We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman

Author:Catherine Newman [Newman, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529193862
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2022-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Scriv and Belle are in Belle’s room, and the door is closed. They’re laughing quietly, and it’s as pure a sound as jingle bells or rainfall. I picture flinging open the door, catching them at whatever it is they’re doing, shouting, “Touché!”

I hear Scriv giggling, Belle’s low voice teasing, “Meat lover.”

I’m just back from the dermatologist, where I tried unsuccessfully to be diagnosed with skin cancer. Instead, the doctor, who is not famous for acting like, or maybe even being, a person, gestured at my body to the nurse, who was taking notes. “Moderate sun damage on the upper chest,” he said to her, and then to me, “That’s from not wearing sunscreen.”

“Ugh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be,” he said. “I don’t care.”

I laughed. “I don’t think not caring is what you want to project. I mean, I’m sure you care.”

And he said, unsmiling, “I really actually don’t.” I raised my eyebrows and winked at the nurse, and she laughed.

The fact that Belle is unlikely to end up dating some feelingsless robot is striking me as the greatest blessing I can imagine. Even her gentle father! “What if you came home and I was dead on the floor?” I asked him once, pissed about something or other. “What would you do?” “Um,” he said, but I interrupted before he could answer. “You would step around me, whistling ‘Dancing Queen.’ Then you’d make guacamole or feed the cats.” “That, my love,” Honey said, mildly irritated, “is what we call hurting your own feelings.”

“Mom, we can totally hear you out there,” Belle calls. “It’s fine. Just come in.” They’re lying in bed with Thumper and Jelly, clothed. Belle is holding a package of the cats’ treats, reading aloud from it. “Okay,” she says to me. “If you had to eat one, which would you pick? Your choices are Cheese Louise, Meat Lover, Shrimptastic, Bacon No Fakin’, or Tuna Luau, which is the flavor of cultural appropriation, so don’t pick that one.”

“Cheese Louise,” I say. “Definitely. But I want it to taste like Cheez-Its, not, like, bone meal or bull dick or whatever it actually is.”

“Odds you eat one,” Scriv says, and I say, “Ten to one?” and they both laugh because, it seems, that’s the wrong answer to a different question.

Scriv picks Cheese Louise, and Belle picks Bacon No Fakin’, since she sometimes misses bacon, and isn’t planning to eat a cat treat anyway.

Jelly and Thumper are winding around the kids’ arms, purring so loudly I can hear them from the doorway. “Oh my god,” Scriv says. “Listen. Thumper is making his little dolphin sounds!”

“I love those sounds! Do you ever wonder if the actual dolphins just make them to annoy each other?” Belle says. “Like the way siblings do? Not even to communicate—just to be an asshole. And all the other dolphins are like, Oh my god, stop making that stupid creaking sound before I kill you!” When the girls were little and driving each other nuts with some

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.