Ice-Cream Headache Read Online Free PDF

diworce, he thought, we’re going to get a diworce.
    “I’ve given my whole life to you children.” His mother let go of his arm and he was glad of that. It was a little numb, but he didn’t rub it because his mother put her hands on his shoulders. “You’re all I have left now. You and Jeannette. Since your brother Tom grew up and left me. Everybody said I was the most beautiful woman in this country and he was lucky to get me. Now he’s cast me aside, for any hotassed bitch that walks the streets.”
    John nodded, memorized the phrase. He learned lots of good swearwords the other kids never heard, listening to his mother and dad when they were mad, although he never said them around her, except when he forgot, because she always washed his mouth out with soap, holding him by the back of the neck, and turning the washrag around wrapped over her fingers and rubbing it hard over his tongue and the roof of his mouth, whenever she heard him swear.
    “Someday women will be free,” his mother said. She knelt down on the floor beside him and put her arms around him. “Your mother loves you, Johnny, even if she is the ugliest old hag in town.”
    “You’re not ugly, Mother,” John said. “You’re beautiful and you’re my mother.” He patted the cook-sweating broadness of his mother’s back. It was almost like the game where someone asks the question and you have to give the right answer or pay a forfeit, except he always got so scared it wasn’t any fun.
    “If you really love your mother, you’ll stand by her.”
    “Sure I will, Mother,” John said. “I’ll do anything for you. Someday, Mother, I’ll make a million dollars and I’ll give it all to you.”
    “No,” his mother said. “No, you won’t. Someday you’ll do just like your brother did. You’ll grow up and forget all your mother ever did for you. You’ll remember the money your father gives you and I don’t have to give you and you’ll turn on your ugly mother just like your brother did and go over to your father.”
    “No I won’t either,” John protested, feeling guilty. He knew his mother didn’t have the money to give him quarters and half dollars like his father did. He knew how hard up they were because his father threw so much money away on beer and whiskey, and then tried to buy his son’s affection with quarters and half dollars. Every time he sneaked up in the garage loft to play with his secret collection of extra soldiers and guns, he felt guilty.
    “I’ll always stand by you, Mother,” he said. “I won’t be like Tom. Honestly I won’t. I’m not like Tom.”
    “Will you prove it to me? Will you find out who your father goes out with tonight?”
    “Sure I will, Mother. Didn’t I say I would?”
    His mother stood up. “All right. You wait out on the front porch where he won’t see you. When he brings the groceries in you run out and get in. But be careful: He bought groceries for over Sunday and he’ll probably have to make two trips to the car.”
    “All right, Mother,” John said. “You can trust me, Mother.”
    His mother was on her way back to the kitchen. “Don’t let him see you out on the porch.”
    “OK, Mother,” John said.
    He went out the front door and sat down in the porch swing to wait for his father to come home. The moon was full, and reminded him of the quarters and half dollars his father tried to buy his affection with every now and then. It was so bright it made shadows under the trees just like daytime. It made everything hazy like a lace curtain. He sat and swung the swing and listened to the chain creak and rubbed his arm where it still hurt and watched the lace curtain of moonlight.
    I’ll fool him, he thought. I won’t let him buy me away from mother with quarters and half dollars like he did Tom. I’ll take the quarters and half dollars, but I won’t let him kid me. It made him feel a little better, a little less guilty, but still he knew, guiltily, that he shouldn’t take