Becky > Books: the_south (57) ×

COLQUITT: You can be a writer, painter, musician, promoter, great salesperson, a lover of beauty, socially in demand, and sometimes extravagant spender. Your energy might be scattered, but you have the ability to bring an idea to completion. You might be psychic, but not know it.
You desire to inspire and lead, to control other's affairs. You are giving, courageous and bold, action oriented, energetic and strong willed. You want to make a difference in the world, and this attitude often attracts you to cultural interests, politics, social issues, and the cultivation of your creative talents.

When my sis­ters and I even­tu­ally left home, it seemed like a nat­ural pro­gres­sion — young adults shift­ing from one en­vi­ron­ment to the next. While our de­par­tures had been rel­a­tively pain­less, Paul’s was like re­leas­ing a do­mes­tic an­i­mal into the wild. He knew how to plan a meal but dis­played a re­mark­able lack of pa­tience when it came time for the ac­tual cook­ing. Frozen din­ners were often eaten ex­actly as sold, the Sal­is­bury steak amount­ing to a stick­less meat Pop­si­cle. I phoned one night just as he was lean­ing a fam­ily pack of frozen chicken wings against the back door. He’d for­got­ten to de­frost them and was now at­tempt­ing to stomp the solid mass into three 6-inch por­tions, which he’d stack in a pile and force into his toaster oven.
I heard the sin­gu­lar sound of boot against crys­tal­lized meat and lis­tened as my brother panted for breath. “God­dam . . . fuck­ing . . . chicken . . . wings.”
I called again the fol­low­ing evening and was told that after all that work, the chicken had been spoiled. It tasted like fish, so he threw it away and called it a night. A few hours later, hav­ing de­cided that spoiled chicken was bet­ter than no chicken at all, he got out of bed, stepped out­side in his un­der­pants, and pro­ceeded to eat the left­overs di­rectly from the garbage can.
I was mor­ti­fied. “In your un­der­pants?”
“Damned straight,” he said. “I ain’t get­ting dressed up to eat no fish-assed-tast­ing chicken.”
I wor­ried about my brother stand­ing in his briefs and eat­ing spoiled poul­try by moon­light. I wor­ried when told he’d passed out in a park­ing lot and awoken to find a stranger’s ini­tials writ­ten in lip­stick on his ass, but I never wor­ried he’d be able to make a liv­ing.

Kathy was in labor for fif­teen hours be­fore the doc­tors de­cided to per­form a ce­sarean. The news was de­liv­ered to the wait­ing room, and when the time came my fa­ther looked at his watch, say­ing, “Well, I guess they should be carv­ing her up right about now.” Then he went home to feed his dog. By this point, nam­ing the child Lou was on par with nam­ing it Adolph or Beelze­bub, but all three were dis­qual­i­fied when the baby turned out to be a girl.

They named her Made­lyn, which was short­ened to Maddy by the time she reached the in­cu­ba­tor. I was in a hotel in Port­land, Ore­gon, at the time and re­ceived the news from my brother, who called from the re­cov­ery room. His voice was soft and melodic, not much more than a whis­per. “Mama’s got some tubes stick­ing out of her pussy, but it ain’t no big thing,” he said. “She’s lying back, lit­tle Maddy’s suck­ing on her titty just as happy as she can be.” This was the new, gen­tler Paul: same vo­cab­u­lary, but the tone was sweeter and sea­soned with a sense of won­der.

The ce­sarean had been un­pleas­ant, but after be­moan­ing the months wasted in Lamaze class, he grew re­flec­tive. “Some is cut loose and oth­ers come out on their own self, but take heed, brother: hav­ing a baby is a fuck­ing mir­a­cle.”

Movie char­ac­ters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burn­ing build­ings, but that’s for be­gin­ners. Real love amounts to with­hold­ing the truth, even when you’re of­fered the per­fect op­por­tu­nity to hurt some­one’s feelings.

"I'm sorry," I said, making a great effort. "I know this is dredging up stuff for you that you're trying to put behind you."

"No, I'm not trying to put Sally behind me," he said. "But I am trying to think about the rest of my life. And the ideas of the last few days, the idea that Sally was murdered, that the son of a bitch who did it has been walking around this town, talking to me, free, has been curdling my gut. And the fact that every time I see you, I want to screw you so bad it hurts. You practically break into my house, my damn house, and I want to fuck you right here on the floor."