A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs

Author:Augusten Burroughs [Burroughs, Augusten]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780312342029
Publisher: Virgin Books
Published: 2008-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

TEN

MY FATHER WAS sitting at the kitchen table grading papers and listening to the broadcast of a distant country on his shortwave radio. “Seis miembros terroristas de la Facción del Ejército Rojo han agarrado la embajada de Alemania del Oeste en Estocolmo, demandando que funcionarios liberen a miembros encarcelados de su grupo . . .” I sat in the chair across from him and twisted the hem of my shirt around my fingers. “Dead?”

Without looking up he answered, “What is it, son?”

“Grover has a growth in his mouth. It’s in the back, on his tongue, and it’s big.” Even though Grover was not allowed indoors, I snuck him inside sometimes, because it didn’t seem right to divide the dogs—the family—into “indoor” and “outdoor.” I was rubbing his belly while he wriggled and scratched his back on the rug, mouth hanging open, when I saw the growth.

“Well,” he said, marking a blue student examination notebook with his red pen, “I hope it’s nothing serious.” He put the booklet aside and took another from the pile.

I was worried. The growth was webbed with veins, and so large that it spread over his rear molars. It created the illusion that Grover had a plump, hairless rat in his mouth and was just holding it there in the back of his throat, saving it for later.

“Can we take him to the vet?” I asked.

My father said, “We’ll keep an eye on him.”

I heard the crackle of gravel in the driveway. “My mother’s home,” I said, pushing my chair back and running to the front door.

She pulled up to the steps, climbed out of the car. “I’ve got a dollhouse in the back of the car here,” she said. “You want to help me unload it?”

Barefoot, I walked across the gravel to the rear of the car. Turned over on its broad side was a small house. Together we hoisted it out of the car.

My father appeared in the doorway, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Well, what have you got there?”

“It’s a dollhouse. Meg was going to just throw it away so I took it for Augusten.”

I was flushed with humiliation and excitement. Nothing in my mother’s tone of voice suggested it was odd in the slightest to bring her son a dollhouse.

“Help me,” she said, lifting it, knocking the wood against the car’s rear liftgate. I quickly reached for the other side and together we hoisted it out, stood it upright beside the car.

It was a three-story colonial held together with the thinnest nails. Perhaps it had once been white, but now it was filthy, the paint smeared with dirt and rubbed away in spots revealing bare wood.

My father smiled. “Well, look at that,” he said, oddly pleased.

Neither of them questioned the dollhouse.

“It needs a good cleaning,” my father said. “Don’t bring that thing in the house until you’ve cleaned it up.”

My mother said, “Her girls are grown now, it was just sitting in the garage like trash. It seemed a shame.”

She clutched her car keys and walked inside.

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