Tar Baby Read Online Free PDF Page B

already you’ve discovered the dining room. That’s three whole rooms. One every decade. First you found the bedroom. That is I assume you did. It’s hard to tell when a wife sleeps separately from her mate. Then in nineteen sixty-five I think it was, you located the living room. Remember that? Those cocktail parties? Those were good times. Heights, I’d say. You not only knew the airport and the dock and the bedroom, but the living room as well.”
    “Yes. I am having guests for Christmas.”
    “Then the dining room. Speak of a find! Dinner for ten, twenty, thirty. Think what’s before you in one kitchen, let alone two. We could entertain hundreds, thousands.”
    “Michael’s coming.”
    “I wouldn’t put it off any longer if I were you. If we hurry by the time I’m eighty we can invite Philadelphia.”
    “And a friend of his. That’s all.”
    “He won’t come.”
    “I’ve never had more than twelve people in this house at any one time.”
    “His friend will show and he won’t. Again.”
    “And I am not a cook and I never have been. I don’t want to see the kitchen. I don’t like kitchens.”
    “Why work yourself up this way every year? You know he’ll disappoint you.”
    “I was a child bride, remember? I hadn’t time to learn to cook before you put me in a house that already had one plus a kitchen fifty miles from the front door.”
    “Seems to me you did once. You and Ondine giggling away in the kitchen is one of my clearest and fondest memories.”
    “Why do you say that? You always say that.”
    “It’s true. I’d come home and you’d be—”
    “Not that! About Michael, I mean. That he won’t show up.”
    “Because he never has.”
    “He never has
here
. Down here in this jungle with nothing to do. No young people. No fun. No music…”
    “No
music?
”
    “I mean his kind of music.”
    “You surprise me.”
    “And so he won’t be bored to death, I’ve invited a friend of his—” She stopped and pressed a finger to the frownie between her eyes. “I haven’t invited anybody down here in years because of you. You hate everybody.”
    “I don’t hate anybody.”
    “Three years it’s been. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to see your son anymore? I know you don’t want to see anybody else—but your own son. You pay more attention to that fat dentist than you do Michael. What are you trying to prove down here? Why do you cut yourself off from everybody, everything?”
    “It’s just that I’m undergoing this very big change in my life called dying.”
    “Retirement isn’t death.”
    “A distinction without a difference.”
    “Well, I am not dying. I am living.”
    “A difference without distinction.”
    “And I’m going back with him.”
    “Sounds terminal.”
    “It might be.”
    “Christmas isn’t the best time to make decisions like that, Margaret. It’s a sentimental holiday full of foolish—”
    “Look. I’m going.”
    “I don’t advise it.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “He’s not a little boy anymore. The knapsack, I know, is confusing, but Margaret, he’ll soon be thirty.”
    “So what?”
    “So what makes you think he’ll want you to live with him?”
    “He will.”
    “You’re going to travel with him? Go to snake dances?”
    “I’m going to live near him. Not with him, near him.”
    “It won’t work.”
    “Why not?”
    Valerian put his palms down on either side of his plate. “He doesn’t care all that much for us, Margaret.”
    “You,” she said, “he doesn’t care all that much for you.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    “Then I can go?”
    “We’ll see. When he gets here, ask him. Ask him if he wants his mother next door to the reservation in a condominium.”
    “He’s through with that. The school closed. He’s not with them anymore.”
    “Oh? He’s done the Hopis? Gone on to the Choctaws, I suppose. No, wait a minute.
C
comes before
H.
Let me see, Navajos, right?”
    “He’s not with any tribe. He’s