Goodbye to All That by Judith Arnold

Author:Judith Arnold [Arnold, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611941166
Publisher: BelleBooks, Inc.
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

He hauled his tie over his head and tossed it onto the passenger seat before leaving the car. What was he going to say to his father? At their respective ages, they’d reversed the advisor-advisee relationship. His mother walked out on his father and his father turned to Doug for advice. Doug’s wife hadn’t left him, although her familiar blond hair had, and he’d turned to his father for . . . what? Comfort? Scotch? Definitely not advice.

His father looked frazzled when he answered the door. He had on a pale gray warm-up suit which didn’t flatter him, and his hair stood out from his scalp in tawny, gray-streaked tufts. “I’m glad you came,” he said, ushering Doug inside. “Maybe you can help me. I’m trying to iron some shirts.”

“Why?” Doug asked.

“They’re wrinkled. Gert said I look wrinkled.”

Doug had met his father’s office manager many times. He considered her snotty, which wasn’t exactly a negative for someone with her job. “Who cares if you look wrinkled?” he asked as he followed his father down the hall to the den, where his father had set up an ironing board in front of the television. “You wear a white coat over your shirt, anyway.”

“I’ll tell you who cares,” his father said as he shook out the extremely wrinkled shirt sitting on the ironing board. “You want a drink?”

Doug spotted an open bottle of beer on the coffee table. No coaster, he noticed. If his mother were here, she’d be infuriated. Maybe his father was leaving moisture rings on the table deliberately, out of spite.

Doug really wanted a scotch, but a beer made more sense. He’d been lucky not to get a ticket driving over. He didn’t want to risk getting a ticket—or worse—driving home. “A beer looks good,” he said. “I’ll help myself. Who cares about your shirts being wrinkled?” he asked again as he ducked into the kitchen.

The room hadn’t changed much since he’d left home for college so many years ago. Fewer notices and schedules attached to the refrigerator with magnets, less clutter on the counters, no huge bowl of fruit serving as a centerpiece on the table. His mother had always had bushels of fruit in the house, a fair assortment of which she’d heaped into a tinted glass bowl and left on the kitchen table every day. He’d thought nothing of detouring into the kitchen and grabbing a peach, a banana, a twig full of grapes on his way somewhere else.

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