"PASSION'S BROTHER" - John Aalborg

"Passion's Brother"

The adult version, for children.

    Prologue (Tricia)

    I'm fourteen now. No dates, no bad habits, and no pimples. My parents, however, blossom in all three categories. You might say I'm living proof that fucked genes and a messed-up environment can produce a good kid. How good? Let me disgust you.
    Dad finally brought home an interesting date. Too interesting, especially for my brother. David is two years older than me, and he's very smart. Smart about school stuff, anyway: straight A's, hardly ever does any homework, reads a book and remembers everything.... Actually, I test almost as high as he does every year, but I carry my smarts over into real life. David boogers through every day like a Neanderthal. Mom says it's because he's a boy. Hey, did Billy-Jeff Clinton, when he was a boy, flick his tongue at girls with big tits, and roll out a burp just because he was a male? Well.... Okay, forget I said that.
    At first I didn't think much about it -- my brother and Dad's date. I have my own life. And with Mom gone, maybe for good, I don't have the time to be David's psychiatrist. But lately I've begun to worry. I'll be going on real dates myself soon, and I think about that a lot. I picture how I'm going to do everything, especially how I'm going to escape from stuff that gets too heavy, or how it will all feel if I don't. I've even practiced with the handle of the bathroom potty-plunger on how to roll the condom over his thing. (Dad calls condoms "balloons"). This girl in school, Lounette Curry, she says they like you to do it for them, roll it on for them. So while I'm practicing it I say stuff to reassure the plunger-stick that without it he ain't gettin' none -- in this low, sultry, firm-as-nails but sexy voice -- when nobody's home, of course!
    Then I think about how dearmost brother David acts and I listen to his opinions on what girls are for and it gets scary. See, Dad lets David go out at night without our knowing where he's headed or when he'll be back. But when it comes to me, I can be taking the garbage bag out after supper and Dad'll ask me where I'm going! So even though I know I'm the younger one, nobody can tell me that I'm not trotting around in chains because I'm a female.
    Anyway, Dad got custody of both of us during the divorce last year, but we talk to Mom a lot on the phone. The deal was she wasn't supposed to see us in person until she went through this detox program (she lasted three days). And even though she seems to be trying to cure herself, Dad still takes a firm attitude about visitation. So we don't get contaminated and addicted -- as if we would. But when Dad's job takes him away from home for more than a day he gets all mellowed out about Mom and they make these little deals, which we have to keep secret. Then she babysits with us, here, overnight. Well, that's all over with now that it's rutting season.
    The new heifer's name is Marcella.

    The Story    (David)

    At first, Tricia pretended to be unimpressed with the latest achievement of Dad's mating skills. Tricia is a "lady" now -- so she claims -- and she believes that this new definition of herself enhances our family reality since Mom split. (Trish's boring fourteenth birthday was only last month). But to me the only lady with any class I've seen here lately is this leggy, star-quality boozer Dad managed to bring home.
    Trish's understanding of the word lady doesn't include high-born, or elegant, or classy -- the qualities of ladies of history. Ladies of today drive tractor-trailer trucks. They go fishing and bait their own hooks. They trade colors and flavors of unopened condom packs in school, and flop for skin-heads and drop-outs. (I have a genius IQ and am probably the only male virgin left in my homeroom). These modern ladies have other, even higher priorities, of course. A lady smokes and has to hold her cigarette just right, and blow the smoke in her date's face. I digress....
    The reason I mention Tricia baiting her own fish hook is because the day we were so rudely awakened to the seriousness of Dad's dating requirements, Tricia and I were planning a "quality time" fishing trip with our immediate ancestor. And Lady Tricia sure can jam a helpless wiggle-worm onto a hook -- without a thought. Besides indifference to routine cruelties, young ladies are also prone to use echo-speech. A man never uses redundancies like wiggle-worm, or roach-bug, or crawly-bug, or un-safe sex. But Tricia is smart in her own way -- she can always get Dad to take us fishing, even when he doesn't want to. I can be sitting there at the supper table telling him the whole, beautiful, weekend weather report, how it's going to be perfect, through Monday, and Dad'll be glomming out the window at the backyard -- missing Mom again probably -- mumbling about how the boat motor didn't seem to be running right last time (it hauled like Orca) and how great it would be to sleep late for a change on Saturday. All Tricia has to do, however, is say: "Oh, please, Daddy!"
    OK, I'm with Trish in the living-room getting tackle ready. There are parents who'd kill to have two trustworthy teenagers behave like this when they're late coming home from work on Friday. I hear the car pull up. I'm thinking: We've got him! He can't turn us down when he sees what we're doing! And Trish isn't racing out the back door to meet him, either -- something Dad really hates. "Give me five minutes!" he's always saying. "Just five minutes!" But he usually ends up swooping Tricia up off her feet anyway for the big, warm hug that I don't seem to rate anymore.
    Trish is busy putting the fish-hooks back into the little compartments in the box according to size, like she's suddenly not into running out to hug Dad before he can even get his briefcase out of the trunk. I'm just about to inquire, you know, toss her a cut, and she says: "It's not our car, David."
    I listen. The motor is still running. It has a deep, rumbling sound -- not at all like the sewing-machine motor in the Kia Dad bought after Mom left. I hear an American car-door slam.
    "Give them five minutes," Tricia says sweetly.
    I shoot Trish a bird and head for the window -- and groan with genuine pain. Lady Tricia is right next to me and trying to mash me to the side with her elbow so she can get a better look. I mumble my thoughts: "Look what Dad lured home. Foxier than Mom.... Too hard to see from here but it's still going to be the same routine.... Maybe...."
    "Not foxier, David," Trish grumps. "She wasn't lured here. You need to get out of the animal kingdom!"
    "Kingdom?" I love to nail her on correctness crap.
    The woman is trying to reach through the window of her old Camaro for the inevitable bag of groceries. duhhhhh.... Like, whatever happened to getting out the bag and then closing the door? Trish and I both let out a simultaneous moan. The grocery bag has long, leafy green stuff poking out at the top.
    "Creepy veggies," Trish sighs.
    "Our reward for being good." We hear the back door open and Dad saying: "Wait till you meet the kids!"
    Trish stomps her foot -- definitely princess material. We head for the kitchen. Other single parents go out on dates! Dad is reaching for the woman's hand, like to lead her in, even though she's got both arms around the groceries. A real gentleman. He sounds funny, too. It's his dating voice.
    "The kids, uhhhh, do the dishes every day after school, but..."
