, that I’ve turned some corner on the road to growing up, that I see, around that corner, confronting me, a new responsibility—”
“Oh, sure.”
“This is really something,” I said, as if offended. “Here I am trying to do my part in the family, and you’re questioning my motives! Unbelievable! Isn’t it just possible that I’m growing up? Well, you can go ahead and think whatever you want, but I am going to help clear the table. It’s time I started pulling my weight around here.”
My father stomped off to the living room and turned the television set on, and my mother began bringing some of the other plates into the kitchen.
“No, no,” I said. “I meant it. I’m going to take care of this. You go on into the living room and relax.” She gave me a little smile, but it wasn’t the smile of real joy she ought to have given, and I realized once again, as I had begun to realize tiny bit by tiny bit, that I was part of my mother’s problem, that some of what made her life wearying was me or came from me. I realized it with regret, but I had no idea what to do about it. Perhaps, trapped as I was within the very earliest stages of the disease of adolescence, with such a need to pay so much attention to myself, I never could have understood or even recognized what she wanted, what she needed.
Alone in the kitchen, I immediately slipped a few peas into my pocket, in case the opportunity never returned. Then I washed the dishes, dried them, and put them all away. Passing through the living room on my way upstairs, I said, “I’ve got lots of homework, so I’m going straight up. Good night.” My exit from the living room had, I hoped, the tone of magnanimity that only the deeply offended have a real right to use. I hoped that my father was left asking himself, somewhere down in the heart of his soul, how he could so have misjudged his boy, why on earth he had been suspicious of the motives of such a worthy lad.
Upstairs, I reached gingerly into my pocket to remove the peas. Those of you who have tried carrying peas in your pocket will know what I found.
On my way back through the living room, shaking my head in the manner of one baffled by his growing absentmindedness, I muttered, “Forgot to wash my face.” In the bathroom, I removed my pants and washed the green goop out of my pocket.
[to be continued]
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