Calypso

by David Sedaris

One day she’d throw a dish at you, and the next she’d create a mosaic made of the shards.

“I don’t know that it had anything to do with us,” my father said. But how could it have not? Doesn’t the blood of every suicide splash back on our faces?

Added height would be of no more use to me than a square head, so who needs it?

It’s so funny to be called an asshole by someone who doesn’t know you, but then again knows you so perfectly.

My problem is that if someone really engages me, or goes the slightest bit out of his way, I feel I have to buy whatever it is he’s selling.

I insist that Carol eat in my presence for the same reason I wait for the coffee shop employee to turn back in my direction before putting a tip in his basket. I want to be acknowledged as a generous provider. This is about me, not them.

The villain at three in the afternoon might be the hero by sunset. It was all just storytelling.

You’d think my mother could have seen the difference between the sunny, likable her and the dark one who’d call late at night. I could hear the ice cubes in her glass rushing forth whenever she took a sip.

There are things I avoid talking about with my father now—politics, for instance. He’s always operated on the assumption that I don’t know anything, can’t know anything, really.