    "You said you'd take us to Burger King today!" Trish says, ignoring our failure.
    "And we were getting the tackle ready!" I chime in.
    Anger is blooming on Dad's face.
    "We forgot the dishes, Daddy!" Trish rushes up to him and scores her big hug. I look at the date, fine-tuning my original appraisal. The thing I'm noticing now, suddenly, is that she's not wearing a bra. Great! Just this short, tight little muscle-shirt with DAYTONA BEACH imprinted on the front. A little flat-chested but pointy, and her jeans are nicely molded on, plus she's trotting these high-clog, leather sandals. Definitely not the vitamin-C and prune-juice lane Dad's been cruising lately. I reach out and accept the bag with the green stuff peeking out, and nearly drop it because of the unexpected weight. The coldness of the bag at the bottom and the clink of bottles reminds me of Mom coming home from the store. "Michelob?" I ask brightly.
    "Don't be a smart-ass, Son." Dad's doing his best to control his wrath regarding the messy dishes overflowing both sides of the kitchen sink. "Marcy? Meet my two young'uns! David and Tricia!"
    DAVID & TRICIA! LIVE!
    I extend my free hand like a true member of the male elite, realizing, but just for a second, that this whole bit could be fun. Dad's date was as tall as me. She flashed her pearly-whites and clasped my hand in both of hers.
    "And I'm Tricia," I hear my sister saying through the excitement, as if who-was-who would be a problem. The creature then takes Tricia's head in both hands like she was a precious vase or something, and begins stroking Trish's eyebrows with her thumbs. For another evanescent twinkling of clarity I know that we are in the presence of a superior force. Dad, obviously nervous, grabs the bag and wacks the bottles out of the six-pack carton, lining them up in the fridge. He's lining them up in there in a perfect row just like Mom used to, only when she would do it Dad would say: "The refrigerator's not church, Honey. It's just a machine to keep things cold." And then I catch Trish's eye and we both nod. Knowledge. This would be a big one. I sneak another, hard look at Dad's catch. Definitely foxy. And nice little hooters, you know, up there. No problem with the laws of physics like gravity. But not Dad's type -- at least I wouldn't think so. Like when they show previews of what's coming on the next re-runs of "Soul Train", I know for a fact that Dad tenses up when the dancers bounce their stuff. One night, when we were allowed to stay up late for some reason and "Soul Train" was about to come on, Trish grabbed the remote control, not to be a bitch but just to see what was on the other channels for a second. Dad reached out and snatched the remote away and held Trish back with his arm, his fingers all splayed out like he was playing guard in basketball, his eyeballs riveted to the tube. But, hey! What are fathers for if not to re-enforce a son's education? You're right, Dad. "Soul Train" dancers are pure, gender-specific, hooter-pots from Hell!
    "David!" Dad's voice pierces my horny reverie. "Get up this tackle! It's all over the living-room!"
    "Coming!" I toss a manly wink at the lady-friend and exit the kitchen looking for Trish, who has conveniently disappeared. I turn around and glance back into the kitchen, remembering how hungry I am. The new person is fondling the dark-green, fluffy-looking stuff with the crinkly leaves -- certainly not the fuel I was designed for. I look Marcy over once more and get caught before I get back to her face. My gaze furtively meets her eyes. Lids painted dark blue. Musky eye shadow with sparkly stuff in it extending way past the outside corners, like Cleopatra. Her fingers loaded with rings....
    "I'm looking for the cutting board," she says sweetly.
    "It pulls out." I show her. I notice the little lines at the corners of her mouth. Around her eyes, too. But she's sure a lot younger than Mom. Dad is yelling again and I boogie for the living-room. I'm preparing myself for the inevitable cancellation of the fishing trip we had planned for the next morning.
    Dad suddenly swings to a better mood. Well, sure, he's in heat! Anyway, he had most of the stuff already put away. "Don't worry, Davey. We're still going. I invited Marcy to come along."
    "And she said yes?!"
    Dad gives me his long, cold look -- then smiles. "She couldn't resist."
    "Yeah, well, how did you do it? I mean, how did you meet her?" It was a good time to get back on Dad's good side.
    "She's an E.M.T. -- and ambulance driver -- at the county hospital. On my route."
    Dad's a salesman for medical equipment. He's always telling us gross, super gory hospital stories at supper time. But he never mentioned any girl ambulance jockey.
    "She just got her certificate to teach EVOC, too! Emergency vehicle operation. She can drive, Son. She sure can drive!" Dad is waiting for some sign of my approval of this heady information, while I poker-face it and picture Marcy hauling ass through town with all the sirens and the lights blazing. Dad tries again. "And she's not bad looking, either!"
    Man-to-man stuff. I manage an inscrutable smile.
    He winks. "Well -- show Marcy where everything is. I've got to get a shower!"
    Thank you, Tricia, for disappearing. I am now alone in the kitchen with this new hot-rod version of Mom busting eggs open with one hand while clutching a Michelob in the other. I move up to observe how she does it. She makes it look so easy. crack plop whup The empty shells are whacking into the garbage thing while one of her sexy, sandal-shod feet is stepping on the little pedal that holds the lid open. Her toenails are bright red but a lot of the paint is chipped off -- like Mom's always seemed to be. I can't help looking Marcy up-and-down again. Hey, I didn't invent my male instincts! Maybe its the fact she's an E.M.T. and ambulance driver that is stoking the attraction. Yeah, and I'm feeling this tugging in my chest. My heart. The other ladies Dad brought home were so blah. You could lose track of them the way they blended into the wall paper.
    "I'm strictly a meat and potatoes and gravy man," I blurt out. "My mother spoiled me, I guess."
    "That's okay," she shoots back, popping the last egg. "How old are you."
    "Fifteen." I successfully suppressed the going-on-sixteen bit.
    "Well. Your Dad tells me you're smart for your age. Fifteen, huh? I have a little girl, well, she's not little anymore.... she's thirteen now but she looks a lot older. A lot older. She's, well...."
    I move back and pull out a chair from the table. I'm waiting for her to finish, but she seems consumed by the desire to chop into smithereens the weird, green stuff. The same vegetable matter, I realize, she is planning to crucify the eggs with.
    "Thirteen?" I was counting back and she turned and saw my lips moving. "You don't look..." I stop. I'm picturing Dad around the corner, maybe listening in.
    "I had Pashy when I was very, very young."
    "Pashy?"
    She stopped chopping and was looking me smack in the eye, the knife poised in mid-air. She starts to smile. "We were crazy back then, my ex and me, and we named her Passion."
