Tidings by William Wharton

Author:William Wharton [William Wharton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

Peg

That reveillon thing was too much. These people here are so gross. I don’t know how Mom and Dad can take it, especially Mom. Dad has his vulgar side as part of his flakiness, he just slips into whatever’s going on, but Mom’s always been so careful and elegant; I guess she only puts up with these things because of Dad.

He’s always trying to get some hold on life no matter how messy it is. I’m sure he was out there wading in pig gore when they killed that poor animal. I couldn’t watch him eat those boudins noirs. They leaked blood when he cut into them and the blood was so dark it was almost black.

I don’t know what got into Nickie. She usually hates those kinds of macho-camaraderie-type men. And they all act like thirteen-year-olds. Their hands are beat up, with thick fingers, cuts all over and calluses that look like warts; blackened, broken, dirty thick fingernails, some of them starting to curl under like horse hoofs.

How can people live that way? God, if I even get a hangnail or a nail gets ragged or broken, I can hardly cope. People are different I guess; I wish I could let go and not be so sensitive but I can’t. I got the pulling back part from Dad, I think, but not the crazy desperateness. I wonder why he’s never tried suicide? Maybe he has, Mom would never tell and Dad might not even have noticed or remembered.

George is on my back all the time about my ‘compulsiveness’, but he’s as bad as I am. If ever he has to wear a shirt two days in a row, he acts as if he’s working in a sewer. If I don’t get every bit of dirt out of the collar and cuffs, he won’t wear a shirt; even if I’ve just washed, starched and ironed it. And he won’t use the wash-and-wear shirts, says he’s allergic to them, breaks out all over his back.

There I go again, complaining about George. When I let my mind run alone, it always comes back to the same things. Maybe I’m feeling guilty and making up excuses to make myself feel better. Sharon, my therapist in Phoenix, says, ‘What we all tend to complain about most in other people are those parts we don’t like about ourselves.’

That’s the whole trouble. I can’t come up with one serious reason to explain why I want to leave George. There’s nothing I can really put a finger on.

At the same time it’s everything. It’s everything about him, how he brushes his teeth, leaves wet towels on the floor in the bathroom when he takes a shower; the way he eats, talks through his nose, pees hard straight into the toilet bowl so you can hear him all over the house; how he burps and farts, leaves cigarette butts in coffee cups, or books of matches in his shirts so when I wash them it stains everything; everything.

Then I get to thinking how unfair it is.

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