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9. November-December 2005
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Chapter Nine November–December 2005 Mose used Monday’s free period to complain, over his newly acquired cell phone, to Barbara in Maine. “Middle-aged! And ready to run around with the ‹rst pretty thing he sees.” “Of course, you wouldn’t like her choice.” “What do you mean, of course?” Something about the smallness of the cell phone made him feel like he wasn’t really on the phone. He had to press the “loudspeaker” button to hear Barbara, and even so, he needed to jam the phone right into his ear. “You’ve always been hard on her.” “Oh, here we go again, spinning the hits.” Barbara never tired of reminding Mose of his failings as a parent, and this was her favorite complaint : that he was too hard on his young cousins. “I pushed you,” he’d agree. “That’s not the same as being hard on you. I wanted you to have what I didn’t.” Usually Barbara would say, “And it worked. We’re insecure and you’re a con‹dent son-of-a-bitch.” From whence this vitriol? He loved both the girls, had loved them always. Not that he hadn’t made mistakes along the way, lost his temper and behaved badly. Once, he’d grabbed Barbara ‹ercely, trying to hold her in the kitchen, so he could make a point. He yelled and yelled at her, all through the college application process. She wouldn’t do anything—‹ll out the forms, write her 86 essay—in a timely manner. She’d run out of the apartment, screaming like a banshee. She wasn’t going to do it; she didn’t have to do it. And he’d grabbed for her, ended up ripping the pocket off the back of her jeans, since she wouldn’t slow her run, and he wouldn’t let go of the pocket. Later, she’d let that pocket ›op, ›op along. She wasn’t going to sew it; he’d just have to look at it and remember he’d kicked her. Kicked her! He hadn’t done any such thing, but this was her claim. She’d slipped out of his grip and fallen to the ›oor, arms over her head for self-protection, and he’d kicked and kicked her. Where she got these things, Mose didn’t know. What he did know is that Barbara never forgot incidents, imagined or true. No matter all the good things he’d done. The bad canceled everything out. “Never mind then,” Mose said now. He was sitting at his classroom desk, and his eyes drifted to the stack of papers before him. A bit of cottage cheese and half a boiled egg sat in a plastic container just beyond the papers. “Let me know how you’re doing.” “D in the D,” Barbara allowed. “Down in the dumps? How come?” He lifted the plastic fork, stuck it in the cottage cheese, then put it down, the effort of bringing the food to his mouth suddenly seeming like too much. “I just hate this place. It’s cold. It’s even cold in the summer. I should never have agreed to come here.” Nothing Mose might say now—Can you think about a move? A warmer winter coat?—would assuage her. Barbara had two modes—her current mode, irrational and angry, and her other mode, in which she was warm-hearted and even funny, an ef‹cient fundraiser for the Center for Grieving Children, where she worked half-time. The reasonable and the unreasonable Barbara bore no relation to one another, and Mose never knew which Barbara he was going to get, on a given day. “I’ll never ‹nd a job.” Her manner was hostile, accusatory, as if daring Mose to suggest her failure was anything less than complete. “You have a job.” “That’s not a job. That’s asking rich people for money.” “It’s a good cause; it’s something you care about.” “I don’t care about anything.” In this mood, she wouldn’t ask about him. Even on her up days, Barbara tended not to inquire about his activities. Sometimes he simply 87 [3.83.81.42] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:53 GMT) offered information, less because he felt a need to unburden himself, than because he hoped to distract her. “Well, honey, we have a new diversity initiative in the district. Everyone is supposed to go to weekend workshops...