    I'm thinking: how did they know what she would be like when she grew up, like what if she grew up to be dorky and ugly, with a name like Passion.
    "Before your gears get hot, we were thinking of her, not how we got her. We wanted her to be hot stuff when she matured." Marcy turns back to the cutting board.
    I hadn't even thought about that!
    From my low, sitting position I try to cop a peek under that short muscle-shirt and am rewarded, instead, with a painfully brief but clear view through an arm hole -- of a nipple! I know, I know.... There are more important things in this life -- I just don't know what they are yet. The meaningful stuff can triumph later.
    Dad suddenly returns from his shower. Resplendent. White shorts. White sneakers with his favorite pair of socks, the ones with "NIKE" woven into the cuffs. His black JACK DANIEL'S T-shirt.
    "How's it going, guys?" His I'm happy -- I'm cool act.
    "Dad! Your Captain Midnight shirt! I thought that was reserved for..."
    His heavy, iron grip clamped onto my shoulder and began to mash the ten-billion or so cells there. Real pain. Intense, Biblical pain, and Dad's Friday-evening score is backing him up.
     "We all are looking for happiness, David. Each in his own way."
    "See, Son?" Dad's grip tightens one more notch just in time to prevent me from being able to say: That's what you said the last time!
    Instead, I blurt like a lamb. "I was explaining to, uh...."
    "Marcy," they both say.
    "I was explaining the, uh, meat and potatoes and..."
    "Gravy," Dad says.
    "Same goes for me!" Trish waltzes into the kitchen wearing her terry-cloth, Day-Glo playsuit which Dad had made her promise to throw away because it displayed a blinding flash of her butt cheeks. I make a note to myself that in addition to the show of ass, the top half of her outfit would be filled out better than Marcy's in another month or so.
    "My sister thinks she has to prove she's blossoming out," I hear myself say. But Dad is slowly releasing his grip on my shoulder as this new reality sinks in.
    "Pashy's growing, too!" Marcy says brightly. She slips me a wink. "You might even like it!" She pauses. "I mean, her."
    "Gotchya the first time!"
    We both laugh. I watch the chopped foliage get dumped into the eggs.
    "Frying pan," Marcy says.
    My forehead and Dad's collide at the bottom cupboard where the pots and pans are stashed. Like I said, a superior force. I defer to my father and back away so he can proffer the desirable female the frying pan. Marcy, in the meantime, had whisked a cold one out of the fridge along with the bacon package in a single, deft stroke. Another memory reared its ugly head. Those twist-off caps on beer bottles -- when Mom was having too many she could slip one of those caps off without a sound. It was so sneaky. Mr. Harris, our next-door neighbor, drinks beer out of cans and when he's out on his front porch getting bombed you can hear the pschttt! when he boldly rips the tab off the next one. Anyway, I've promised myself never to let stuff like beer get a hold on me. I'm going to be independent. What if a war starts one day? There's fifty of them going on in the world right now -- what if one starts here? Where are people like Mom going to get their alcohol, their cigarettes, their drugs? Huh? But people like me, all we'll have to score every day is food.
    I used to hang out at this one kid's house -- his parents were always nice to me but they both smoked cigarettes and drank beer and smoked grass. I was over there one night when they were out of pot and they had this big discussion about who they knew who would have some reefer and how much it would cost, et cetera. It was pitiful, you know, because they were already too zonked to do anything about it. I was also over there on another night when it was storming -- it was getting late and I was hoping they would eventually offer me a ride home -- when a big commotion fired up in the kitchen about who drank the last beer. The argument was over in seconds. Suddenly we were all heading for their car and getting soaking wet in the downpour. The addicts scored their beer first, the legal stuff, then dropped me off at home. On the night they were out of pot but had plenty of beer, I had to walk.
    I feel Dad's hand on my shoulder again, gentle this time. "You okay, Son?"
    "He daydreams," Tricia says in her I-know-how-everything-is voice. "Sometimes after school, before you come home, he'll be staring out the window, dreaming, and he'll start to twitch and stuff and then his foot kicks out and he has to quick catch himself so he won't fall out the chair."
    "I thought I told you to get rid of that playsuit, young lady." Dad in his model-parent mode.
    "Mommy gave it to me. We have a deal about stuff like that."
    "But I also told you that..."
    "A deal is a deal! At least it used to be!"
    "She's so pretty!" Marcy chimes in.
    I suck in another deep breath. I get straight A's in school, right? Always have. I sent the SSAT test computer off scale -- top one percent in the nation! Tricia gets C's. Last time even a D -- she's that lazy. But she's pretty. She's a chick. See what I mean? And they say it's a man's world.... Dad took us to see the movie "Amadeus" one time -- he was so happy they had brought it back. Near the end, in the nut-house, Salieri was preaching to everyone that God was the Patron of Mediocrity. After the movie, while we're riding home in the ingenuous Kia, Trish asked Dad what mediocrity meant and Dad slowed down and leaned over and gave Tricia a hug.
    More and more I see myself as one of those people who will produce wonderful things, like Amadeus Mozart, and not be recognized as a treasure-for-all-time until after death.
    Suddenly, while I'm thinking all this great stuff, the sun peeks out. I mean, Marcy comes over to where I am sitting and hooks an arm around my head, pressing it against her in this wonderful hug. I'm instantly overwhelmed. My mind boggles and tries to deny any knowledge of which exact part of her body I am being loved against, but it's soft and firm at the same time and I can feel that nipple! It's her big hug, I'm sure. She understands!
    But then she turns me loose, just as suddenly, and goes over to Tricia and lays a big one on her! With kisses! For the millionth time in my life I am forced to believe that gremlins stay glued to my channel, reading my mind and messing with it -- playing hardball with my life.
    Tricia proudly plunks down in the chair next to mine and leans back, looking down at her chest. Dad and Marcy don't see it.
    "It'll be a toss-up soon," I say.
    "Tune in next week." Trish chortles her evil, Bart Simpson laugh. We both quiet down to listen in on the new development gaining in volume. They're arguing already? In the middle of it, Marcy opens the fridge and has a new bottle out so quickly that nobody sees her twist the cap off. Her other hand is empty, as if the Michelob she's holding is the same one she had before. "The Magic Beer Bottle Trick". Now both of them are into the fridge groping around for the cheese while Dad counts remaining bottles, pretending to be helping.
    I want to help, too. "Only one left, Dad."
    "We had fried cheese sandwiches last night, Pop," Trish reminds him. "We used it all, remember?"
