Apologize, Apologize! - By Elizabeth Kelly Page 0,11

his place alongside him in the library, the door closing behind them, shutting me out, I heard the Falcon ask his opinion about the condition of the walls.

“I’ve no interest in changing the color, but I think maybe the room needs a fresh coat of paint. What do you think, Cromwell?”

CHAPTER THREE

BINGO DIED TWICE BEFORE HE WAS NINETEEN. THE FIRST TIME HE was five years old, pale as the moon and small for his age, “no bigger than a beer bottle,” as Uncle Tom would say. Bing coughed when he laughed, he was always coughing, sand and grit in his voice, scratchy as Pop’s old record collection. It was spring 1969, the air blowing cold and dry. All it took was a sudden shift in temperature and Bing would be in trouble.

“Why didn’t you wake us?” my mother screamed at me, standing next to Bingo’s bed in her nightgown, teeth chattering uncontrollably, her body shaking so much that she was a blur, coming at me in waves of hysteria as I squinted against the sudden sharp injection of light.

Bingo, lying on his back, struggling to speak, reached out for Ma, but her focus for the moment was on me.

“For Christ’s sake, Anais, it’s not Collie’s fault,” Pop said, grabbing her by the shoulders. The words were hardly out of his mouth when she lashed out, wound up, and slapped his face. Whack! I marveled at her speed; there was no palpable distinction between cause and effect.

He didn’t miss a beat, but shoved her against the dresser, her head wobbling like one of those dashboard ornaments. Way to go, Pop! She rebounded, took another swing at him, he ducked, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit her back, and I was right!

I was only six years old, I should have been horrified, but I was thrilled. Ma forever accused me of leaping to my feet, the mattress a trampoline, and clapping my hands in glee when Pop struck back. Wham! Right across the kisser, it was the joyous sound of a hundred angels getting their wings.

“It’s therapeutic! It’s therapy!” he shouted, trying to explain why he had my mother in a headlock. “It’s medicinal, Anais. I’m sorry, Collie, but your mother’s gone right off her nut!”

“Jesus, what’s all the fuss about?” Tom wandered in, wearing boxer shorts and a white T-shirt, his gray hair standing upright as quills, the familiar smell of booze trailing him like one of Ma’s wiener dogs. Eyes rheumy and face muscles slack, he was trying in vain to impersonate alertness. His eyebrows rode up his forehead like a couple of struggling elevators.

“What do we do? What do we do?” Ma wailed, throwing her head so far back that it was practically sitting on her shoulders. She’d broken away from Pop and stood in the middle of the room, seeming to generate her own spotlight, her legs spread apart and arms thrown skyward in a pose so dramatic, I felt convinced the hand of God was going to break through the ceiling like some sort of cosmic crane operator and spirit her off, Ma’s unbearable intensity finally propelling her into another dimension.

“Someone call an ambulance!” Pop hollered as if he were in the midst of a crowded dance floor.

“Daddy! Daddy, where are you? Help me. My baby! I want my father.” Ma just kept shrieking, her feet planted, arms pinned to her sides, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide as a cavern, calling for the Falcon, a scenario that had me, young as I was, completely flummoxed, since she was popularly known to hate his guts.

Tom, weirdly calm and self-involved, nudged me and bent over, whispering, “Oh, listen to that. The proof we’ve been wanting all this time. I told you, Noodle, the Female B is father-fixated. It’s love-hate—that’s what makes the world go round. What did I tell you?”

By now, Bingo was quietly smothering, making only the weakest croaking and squeaking sounds in a last-ditch effort to attract some meaningful attention.

“What about Bingo?” I asked finally, fully awake and mildly exhilarated, standing up in the middle of my bed. “Who’s going to save Bingo?”

I pointed over to his bed, where Bingo was lying on his back, still and staring, one hand resting on his chest, the other hand at his throat, the mechanical sound of his breathing whirring and clicking.

All three of them stopped and stared at me until Ma let out the biggest scream I’d ever heard.

“Jesus, she’s gone Crazy Horse on

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