His father opened that present last, peeling off the shiny red foil wrapping paper H---- had applied himself at home after work that day after buying the book during lunch at the national chain bookstore down the block from his workplace, picking up the book from the remainder table for only nine ninety-five, marked down from thirty-nine ninety-five, complimenting himself inwardly for his thriftiness. His father looked at the book for a few moments, said "How thoughtful" with a trace of delight in his voice, and started leafing though the pages.
Then something caught his father's eye for a second. Someone had dog-eared a right-hand page showing a dazed, bloody young woman in Manhattan a few hours after the attacks, the somewhat large dog-ear slicing through the tip of her skull at a 45-degree angle. "Thanks," his father said with what H---- perceived as an almost imperceptible lessening of enthusiasm, his father smiling but opting not to look at his son. As H----'s father laid the book (a little too carefully in H----'s opinion) onto the dining-room table covered with the 65-dollar gift certificate redeemable at a national golfing supplies warehouse chain, the four-CD box set of remastered easy-listening radio hits, the five-DVD box set of flattering documentaries about various Reagan administration personages, and other presents from the relatives, friends, acquaintances, semi-acquaintances, and tolerated boors assembled there around the table, H---- could see the four-inch-long green marker slash on the bottom of the book's pages, a slash signifying something remaindered and thus cheap, a slash H----'s father had to have seen..
H---- deprecated himself inwardly for not examining the book more closely at the bookstore, for disgracing his employer by disgracing the memory of his father's old college roommate's granddaughter and by extension the memory of everyone (except the terrorists) the September 11 attacks had killed, for buying too many manga-style graphic novels that month at the local comic book and trading-card store and thus being able to afford only something cheap as usual for his father's birthday (his father's 65th birthday), for dawdling over lunch at the national chain 1990s alternative rock-themed semivegetarian restaurant across the street from the bookstore and thus grabbing in a rush the first volume H---- had thought his father would enjoy from the remainder table, for not even paying the bookstore extra to wrap the present with greater skill than H---- had done. (H---- thought he had used too much cellophane tape.)
The deprecation increased when H----'s 62-year-old mother announced "Now for cake" in what seemed her usual syrupy voice. Only H---- could hear the contempt underlying her cheerfulness, contempt no doubt for a son for whom she had always professed affection, professed more as a formality no doubt than as something genuine. He wished he could pay his seventy-five hundred in credit-card debt. He wished he could have the time and ability to learn Japanese so he could read actual manga. He wished he could introduce himself more easily to women he considered desirable (such as that semilesbian waitress with the cantilevered clavicles at the semivegetarian restaurant). In short, he wished he could fulfill the prophecy his mother had made to him 24 years earlier, when he had been five, prior to his leaving home for his first day of kindergarten: "You'll have the world on a string someday."
By the way, six months before his granddaughter's death, during a dinner date with her and her mother at a national chain U.S men's professional sports (except soccer)-themed restaurant in an upscale shopping mall, the old college roommate jovially declared, apropos nothing, that his daughter's unspecified teenage "antics" had almost compelled him "to grab the nearest coat hanger and perform a retroactive abortion on her", a remark eliciting what his granddaughter perceived as mortified laughter from her and her mother. No one mentioned or thought of the comment again.
END
Only seventy-five hundred in credit-card debt? That's high-quality financial planning by American standards!....Fiction, Home.
� 2004 David V. Matthews