    "Yeech!" Marcy says. "This bread!" She had spotted the brand new loaf of our favorite, soft, white bread and is waving it in Dad's face. The loaf is kinking in the middle, mashing the premium slices. "This is junk food!"
    "I'll go to the store," Dad says meekly, "and..."
    "No, I'll go. I'm off!" Her long legs are already flashing toward the back door, the heels of her platform sandals clicking like firecrackers. Jeans and clogs, ahhhhh....
    Half-way out the door she blows Dad a kiss.
    Dad sighs and sits down at the table with us. We listen while Marcy's old Camaro fires up and burns rubber backwards out of the drive. Dad sighs again, but he's smiling. Like he does when he's eating ice-cream and there's more in the fridge. He looks back-and-forth between us for the points we might be giving this one.
    From down the block comes the chirp when Marcy shifts into second.
    "Well, she can drive, Dad." He looks at me, waiting for more. I give in. "She's different. And she's not boring. Definitely not charm-challenged."
    "She reminds me of Mom a little," Trish says.
    Just what I'd been thinking but didn't want to admit. "But younger. More -- lively. Foxy."
    Just the animal reference Dad was trolling for. His smile broadens.
    After a long silence, Trish says, "Will she last till supper's done? You know, I mean, is she going to pass out -- before?"
    I was going to add that I hoped she wouldn't pass out before getting back from the store but I hold my tongue. She isn't that drunk yet, anyway, although if she's like Mom she has a whiskey bottle in the car. But Dad is looking sad now. He shrugs and gets up to survey the progress on our dinner.
    "Well, nothing's burning!"
    "You have to turn on the burners for that," Tricia says.
    Cute, but it didn't amuse Dad, who is really looking pitiful now. Suddenly Trish blurts out: "I love you, Daddy!"
    For the first time I don't hate her for saying trite stuff.
     "I love you too, Dad."
    We wait. Never has the kitchen been so quiet. It seems to be getting very warm, also, at least for me. "The oven is on!"
    Dad starts to get out of his chair but eases back down. "It's on pre-heat."
    Trish giggles. "We're having baked eggs?"
    Another long silence. We're all thinking about Mom, I know it. Day finally says, "You guys never did let me see her last letter. Has she called lately?"
    "She said she misses us."
    "She said she stopped drinking again."
    "That's what she always says."
    We were telling about the last phone call. Her letter Trish had tried to flush down the toilet along with a spent rag, a mess I had to fish out and then promise not to tell. Dad had put a special container in the bathroom for that kind of girl stuff....
    "And she wanted to know if all three can fit in the Kia."
    This time we all laugh.
    "You didn't have to get the smallest Kia they make, Dad," Trish says.
    "They build faster ones, too."
    "Not as fast as Marcy's Camaro, I bet, dear brother."
    I think about that for a minute and then hear the devil itself returning -- the Camaro squealing off the avenue onto our street for the final approach. In seconds Marcy comes dazzling into the house with the cheese. No bag. That meant the new six-pack was still in the car. With one side of me telling me to forget it, I get up and tell everyone I have to go out and inspect the muscle-car. "It sounded so good when you took off!" I explain. I don't want to be an asshole but I can't stop myself. Sure enough, the grocery bag is behind the front seat. Another batch of cold ones. No multi-grain, all-pure, hippie nut-bread, though. I ease back into the house with the bag. I wasn't being all that mean because I had politely abstained from checking to see if she drank one on the way back.
    I stand there quietly for a second, holding my tongue. Maybe because Dad and Marcy look so happy. Maybe because Dad is drinking the last beer from the first shipment himself. Trish gets up and walks past me, whispering, "Show time!" She turns around and plunks down in Dad's chair at the table, the seat of power.
    I want to take the heat off my sliding the new batch of Michelob into the fridge. "That Camaro..." Five full bottles, one empty. "It's a '69, isn't it?"
    "You bet. Thanks for bringing the beer in."
    I wink. "Don't mention it."
    Dad is watching me ball up the grocery bag with the six-pack carton for the trash can. He goes to the fridge and peers in, snatching out the empty I left in there. I manage to get my foot on the garbage-can pedal just in time for him to wing it in.
    "The refrigerator is the center of attention around here," Trish says sweetly. I'm sitting down and she gives me a kick under the table. I look back. Dad has returned to the machine which is not church but awful close to it, and he's pulling out another beer for himself.
    "And to top things off," Marcy announces, "it's almost time to fly the Camaro over to the karate studio to pick up Pashy from her class!"
    "Karate class!" Trish says. "Far out!"
    "Sixties-speak," Marcy beams.
    "Solid!" I say.
    "Fifties! Well, Johnny?" she says to my father, and believe me, everybody calls him John. "Johnny? You have your children educated!"
    It's their mother," Johnny says, missing a chance to plug himself. "Maybe we should hold off on supper for a few minutes if we're going to leave to get Passion."
    Marcy catches Dad clicking off the oven.
    "It was only on pre-heat, Johnny, I mean..."
    "Pre-heat is the hottest thing on there," Trish says. I nod in agreement.
    "Well, where's the thermostat for the air-conditioning? It's getting so warm in here." Marcy puts down the tray of junk-food bread she has just buttered.
    "It's in the hallway," Dad says meekly. "But we keep it on 78 to save energy, you know, like..."
    Marcy was already out in the hall, cranking the AC to Hi-Kool. "If you've got it, flaunt it!" she says, flashing her super-white teeth.
    "That's a no-no, Miss Marcy," Trish says, up and heading for the control. My sister has a strong sense of territory, and Dad had to stop her with a chest-high arm-block across the hallway entrance.
    "It's an adult world, girl."
    "And you're the adult here, right? And you said to keep the thermostat on seventy-eight. No matter what! You said that people who..."
    Tricia's words choke off as Dad's iron right hand initiates a shoulder-crushing squeeze.
    Marcy butts in. "People who what, Honey?" She's back over there in two leggy strokes. She clamps her hand over Dad's, which is still mashing the juice out of Tricia's meat. I hunker down in my chair, feeling the pain myself. I see the day coming when Trish and I will need to become real friends.
    "Come on, Johnny. We could all use a ride in the car."
    Johnny loosens the Grip-of-Death. I'm able to relax myself now and I begin to think out loud. "If we go in the Camaro to get Pashy," (I say her name like I'm referring to something sacred) "who's going to drive? Dad said we shouldn't go with anybody who's driving under the influence. Ever." Which would leave me, I was hoping, as the only wise choice.
