There Must Be Some Mistake Read Online Free PDF

Finally, Jilly said, “I don’t think Diane should be sleeping with Cal.”
    Morgan said, “Me neither.”
    I said, “Delay of game!”
    â€œDiane probably thinks it makes things more interesting if she sleeps with him,” Jilly said. “She hasn’t thought about it carefully.”
    â€œDuh,” said Morgan.
    I reached for their hands across the table. “I’m glad that you two have spoken up. I was worried it was just me for a while there.”
    â€œI know you were,” Jilly said.
    â€œDiane’s a slut anyway,” Morgan said.
    â€œI’ll be right back,” I said, starting out of the booth. “Get me some pasta, will you?”
    â€œStay put, Dad,” Morgan said. She pointed me back into my seat.
    â€œI don’t know,” Jilly said. “She’s lonely maybe.”
    â€œWe’re all lonely,” Morgan said. “And we’re all sluts.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” I said to Morgan.
    â€œI’ve done my share of slutty stuff,” she said.
    â€œI’ve got to get out of this booth,” I said.
    â€œDad,” Morgan said.
    â€œI’m going to be sick,” I said.
    The waitress was wearing a stained white shirt. She was suddenly alongside the table, pen poised. Jilly took over and ordered for herself and for me. I was getting spaghetti and meatballs. She and Morgan were having salads, wonderful, complicated salads. The waitress vanished.
    â€œLet’s move on to other topics,” Jilly said.
    â€œGood,” I said. “I don’t want to hear any more about Cal. What’s done is done. I mean, we’re here at Olive Garden. Fantastico! Christ.”
    â€œWallace,” Jilly said. “You want your children to talk to you, yes?”
    â€œSure,” I said. “There’s one child, and I want her to be an attractive young woman with no boyfriends. No sex, love, anger, worry. No pets.”
    â€œHe doesn’t mean that,” Jilly said.
    â€œPets are OK,” I said.
    â€œIt was just once,” Morgan said.
    â€œYou’re making it worse, sweetheart,” Jilly said.
    Our food arrived in due course. Mine was execrable, in the best possible way, as usual. Thick, gloppy, greasy, misshapen, lukewarm, and inedible. We dined in silence, unless slurps and other sucking noises are to be counted.

5
The Virgin Mary
    WHEN WE got back to Kemah I had neighbors coming out of my ears with rumors about the things that had happened at Forgetful Bay. The assaultee, Chantal White, was now said to be, variously, a druggie, a woman recently in business with unsavory types, an LGBT pioneer, transgendered division, a woman with sexual appetites described as “voracious,” a word I seldom used myself. The dancing woman remained a mystery, but it was acknowledged she was connected to Duncan Parker, who had apparently been asked by the members of the board to vacate his presidency of our HOA and had been replaced by an interim president, a woman who was relatively new to the development and about whom I knew nothing but her name: Bernadette Loo. This was a crushing blow to Roberta Spores, who was, I was told, embittered. There was, also, a new peculiar event in the neighborhood, which was that someone had stolen—under cover of darkness, presumably—a dozen mailboxes, these being removed whole, post and all, like teeth pulled right out of their sockets, and installed in the shallows of Smoky Lake. By this time the neighbors were sure that one of our own was the culprit, the engineer of all carnage.
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    One afternoon coming home from Target where I had two prescriptions filled and bought some Orange Milanos, the Pepperidge Farm cookies my mother used to like so much before she died, I thought about my mother on the drive, remembering her at different points in her life, and in mine—when I was a kid at Saint Michael’s, when I went off to