Inflating a Dog (The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy) by Eric Kraft (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

on the Herald label in July of 1955. Mark Dorset, author of Deconstructing the American Pop Canon, considers “When You Dance” to have been the first song to include in the chorus the word doo-wop. The Turbans’ recording was already about three years old when we played it in the fog, over and over, that delightful day.)

TOWARD THE END OF THE SUMMER, my father took a week off from work at the gas station, “to help out.” He didn’t announce his plans. He just showed up one morning.

“Bert!” said my mother when he pulled up to Arcinella’s slip.

“I thought maybe I could, well, give you a hand,” he said, getting out of the car.

“What about the garage?” said my mother.

“A guy’s gotta take some time off. I thought I’d take a week — see if I could help you out.”

“Well — ah — thanks,” said my mother, “but we’ve really got everything — um — under control.”

He looked around, and I watched him. I could see that he was beginning to feel awkward, and I realized that he wanted to be part of what my mother had accomplished.

“I — I could use — you know — the engine — the engine could sure use a good going-over — by somebody who knows what he’s doing,” I said, “instead of me.”

“Hey!” said my father, rolling up his sleeves. “Good thing I’m here!”

I think he enjoyed himself during the week he spent with us, but I know for certain that we didn’t need his help, and that knowledge allows me to say that my mother had succeeded at last.

I saw how much his attitude had changed when, at the end of the week, he tried to tell my mother that he admired what she had achieved. The attempt went something like this:

“Ella,” he said, “you — ”

My mother saw from his shuffling shamefaced hangdog look what might be coming if he could manage to say it and decided to head it off.

“Let’s dance, Bert,” she said.

“Ella, I just want to say — ”

“Doo-wop da wadda wadda, doo-wop da wadda,” she sang.

“Please, Ella, I’m trying to tell you — ”

“When you dance — ”

“Ella — ”

“ — be sure to hold her close to you — ” she cooed, and, swaying invitingly, held her arms out to my father, who accepted the invitation and waltzed her around the deck, while Patti and I looked on, smiling like approving parents.

Chapter 50

The Son of Second Best (Testing the Hypothesis, Part 4)

I WAS SITTING in Dudley’s chair. Patti was sitting on my lap. We were pretending that she had come to see me to discuss the meaning of life, but I had pulled her skirt up around her waist, and I was rubbing her through her panties while I said, “But my dear, there is no inherent meaning in any of it. The only meaning is the meaning we add to it, like chocolate sauce and chopped nuts on a quite meaningless scoop of vanilla ice cream.”

She squirmed a little, rearranging herself so that my erection fit more comfortably between her buttocks, stayed my hand, and said, “There’s something wrong with this.”

“Scruples at this late date, my little darling?” I said, nuzzling her neck.

“I can imagine it all,” she said, “and I can even think of things to say to you, like ‘Oh, Dud, you can’t mean that there’s no meaning to it at all?’ and that kind of thing, but you know what?”

“What?”

“I’m not having any fun.”

“Oh,” I said, crushed.

“I mean as Ella,” she said, and gave me a consoling squeeze. “When I’m being Ella, I’m not enjoying myself.”

“Oh.”

“Do you understand what I mean? I mean that she’s not enjoying herself with Dudley.”

“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’m glad to hear that. It’s very tiring being Dudley. I think it would get pretty tiring being the son of Dudley, too.”

“Here’s what I think,” said Patti. “I think she might have let Dudley snuggle her a bit. She might have let him feel her up, maybe unbutton her blouse, and I think there might have been some kissing, maybe even a lot of kissing, and romantic words — a lot of romantic words, since I have found that it is very hard to shut Dudley up — and I think that she might have liked all of that, that it might have been thrilling for her, the forbidden aspect of it, and the kinkiness of it, with an older man and all, and that it would have felt flattering, since he was sophisticated, and so on — but I think that’s as far as it went, because that was where she stopped enjoying it.”

“But why did she stop enjoying it at that point? What makes you think that she didn’t go on enjoying it long enough to conceive me?”

“I think — I just think — that the only reason she got into any kind of amorous entanglement with Dudley — if she actually did get into something with Dudley at all — was because she would rather have been with somebody else.”

“What?”

“She was longing for someone else, and she let herself take some consolation from Dudley.”

“Who was she longing for?” I asked. “Who’s on your list?”

“Do you know much about your uncle?”

“My uncle?”

“Your father’s brother — Buster.”

“Oh. No, not much. He was a year or two younger, and he was killed in the war.”

“He was smart, clever, funny, charming — and very good looking. I’ve read the letters he wrote to your grandparents after he joined the navy. I think you would have liked him. I think I would have liked him. Most important, though, I got the impression from talking with your grandmother that Ella definitely liked him — liked him more than she liked Bert — though apparently she was smitten with both of them. The three of them used to go out on dates together.”

“But he couldn’t be my father. He died long before I was born.”

She put her hand over my eyes and said, “Let’s