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Thursday, February 21, 2013

My sister yells at me and says I'm cold



The next day my father woke up, finding himself in my sister's old room. "How did I get here?" he said.
"You moved in the middle of the night," my mother said.
"Hmmm. I don't remember."
"Your son is here."
"What? Here? When did he get here?"
"Yesterday."
"Did I see him?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. I don't remember. Did I know he was coming?"
"No, he just called with some bullcockey story that he was sent for work. But I saw through that. I know what he's up to. He's conspiring with his sister. They're doing inventory on our stuff."
Having stayed up most of the night, wracked with jetlag, I dragged myself out of bed and said good morning to my father.
I sent a quick text message to my sister, saying that I had arrived and was seeing first hand what she had described in December, and how it stank. Minutes later, the phone rang. It was my sister. She spoke to my parents and then spoke to me.
"Wow you're really there!"
"Yeah I'm only here a week."
"A week? A week! I was there for three weeks! And it was hard, it was really hard on my girls, but I made progress. I cleaned up the whole kitchen."
"Well that's gone. The kitchen is a disaster again."
"So what! They want help. They told me."
"I'm not wasting my time. The big clean up will have to wait until their dead."
"Dead?! When did you become so cold? What is this? These are your parents. You have to care about them."
"I do, and I am taking dad to the doctor tomorrow, but cleaning here is a waste of time. They don't want it. They don't appreciate it, and they will just clutter it up the moment I leave."
"You're a bastard, you stupid, you stupid dick. What if your kids treated you like this, would you like that?"
"It's not relevant."
"Not relevant? I don't understand you. I don't understand you at all. I was planning to come out there every few months and help, and you just come for a week and are gonna do nothing."
"Yeah, that's right."
"Well I want them to come and live with me. Their only excuse had been the health insurance that they need a reasonable health cooperative out here in Ohio. I need your brains to find that. Call me back tomorrow."
"I'll send you an email."
"An email? Wouldn't you like something more personal and call me?"
"No."

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