Watch Your Mouth Read Online Free PDF

these secret defects to line up in the right way to have the leg shatter, but—”
    “Impossible,” Steven said. “Statisically impossible, not improb- able.”
    “But it happened,” Cyn said. “It can’t be impossible.” “ Statistically impossible,” he said wearily.
    “In any case, that’s why he got upset,” Cyn finished. She was still leaning toward me, her story breathing on my face, my neck, down my shirt. “So don’t sweat it. The cracked plate just upset him.”
    “And it wasn’t even the one that was cracked,” Mrs. Glass said, stalking back into the room a little wildly. She picked up the butter plate and threw down dessert spoons like a witch doctor casting bones. “That’s why it wasn’t his fault, don’t you know that? It’s exactly like the plates!” She grabbed Cyn’s empty plate and traced the crack through the traces of sake-sauce. “You see? Your plate wasn’t cracked like this, Joseph, and it’s the one that broke.”
    “That’s exactly what Joseph was talking about,” Steven said, giving me a half-smile of male camaraderie even though I was fucking his sister. “The crack didn’t break the plate because the defects in the ceramic were not lined up correctly. That’s why Joseph’s plate broke even though he just dropped a fork on it. You could probably wham this one down on the table and noth- ing would happen to it.”
    “Really?” I said.
    Steven took the plate from his mother and gave it to me. Gramma nodded sagely. My fingers were sticky. I looked at everybody and then whammed the plate down on the table, breaking the second plate of the evening.
    “What was that?” Dr. Glass sounded positively cardiac from the kitchen.
    “Oh,” said Steven. Together we looked at the large pieces lying ruined on the table like uprooted sidewalk chunks. The plate had cracked right where the crack was, right where you’d think it would crack. Secret defects indeed. The son whisked the pieces away and the father emerged with a tray of strawberry-and-nougat parfaits.
    During that summer, Mrs. Glass was mildly renowned at the Glasses’ synagogue for making the best nougat in all the Sister- hood. Even the first night of my stay there she’d already per- fected the recipe (the trick is omitting honey), so all the ceramic tensions were dissolved in spoons of moist stickiness and ripe wet berries. Everybody’s mouths were wet and grinning, even Gramma’s, and Dr. Glass relaxed and continued to talk at me. I nodded and scooped in berries; it was going to be a delicious summer. Jovial French horns or something.
    “I’m really looking forward to working at Camp Shalom,” I said. “And I really appreciate your letting me stay here.”
    “We wouldn’t have it any other way,” Mrs. Glass said, smil- ing. “It’s good to see our daughter getting laid.”
    “What?”
    “Usually she volunteers,” Steven said. “She answered phones at a women’s clinic last summer, and before that she candy striped at Dad’s office.”
    Paid.
    “Well, this summer you’re not making any money,” Cyn said.
    “Steven is working at a very prestigious lab,” Dr. Glass said. “Carnegie Mellon. Physics. We’re very proud of him.”
    “I’m proud of him,” Cyn said defensively. “I just wanted to point out that he’s not making any money.”
    “He’s made money previously.” Dr. Glass licked the rest of his nougat off the spoon.
    “Well, I’m glad this summer she’s finally pulling her weight,” I said. “I bet you guys were tired of covering her mortgage pay- ments.”
    “Ha!” the doctor said.
    “Well,” Cyn said, “speaking of tired, I am. And Joseph and I have to make up the bed before we can even hit it. Can we be excused please?”
    I promptly set down my spoon. “Bed?” Gramma said. “Yes,” Cyn said. “I know it’s only eight-thirty, but Joseph and
    I had a long hard drive. Very hard. Very long. And we kept driving faster and faster and faster until we were