    Marcy got all backed up. "Well, then. What we'll do is Johnny and I'll go and you two kids can lay back here and dig security and comfort! Strap yourselves in on the living-room couch. Buckle up for safety! Or whatever else that turns you on that's safe and decent!"
    "Now Marcy...." Dad says quietly. "I don't think..."
    "It's okay, Dad!" I say. "I didn't mean it! Really! You guys aren't drunk or anything like that."
    "Yet," Trish says.
    We all watch Johnny chug-a-lug the rest of his beer and slam the empty down on the counter. He turns on us, eyes darting from one to another, and announces that he will drive.
    "The Camaro?" Trish says, looking at me and nodding.
    "Marcy?" Dad is looking at her for permission, like a puppy begging for a biscuit. I hate to see it, but Trish giggles.
    "Sure! Why don't you guys go, and I'll stay here and keep dinner going!"
    "The Camaro?"
    "Jeez, Dad." I look at him. "You guys came here together!"
    "You must've left our Kia somewhere, Daddy!"
    I wink at Marcy. "In the heat of passion, no, I mean, lust, no -- I mean..."
    "Oh, yeah...." Dad says. "Shut up, David."
    "And you two young'uns sit in the back, okay?" Marcy says. "Pashy gets motion sickness in the back seat."
    "So do I!" I blurt out before Trish has a chance.
    "Well, Passion pukes up green stuff."
    Dad turns on his command tone. "Passion sits in the front." He's out the door before we can rally, leaving us to race for the car and fight for our positions in the back. But I outfox Trish by pulling back at the last second and nailing down the front bucket-seat for myself. "Dad, I'll move to the back when we get there."
    Tricia grumps. "You didn't give her a goodbye kiss, Daddy."
     Our father fumbles with the ignition key. Suddenly the car bursts into life with a roar, and we settle back into our vibrating seats for the big thrill. I dig a bottle cap out from under my ass and give it a quick inspection just before Dad retrofires our new hotrod into the street.
    "Pepsi!" I declare, flicking the cap back at Trish. "Must've been the passenger."
    "Pashy!" Trish yells. "The new generation!"
    Our petty conversation is killed in the neck-snapping blast-off from our home base. I push myself back up in the seat and fight the G's as the perfectly spaced and familiar houses of our neighborhood recede in a dizzying blur. I twist my head to the left and see the tach heading for 6000 before Johnny shifts into second gear. Another neck snap.
    "Dad!"
    From the back seat comes: "Children against drunk fathers!"
    We touch down briefly at the stop sign before burning onto the main drag. I was worried, but proud of us at the same time.
    "She let me use it the other day on my run to the trauma center!" Dad is shouting this to the rest of the world. "I've had some practice!"
    "We didn't know!"
    "Live to die!"
    True.... Suddenly Dad slows down -- all the way to a crawl. Trish is tapping my shoulder from behind. We're passing by some kids on the sidewalk. They're wearing two-piece white pajamas. Karate troopers. To me they looked like high-tech Ku Klux Klan. Solid state KKK. No tubes to get hot and burn out. They were coming from the karate studio that used to be our hardware store before WalMart.
    The Camaro is loping and jerking along. The motor wants to be turned loose again -- I can feel it. Trish says: "How will we know which one is her?"
    Dad looks proud. "Marcy said Passion's the only one that changes back into her street clothes after class." He swings our machine into the loading zone in front of the building, barely nudging the back bumper of a mother in a shiny-new van loading up on brats. Dad sets the hand-brake and blips the throttle a couple times to enjoy the sound o' power. The mother ahead of us looks back and snarls something, but none of the karate snots on the sidewalk turns a head to check out the car with the macho growl. Boards up their asses. More of them are marching out the front door of the building now. So cool. Little chins up. More girls than I would have thought....
    "Flat chested," Trish notes.
    "Not all of them, Sis." The older ones were emerging now, like streaming from an alien pod.
    "They kill me."
    "Not so loud!" Dad says.
    "Bet they're not bullet proof."
    Dad adds to the philosophy. "One day they'll all have kids of their own, and mortgages...." He sighs.
    Hungrily, we wait for the magic moment when Passion will be revealed unto us. I picture the scene back home at this moment: the empty oven turned on red-hot, the AC churning the temp down to a meat-locker, slow-death chill, the eggs with the green lawn-clippings overflowing the mixing bowl, and Johnny's new, hot date passed out at the kitchen table....
    I know Dad's lonely -- Trish and I are, too.
    The rumbling of the Camaro reminds me that all is not lost. This was going to be better than watching TV, anyway. It's just that what we all needed, it seemed to me, was for Dad to find somebody beautiful to look at who is also a neat person -- no, I mean somebody who is also intelligent. A mother for us and a buddy for Dad. A real mother. Like on TV commercials where in seconds the mother has this new stuff they're advertising sliding out of the oven and right onto the table with a white table-cloth and everybody is sitting around and smiling and giving thanks and drinking Gallo wine. Except I didn't want a grand-mother type. Real grandmothers can hardly walk. I know. I have friends who have grandmothers actually living with them. Sometimes they can't even make it to the bathroom in time.
    Trish is poking me, bringing me back to Earth. I suck in my breath. Passion! Even if she hadn't recognized the car, I would have known. Passion....
    "Well, well," Dad says faintly. I swallow hard and wonder how my tongue can dry up so fast. It's not that this girl is built. Really not. Well, I mean, in addition, she was in charge. In charge! Like instead of the front door of the karate school opening up and letting her out, I am seeing a space ship opening up and this beautiful princess stepping out to greet primitive mankind. Tall. Cool. Piercing eyes boring into me as I stumble out of her mother's car to vacate the front seat -- her eyes punching through my speechless stare like bullets through cardboard. Full lips, painted, half-open and sucking me in to spit me out as the word "Hi!" tumbles out of mine. I lurch out of her path to the side and my right foot snags on the curb and I go down. Damn! Instinctively I hold my grip on the door and instead of sprawling face down at her feet I manage to pull myself into the back of the car half-way through the fall. As I claw my way off Tricia, who had switched sides to be a bitch, I retracted my twisted feet just in time for Passion to float down into her throne in the front. She turns and looks back at us, offering her hand between the seats. Long, curving, vampire-red nails. Perfect nails. Long. Curving. Vampire red....
    "I'm Pashy," she's says in this low, sultry voice. "Daughter of Marcella."
