Less is a possibility

DOWN-NESTING: The

PERSONALITY TITHE: A

price paid for becoming a couple; previously amusing human beings become boring: "Thanks for inviting us, but Noreen and I are going to look at flatware catalogs tonight. Afterward we're going to watch the shopping channel."

JACK-AND-JILL PARTY:

A Squire tradition; baby showers to which both men and women friends are invited as opposed to only women. Doubled purchasing power of bisexual attendance brings gift values up to Eisenhower-era standards.

tendency of parents to move to smaller, guest-room-free houses after the children have moved away so as to avoid children aged 20 to 30 who have boomeranged home.

HOMEOWNER ENVY:

Feelings of jealousy generated in the young and the disenfranchised when facing gruesome housing statistics.

Earlier on I made the mistake of complaining about the house's lack of amusement and my Dad joked, "Don't make us mad, or we'll move into a condo with no guest room and no linen the way all of your friends' parents did." He thought he was making a real yuck.

Right.

As if they would move. I know they never will. They will battle the forces of change; they will manufacture talismans against it, talismans like the paper fire logs Mom makes from rolled-up newspapers. They will putter away inside the house until the future, like a horrible diseased drifter, breaks its way inside and commits an atrocity in the form of death or disease or fire or (this is what they really fear), bankruptcy. The drifter's visit will jolt them out of complacency; it will validate their anxiety. They know his dreadful arrival is invevitable, and they can see this drifter's purulent green lesions the color of hospital walls, his ward­robe chosen at random from bins at the back of the Boys and Girls Club of America depot in Santa Monica, where he also sleeps at night. And they know that he owns no land and that he won't discuss TV and that he'll trap the sparrows inside the birdhouse with duct tape.

But they won't talk about him.

By eleven, Mom and Dad are both asleep and Tyler is out partying. A brief phone call from Dag reassures me that life exists elsewhere in the universe. Hot news for the day was the Aston Martin fire making page seven of the Desert Sun (more than a hundred thousand dollars damage, raising the crime to a felony level), and the Skipper showing up for drinks at Larry's, ordering up a storm, then walking out when Dag asked him to pay the bill. Dag stupidly let him get away with it. I think we're in for trouble.

"Oh yes. My brother the jingle writer sent me an old parachute to wrap the Saab up in at night. Some gift, eh?"

Later on, I inhale a box of chocolate Lu cookies while watching cable TV. Even later, going in to putz about the kitchen, I realize that I am so bored I think I'm going to faint. This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about the family on returning. That doesn't happen any more—the days of revelation about my parents, at least, are over. I'm left with two nice people, mind you, more than most people get, but it's time to move on. I think we'd all appreciate that.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23