Shannon (Giraffe Days)’s Profile

It's like this: I spent my first years with my parents in Kanton Stret on a tiny courtyard with a communal water pump and a communistic toilet - a hole in a plank, directly above the septic tank. Water ran down the inside of the living-room walls and we stuffed balls of newspaper into the worm-eaten window frames to keep out the wind. My father always spoke of the inconveniences of our residence with pride - longing for an easy life was a clear sign of inadequate masculinity - and when we finally moved to Mere Street [his grandmother's house] it was only to be even worse off. Our new toilet was a hole in a plank as well, but this house had the advantage of a leaking roof. [...] And we cherished the rotten, mushroom-sprouting death trap of a staircase over the cellar as a prime example of proletarian architecture. My father was a socialist and went to great lengths to be recognized as such. For him, possessions were nothing more or less than extra dusting. You didn't own them, they owned you. If a burst of unexpected thrift put us in danger of reaching the end of the month with a financial surplus, he hurriedly plundered the bank account and drank his entire pay packet to protect us from the temptations of capitalism. Unfortunately my mother revealed herself more and more as a bourgeois cow: she was too vain for worn-out shoes and filed for divorce after just ten years of marriage. When she left, she took everything that wasn't nailed down, thus granting my father ultimate bliss. [pp.2-3]

We knew that thoughts come at night, in bed, and we suspected that my father had lain awake in mortal fear, feeling the pain in his body, in his liver, his stomach, his chest. And that he, alone with his thoughts, lost his brave acceptance of physical deterioration. We couldn't exclude the possibility that he had licked his sopping hands, discovering to his horror that he had started to sweat alcohol, that his body was defeated and no longer knew how to get rid of all that fluid, that it had started to leak it out of all possible pores and holes. My father now tasted like beer and his armpits smelled like it too. Maybe he had already noticed the whites of his eyes growing yellow, his steady loss of weight. A drinker's coffin is seldom a heavy burden, undertakers are always glad to carry them, and our family would have saved a lot of money if we'd been able to pay for our funerals by the pound. Did he think that night about the worms that were besotted by the deliciously fermenting bodies of dead soaks and made the soil of our graveyard so rich that the gravediggers spent their working hours growing carrots and spinach between the collapsed and forgotten tombstones of a previous generation of chain drinkers? [p.100]

"You look beautiful," he repeated. Looping an arm around her shoulder, Geoff pulled her in close. Chloe thought he was going to kiss her, but Mary Beth made short work of that idea.
"Daddy!" Ripping off a patent leather shoe, she flung it at Geoff's face. It hit him square in the jaw, just missing Chloe.
The other kids at the park gave up a collective gasp. Mary Beth was obviously In. For. It.
Dropping Chloe's hand, Geoff took a step away. "I'm so sorry. Mary Beth must feel threatened." Walking toward the jungle gym, he called, "Honey, let's go get that ice cream."
Ice cream seemed to be Geoff's go-to parenting move. And it was all wrong, as the women at the park were quick to point out.
"Ice cream? Hell no." A heavyset mother glared at Geoff. "Don't you set a bad example in front of my kids." The woman shook a thick finger at her daughter, as if her daughter had done something wrong. "You don't get ice cream after that."
The other parents nodded. Delighted to have everyone's attention, Mary Beth took off her other shoe and whipped it at Chloe. Catching it, she considered her options.
Kids needed security. They needed boundaries. Even though Chloe wanted Geoff to like her, letting Mary Beth run wild wasn't helping anyone. Especially not Mary Beth. "Geoff, can I please have your permission to get your daughter under control?"
"Fine." His expression was as petulant as Mary Beth's. "I don't know what to do anymore." [p.169]