    I haul myself upright and take the sacred hand. My eyes meet hers once more in a feeble attempt to even up the score so far. I might as well have tried to hurl marshmallows through boiler plate. Her hand is electric and I give it my most meaningful, gentle but firm squeeze. My brain, already on Emergency Power, is scrambling for suitable words.
    "David," I say manfully.
    "I am Tricia," my sister says evenly. "Daughter of Johnny."
    "I am John." Dad says.
    To my relief we all laugh. Dad taps the throttle of the old but hot Camaro and lets the engine rip for a second. I wished, then, that I were driving. With Passion at my side. Forget Trish. Forget Dad. Forget Marcy....
    We pull out from the curb and Dad makes a gentle U-turn. Trish says something quietly in my ear about how Dad is always complaining about other people making U-turns but I couldn't relate to that just then. I was locked into the oblique view of Passion's noble head. I was consumed. It was love. True love. No one else would ever do. My future was written.
    Bleeding through the rapture was my father's voice. Something like: "Well, daughter of Marcy -- I was under the impression that you were younger."
    "Me, too." Trish said.
    "I am thirteen."
    Dad said: "Thirteen? Thirteen what?"
    Trish snickered. I was beginning to come back. I could feel my feet in my Boks, and wiggle my toes. I could hear the Camaro rumbling along at a sedate speed toward home. I could smell Passion's perfume -- or was it her aura -- like the clean, alive, electric scent of the air after a thunderstorm with a hint of Mom's lingerie drawer. I sucked in a deep breath of this goddess. Love.... Dear Lord, Thy works are great!
    Her words poured like honey. "Where's Marcella?" the Daughter of Marcella said.
    "Your mother's at our place -- cooking," Dad says. "You don't call her mother? Or mom?"
    "Or mommy?" Precious Trish.
    "Revenge for naming me Passion." Her low, velvet voice turned out a melody of laughter as she tilted her head back. Her neck was beautiful. Exquisite. She was a swan. With wonder and pain, my soul drank of her beauty.
    "I think your name is unique," Dad is saying. "It stimulates interest and, uhhh..."
    "It invokes lust," Passion says.
    "That's neat!" Trish says.
    "I like your name," I said. I'd wanted to say: I love your name!
    "It invokes lust. And here I am, just trying to cope with being thirteen. Really!"
    "Thirteen what?" Dad asked again, which wasn't all that funny.
    "Thirteen units," Passion replied easily. She and I both laughed at that one. She was intelligent and beautiful! And she had turned her head and was looking at me with the faintest of smiles.
    "You practiced that smile in front of the mirror," I said, surprising myself. "You must've seen the original at the Louvre."
    "Oh, don't mind the genius here," Dad had to say.
    "I do practice my Mona Lisa smile before the mirror!" Her eyes were now fixed into mine. "It has a gold frame around it, too -- the mirror. Marcella got it at a flea market. With a bad check. She had to call the man up the next morning and beg him not to deposit it right away." Passion was still looking at me and I was still drinking her in. We were pulling into our driveway. The motor shut down. Dad's door opened and he was out, slamming the door shut before Tricia could get to it.
    "I can't get out!" Trish grumped, stamping her foot and breaking the spell.
    Passion slid out and held her door open. Trish scampered over me and I followed her out of the back. I watched her trot after Dad toward the house, her playsuit flashing moon.
    "How old is she?"
    "Fourteen." My brain boggled with the realization that my sister was a year older than the object of everything I had ever desired in a woman. "Years," I added.
    "Oh, yesssss...." Passion reached for my hand.
    She's wants to hold my hand!
    She is saying: "I'm really very shy but.... This is a new place for me." She gives my hand a gentle but lingering squeeze.
    "I'm the shy one," I blurt. I squeeze back. Get a grip! "I'll just have to overcome it." Oh, I was proud of myself for that one. But in fact I was terrified to the bone. A long pause followed and I scrambled to fill it. "My mother's not here. She drinks a lot and my father gave her a choice. So she split. For good, I think...." What to do with her hand?
    "My mother drinks, too. All the time! I probably shouldn't have told you that, but..."
    "I understand." Now we were holding both hands, facing each other, still in the driveway. I swallowed hard and hoped she didn't notice.
    "My parents split up, too. Divorce. Well, well...."
    "Well well is what I use sometimes, too." Why did I have to say that!? She catches me looking down, too -- I mean, looking her over. "Well, well, I say again, breaking into a laugh, saving myself (I hope). We look at our hands and start bouncing them up-and-down. Then, as if on cue, we both stepped back a little, still holding on, looking into each other's eyes.
    "Well, well...."
    "Yeah...."
    "Hmmm!"
    "What can I say...."
    "Yeah...."
    Somebody had to do it -- break this high-level dialogue. "I think somebody's going to have to come out here and get us. To break the spell!" I was attempting to look back with equal power into her steady gaze.
    "Pashy! What are you doing?"
    "The serenity shattered by Marcella," Passion says slowly, her voice low and seductive. Pure, Log Cabin maple syrup.
     I say, "Should I stay here and wait -- to see if my parent remembers me?"
    Passion broke our hand-clasp and turned toward the house, then looked back at me. In a hoarse whisper, she says: "I'm really fifteen and I'm not stupid but I flunked two grades in school and that's Mom's excuse but you didn't hear it from me!"
    She was gone. For a moment, I could hear the lawn-mower from a couple doors down the street. It would drone along steadily and then hit stuff, like you could hear sprinkler heads clanking into the blade and slowing it down -- like when Mom would insist on cutting our grass herself after she'd been drinking Saturday morning. Suddenly I heard this big clang! sound and the neighborhood went silent. Silent except for the inside of my head, that is. This voice of an angel kept saying: I'm really fifteen. I'm really fifteen....
    And then my parent remembered me, and called from the back door. And I understood. It was OK if Marcy wanted to call him "Johnny". They saw something in each other. Who was I to question the power of such things?
    And who knows what desires had been aroused in this man, my father, when I was conceived?
    Off in the distance the lawn-mower started up again. It didn't sound as good as before, though, and it died. silence.... And then Passion was beside me, taking my hand again, tugging me toward the back door.
    "David? They have decided we all need to be inside while dinner progresses. I guess because progress is going to be all uphill!" She laughed and kept on tugging me along as I pretended to drag my feet. God did love me after all! All of my life's misfortunes to this point had been merely a test. And I'd passed. I had been found worthy. And this angel in human flesh was my reward. I decided right then to stop playing sick on Sunday mornings. I would go to church willingly. I believed. Heaven had sent me the most wondrous woman ever made. Not in my dreams but here. Here on Earth! And she was leading me into my own house, into my own kitchen! Oh, how wonderful is her hair! The flash of her smile! Her body the fulfillment of my wildest dreams! Her voice...
