The Wishbones Read Online Free PDF Page A

that, but on another level, it was hard to saythat he and Julie had actually chosen each other in some rational, adult way. Fifteen years ago—half their lifetime—she had walked up to him in the hallway of Warren G. Harding Regional High School and told him that Exit 36 had put on a great show at the spring dance and predicted that they would someday be famous. A week later he took her to see
Midnight Express.
Two months after that they split a six-pack purchased by her older sister's boyfriend and had sex for the first time. It just
happened
, in some urgent hormonal haze that had little to do with concepts like choice or intention, and they hadn't been free of each other since. And now, apparently, unless he thought of something fast, they were going to get themselves married.
    Dave's father Sat at the table in his Mr. Speedy baseball cap, reading the
Daily News
with the almost religious thoroughness he devoted to every edition. It seemed to Dave that he pored over every word of it—the advertisements, the classifieds, the bridge column, all twelve horoscopes. Reading the newspaper filled most of Al Raymond's spare time; it was his version of a hobby.
    “Hey,” he said, looking up with a smile that was surprised and satisfied at the same time. “Congratulations. Your mother told me the good news.”
    “Word travels fast.”
    “You had her worried there for a while, Dave. She didn't think Julie would stick around long enough for you to make up your mind.”
    “It wasn't a matter of making up my mind. I just didn't feel ready.”
    “No one feels ready. It's the same with having kids. You just jump in and start treading water. If everybody waited until they were ready, we wouldn't need express lines at the supermarket.”
    Since his retirement, Al had emerged as something of an armchairphilosopher, full of cryptic insights into the workings of the world. It was a development that surprised the whole family. Dave still came home half expecting to find the old Al lurking behind his paper, the grumpy exhausted chief of maintenance at the county courthouse, the human jukebox of grievances.
    “So what do you think about marriage?” Dave asked, sorting through the junk mail on top of the microwave.
    “About what?”
    “Marriage.”
    “Julie's great,” his father replied. “I hope you'll be happy together.”
    “I didn't ask about Julie. I asked what you thought about marriage.”
    “What? The institution in general?”
    “Yeah. I mean, you've been married for thirty-six years. I figure you might have formed an opinion by now.”
    His father studied him for a few seconds, apparently trying to decide if he was serious.
    “Come on,” he said, chuckling uncomfortably. “Quit pulling my leg.”
    Until that evening, Dave had never given serious consideration to the matter of inlaws. He'd known Jack and Dolores Müller for a long time—almost as long as he'd known their daughter—and paid them the wary respect due the parents of the girl you're sleeping with, but it hadn't occurred to him, except in the vaguest, most fleeting way, to think of them as
relatives
, people whose lives might one day be intimately and inextricably caught up with his own. Inlaws were people you were required to visit on holidays, people whose genes your children would inherit, people who might—it happened all the time, he realized with dismay—end up, for one reason or another, living in your house.
    Mrs. Muller answered the door in a ruffled apron, the bib of which was emblazoned with the image of an eggplant. Despite her manufactured smile, the air between them was instantly thick with embarrassment; Dave had to resist an impulse to place his hands over his crotch. Stepping through the awkwardness into the house, he greeted his future mother-in-law with a clever approximation of a hug.
    “Congratulations,” she said, rallying a little. “We're so pleased.”
    “Thanks. It's kind of amazing, isn't it?”
    “I'll say,” Mrs.