Excerpt:
Following the sound of the blender into
the kitchen, I jiggled the pharmacy bag under my dad's nose.
He turned off the blender. "That our
meds?"
I was having a hard time keeping a
straight face. He was dressed in a dazzling green polyester slacks and a white
shirt with a big collar. The seventies were all over the pages of Vanity Fair
and Vogue, but somehow the retro look didn't quite translate to
sixty-eight-year old men with thinning gray hair and jug-handle ears. I cringed
at the matching lime green suit jacket hanging on the back of the chair.
I put the bag on the table, drawing out
one small bag for him and another for his buddy, Spike.
"Okay. Heart meds, Lasix, arthritis pills,
and Spike's crazy pills."
"He can hear you, you know."
I looked down at the small brown Chihuahua,
his tail beating an uneven rhythm in time to some inner demon. When he lifted a lip and snarled, I said, "And
not a minute too soon, I see. When do you think the vet will take him off the
Prozac?"
My dad uncapped the bottle and tipped out
a pill. The dog's ears went up in trembling anticipation. "He's much better,
don't you think?"
I studied the floor trying to find
something kind to say about our resident Kudjo, then got an eyeful of my dad's
shoes. He followed my stare down to his feet. "White for summer, right?
They're already patent leather so I don't have to polish 'em. Lucky for me,
huh?"
I worked my lips around the laughter
bubbling up, imagining my father in retro style leisure suit, escorting his
latest squeeze to a potluck at church, or better yet -a funeral and its wake. I
slid a glance at the blender looking for a reasonable topic of conversation,
but since the frothy blue concoction might or might not have Viagra as its key
ingredient, I blurted, "You need a haircut!"
No comments:
Post a Comment