    "And I'm intelligent," she said, laughing. "Just like you!"
    "And a mind reader!"
    "I flunked because I was cutting classes all the time."
    "A mind reader."
    "ESP -- you believe in it?" Passion suddenly stopped tugging at me and we bumped into each other, you know, her chest and my arm, just a little, by accident, when she stopped.
    "Sorry," I said instinctively, immediately wishing my mouth could be cool instead of blurting out everything before I had time to think. I stepped back just enough to relieve this elbow contact with ecstacy but she moved with me and hooked her arm under mine to draw me closer. My heart hammered up while the sane part of me tried to regain control of whatever systems I had left. But the only signals allowed access to my brain at this point were coming from about ten square inches of pressure against my upper arm: warm full rich plump Nothing in my girlie-magazine literature had prepared me for this!
    "Marcella makes me take birth control pills. I think that's why they're so, you know, so...."
    "You? Lost for words? Ha!" I gave her wrist a squeeze when what I really wanted to do was palpate the fruit.
    "Filled out."
    "Ripe."
    "Ripe."
    I wanted to look down and let my eyes roam around there, but I couldn't.
    "Ripe with fruit."
    "Heavy with fruit."
    "Laden."
    "Burgeoning." We laughed, and looked into each other's eyes.
     I couldn't believe the level of this conversation -- and my luck! "Sunkist ripe," I said, referring to the little logo printed on the otherwise plain, light-blue, slightly too small T-shirt covering the fruit from Hell. Sunkist....
    "And I'm a virgin! But she makes me take the pills anyway so I don't embarrass her one day. Hell, I'd be scared, you know, to do it. Catch something. Know why I'm telling you this?"
     My mind jammed. I made a start for the back door but her arm was still hooked into mine and she hauled me back. "You believe I'm a virgin, don't you?"
    She didn't give me a chance to compute. "I -- well, sure!"
    "You better! You know why I'm telling you this, David?"
    Her eyes were looking right through mine and scraping the back of my skull. A real control freak. I pictured her controlling me, standing over me, forcing me to perform unnatural acts.
    "I'm telling you because I think you are a, well -- you're a virgin, too. Right? Am I right? Ha ha! I'm right! And Marcella told me your father told her you had a genius IQ. Right? A genius IQ?" Her arm tightened around mine.
    "Yeah, well...." I could handle the genius part. Graduate early from college and go directly to McDonald's. Big deal. Smart and fifteen. So smart I was afraid of girls. Girls, women, females, foxes -- all I ever think about lately. Friends at school are continually bragging about their scores. Being the youngest in my class doesn't help, either. I've been wanting a girl bad. I lie awake for hours and dream about what she'd feel like all wrapped around me, nude. What she'd feel like inside. What it would be like to reach into her blouse and pull her tits out and feel of them. Squeeze them and kiss them and feel of them for so long that the memory will last forever. But people tell you, hey, wait until you're older and you're ready for the responsibilities. Or they say, don't forget about AIDS! How can I forget? Forgetting's not it! So I die later! Skip old age! By-pass the nursing home stuff, right?
    I tell myself I'm simply waiting for the right girl to come along. Casual sex doesn't pay -- they're right. I am doing the right thing. But deep down inside I know better. I want to get laid. I want to get laid now. Bad. I am a virgin because I'm chicken. Chicken!
    "It scares me," Passion is saying.
    I must have jumped, or twitched. She turns me loose and steps back. "You look a little gray around the gills, David."
    "Heh! Yeah, well, I'm not used to getting right into the heavy stuff with someone I just met. You're a -- surprise attack! So to speak, ha ha...." I'm nodding my head, pleased with myself once again. I was handling this.
    We began to move toward the back door but stopped when we got there. The door opens. It's Johnny. Beer in hand. Standing in the doorway staring at us -- and then, quite frankly, staring at Passion. "Would a little cold water with the garden hose do it?" He laughed.
    Passion looked peeved. After giving Dad a quick glance, she continues our conversation as if he weren't there. "On the other hand, Marcella doesn't need to take the pill 'cause she's been fixed. Still has her ovaries, though. All the precious hormones intact. But no incubator. No muss, no fuss. Ready to trot all thirty days of the month!"
    Dad looked shocked. "Passion! Thirteen? God help us!"
    "We're religious," I explained. Dad moved quickly but I dodged and missed his fatal shoulder clamp by inches.
    "I'll explain that!" Marcy said, running up behind Dad. "The thirteen, I mean. And Passion's big mouth! I send her to self-defense classes to learn discipline -- not just how to fight. Confidence building. How to crumble people with an attitude, with a mere word. So what does she do? She practices on her own family! On her own mother!"
    "They teach us to abstain from things harmful, like alcohol." Passion slipped past Dad and Marcy and disappeared into the house.
    Dad's shoulders were slumped. He looked at me. "You all right?"
    "Yeah.... Are you?'
    "I'm not sure...." His voice trailed off. Then he straightened up. "Come on inside now. I need a backup."
    "We're both going to need backup, Pop." We laughed and bumbled into our kitchen. Father and son.
    The heat was stifling and there was a burny smell. Marcy and Trish were be-bopping around to the rap music on the kitchen boom-box, and Passion had seated herself on Dad's high, antique stool in the corner. She was facing everybody like an eagle on her perch. So beautiful. So in control! She had kicked her sandals off and I would have willingly dropped to my knees and kissed her toes, her feet were so fine. The toes so perfect and the nails painted to blood-red perfection.
    "The garlic-bread burned," Marcy said, panting. "And the omelets."
    "And the air-conditioner," Passion said.
    Trish was still bopping around. "The air-conditioning never breaks down at Burger King!"
    I turned the AC control to Off and headed for the stairs to the basement. Man of the house. I stopped, as if I just had a second thought. "Come on, Pash. Let's go down and check the circuit breakers."
    "You have a basement?" Passion slid off the stool and followed me bare-footed down the basement stairs. But before I could get to the fuse box she caught me and turned me around. I hadn't turned the lights on but it wasn't so dark I couldn't see her. My heart pounded up as she pulled me close. Our chests touched.
    "Let them feel the heat up there," she whispered, "while we feel the heat down here."
    Thank God for pushy females! I bend my head close to hers, moving in. Terrified or not, it was going to happen! We were going to kiss! Our lips were going to touch! I was on the threshold of tasting the forbidden fruit of her mouth! Parting my lips ever so slightly, I...
