Friday, September 15, 2017

Ch 11 But then Sly makes Doris pay the price for my insolence

Doris: Primo, would you please turn off the TV and turn on the radio? There’s a concert on NPR that I want to hear. Sly, do you remember the time when we went to dinner and that concert with the Browns and the singer asked me to join her onstage to sing with her? Primo, this was shortly after you were born. We had mutual friends who had told the singer about me and she asked me to accompany her on stage! Me!

Sly: No honey. It was the Smiths.

Doris looks bewildered. Does it really matter if it was the Smiths or the Browns? This was decades ago. She soldiers on.

Doris: No, it was the Browns.

Sly: It was the Smiths!

The story Doris is telling is about the singing. That is the story I want to hear. That’s the story Primo wants to hear. That's the story she wants to tell.

But Sly can’t let go of the Smith/Brown dilemma.

Doris: No, it was the Browns. I remember, honey.

Sly: It was the Smiths! It was the Smiths!

Doris: Honey, why does it matter? I think it was the Browns, you think it was the Smiths. Let me finish the story, please.

Sly: It was the Smiths! How stupid are you? Did they have a “stupid” category on your report card when you were a little girl? If they did, you would have gotten an “A!”

Doris: Don’t you talk to me like that!

Sly: I’ll say what I please. Stupid. Probably because of your stupid parents.

I swear I am not making this stuff up. I am reporting, verbatim, what is happening.

Sly: Stupid parents, stupid daughter.

Doris (crying): Leave my parents out of it, you fucker!

My jaw drops. I had never in my life heard either of my parents cuss at each other. I never heard either of them use the “F” word – and my dad was a sailor before he was married. Not that my parents didn’t fight, but when they fought, they usually didn’t do it in front of us kids and I certainly never saw my dad reduce my mother to tears.


I watch the tears roll down Doris’ face. What am I supposed to do?

What is a 70 year old woman who is treated like this supposed to do?

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