One Year in Coal Harbor Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’m-going-to-try-to-ignore-the-line-of-bruises-forming-up-my-arm type. If I was less invested in their future happiness I might have found it entertaining. Well, all right, it was entertaining anyway.
    “And
now
,” said Uncle Jack, continuing his anecdote as he picked hopelessly at the teeny bit of meat left on his chop. Out of deference to Miss Bowzer, I guess, he wasn’t picking up the bone and gnawing on it. But he wouldn’t leave it half-eaten either and kept trying to get at the tiny stringy bit of lamb with his knife and fork, which sometimes slipped against the greasy chop and made terrible clattering noises on the plate. I saw a splatter of ersatz gravy land perilously close to Miss Bowzer’s polka-dotted dress. And of course it all resulted in yet more jabs to her arm with his elbow, all for the sake of good manners. I wanted to scream, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, THERE’S MORE IN THE KITCHEN. Although there wasn’t more lamb. It was expensive enough giving everyone three chops. But there was a swell dessert—floatingisland. I had chosen it and helped to make it myself. My mother had wanted to go with chocolate cake but we had never made floating island and I had always wanted to and it’s not the type of thing you make just for yourselves. “You ought to make something fancy so she won’t think all you know is ersatz gravy,” I said to my mother, and that, of course, sealed the deal.
    I pointed out the ersatz gravy to Miss Bowzer and reminded her that she had said she wanted to try it and she said, “Ah, um, yes,” but she didn’t seem to really be paying attention. I noticed she had poured it on her potatoes and eaten it but my sense of things was that she hadn’t tasted it at all. She was still too busy being nervous and overdressed.
    “Anyhow,” Uncle Jack wrapped up his last hilarious anecdote about development by Campbell River, “I’m done with that project.”
    Miss Bowzer didn’t respond. Just sat there in her polka-dotted dress, looking uncomfortable, her chops half finished.
    “So, Jack,” said my father. “What’s next?”
    “There’s always something next with this guy!” said my mother, through a mouthful of mashed potatoes and peas, while gesticulating wildly with her knife and fork.
    “Well, Miss Bowzer may have some suspicions,” said Uncle Jack.
    This had the effect of making Miss Bowzer suddenly
look
suspicious. It was actually a rather attractive look for her. It made her appear all fiery and romantic. Angry and suspicious were good looks for her and I thought this was lucky as those were the two emotions Uncle Jack seemed to inspire in her the most.
    “Why should I know anything about what you’re doing next?” she demanded.
    “Because it’s already started right across the street from you,” said Uncle Jack. “I thought by now you might have gotten normally curious and gone and at least looked in the window.”
    “Jack,” said my mother, tittering in a fake way. “I’m sure we’re all normal around here.”
    Why couldn’t everyone just be
themselves
? I really felt frustrated by not being able to choreograph everyone’s behavior. I liked everyone at that table and I couldn’t believe how wrong they were all getting it. I felt I should hand out scripts.
    “Are you
saying
I’m not normal?” Miss Bowzer asked, turning with steely eyes to Uncle Jack. Before he could answer, my father interrupted.
    “Were you the one that bought that building across from The Girl on the Red Swing? The one where there’s construction going on?” Heretofore my dad had been preoccupied by figuring out exactly how much meat he could get off his chops. He was the only one who picked them up and gnawed. He’d study them as if he couldn’tbelieve there wasn’t something he was missing. Not at ten dollars a pound. Then he’d pick them up and go at them again. It seemed like an engrossing activity, practically a new hobby, so that only now was he waking up to the table