    "Yeeeech!" She shoved me away hard and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Your breath!"
    "I..."
    "Don't you ever brush your teeth?"
    I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I couldn't breathe. My stomach burned. I could feel my ears turning red in the darkness. "I, uh...."
    "Forget it, David! Your breath is -- nauseating!"
    I swallowed. I wanted to die. Finally, I took a deep breath and headed for the fuse box. Her rejection was crushing me and I had to push myself to keep going. With the flashlight that Dad kept there, I scanned the breakers for #8. It was tripped. I flipped it back to ON.
    "My mother won't let me near the fuse box," Passion said from somewhere behind me. Like nothing had happened. I swallowed hard again and carefully closed the gray metal door of the box. Somehow I was able to turn and face her but not her eyes, or the precious lips which had almost been mine. My head was shaking and I was grateful for the dark. As I faced her, she backed away from me.
    "Well, I'm sorry," she said, but I keep myself clean. You must have decaying food in your mouth -- between your teeth, you know, the cracks between. If we would kiss, well, I mean, chunks of that rotting stuff would fall off your teeth and get into my mouth and..."
    I walked around and past her, hoping the redness of my burning ears was not noticeable. As I headed up the stairs I felt a tear coming but I made like I had to scratch my head and caught the tear with my thumb. I could hear her bare feet padding up the stairs behind me and I pictured those feet for a second, her bare toes.... I pictured her lips, her beautiful face, her Sunkist shirt bobbing up-and-down (I was sure) behind me, her mouth....
    "...make me retch! You ever smell a dead animal, David? Or meat when it goes bad in the refrigerator? When Marcella bought the Camaro, the check to the electric company bounced and they shut off our current for a while and everything in the fridge..."
    I walked into the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the table, then had to get back up again because I forgot that it was probably OK now to switch the AC back on. Passion was still talking. Dad and Marcy and Trish were all sitting there, looking at us and looking dumb. I set the AC to 78 and heard the unit click on.
    "...and everything in the fridge spoiled. Well, not everything. The bacon was still sort of okay. But the hamburger meat -- yeeech! I almost threw up when I sniffed it. It smelled just like your breath!"
    "Passion!" Marcy yelled. She sounded drunk. Like Mom used to sound when she was cooking supper.
    I faced Passion and spoke with my lips as closed as possible. "It didn't smell like burned food?"
    "David!" Dad yelled. He sounded drunk, too. A little, anyway.
    "It never smells burny at Burger King!" Trish said.
    "Floss," Passion is saying. "The un-waxed kind. After every meal, same as brushing. I floss after brushing but Marcella flosses before."
    "Before passing out, or before brushing." I was able to look her in the eye again, even though my head was still shaking. She was back up on the stool -- her eagle perch.
    "David!" Dad barks.
    Trish begins humming the tune from the latest Burger King commercial. Marcy was looking at me from her slouched-over position at the table, eyes half open and glazing over. Suddenly her chin slips off the palm of her hand and she has to scramble for balance.
    Tell you what," Dad says, using his happy tone. "Marcy's not feeling well, and dinner's spoiled, so why don't we get her comfortable on the couch and then the rest of us go down to Burger King!"
    "The Camaro!" Trish squeals. "Burger King! All - O - Us!"
    Passion catches me running my tongue over my teeth, hunting for food particles.
    Trish is up on her feet, flashing around in her Day-Glo playsuit. "Can we call Mommy? See if she wants to come, too?"
    "Not today," Dad said.
    I pick up on it. "Next time then?" I regretted saying that but I wanted to cut Marcy and Passion.
    "Sure, Son."
    Marcy shot Dad a look and tried to get up. Dad and I caught her by the arms and headed her for the living-room. When we got back Passion was still on her stool. She was staring out the window at the back yard. It seemed to me a good time to ease down to the bathroom to brush my teeth. And from now on it would be after every meal. After every snack. And I'd floss. For the rest of my life.
    "Where's Trish?" Dad says vaguely to Passionate.
    "Telephone." Bored eyes, looking out the window.
    On the way to the bathroom I stop to hear what Trish is saying to Mom. From the kitchen I can hear Dad trying crank up a conversation with Passion, and I think I hear that velvet voice say: "I'm really seventeen, but..."
    "But Mommy!" Trish is saying. "They say on TV that you can't even have just one! You have to quit forever! Not one, teeny little drink! Wait! Here's David! He'll tell you!"
    I take the phone. Seventeen.... "Mom? I miss you." That sounded sort of dumb but it was the truth.
    "Hi, David! I love you, too!"
    She doesn't sound the least bit drunk. "Did you quit?"
    "No.... I cut down. To two a day. I cut down because I don't believe I should have to, you know, do without completely. You know."
    "Yeah, I know! Mom..."
    "I'm tough, David. I can do it. I am doing it."
    "Yeah, but for how long?"
    "David -- forever, I hope. Today I had my after-work beer and I didn't even feel like having the second one! That's a first! When can I see you? Trish says you guys are having quite an experience today."
    "Yeah. But I'm doing okay." Trish is clawing at me for the phone and I back-hand her a swat. "Trish can't wait her turn."
    "It was my turn!"
    Dad is standing next to us now and he places his gentle clamp on my shoulder -- ready to escalate. "Mom, Dad wants to talk."
    We let Dad run on-and-on, the way he always does when he has Mom on the phone and she's sober. I peer into the living-room at Marcy's still body. I move in a little closer. She's breathing, but almost imperceptibly. She looks so peaceful now. Even beautiful. I remember how reverently Dad had taken off her clogs and placed them side-by-side next to the couch. It was what I would have done.
    Would I have removed Mom's old floppy slippers with the same care and affection? Would Dad? I head down the hall for the bathroom. It wasn't Mom's fault that we didn't know what we wanted. But it wasn't our fault, either.
    Passion had decided to stay with her mother in the living-room and we would bring her back a take-out from Burger King. The thought that both of them would be staying overnight in our house thrilled me, but there was something missing now.
    "Cheer up, guys!" Dad said when we got into the Camaro. "We've got a great team, and it's our ball!"
    "Yeah," I said. "What game are we playing?"
    "There's only one game, Son." Dad turned and gave me a strange look.
    "Come on! Crank 'er up and let's go," Trish said. "I'm not having a problem!"
    "That's because you're not grown up yet," Dad said to her while he looked at me. He was smiling, and for the first time I could see into my father's eyes.

<end>

Humanism with attitude!