Bulls Island Read Free Page B

was on an evening following a trail of such days that Mother found herself trapped in our home by the threat of a sudden squall. She decided to stay for dinner and took it upon herself to turn off the air-conditioning. Just as I opened the French doors to the portico, raindrops as fat as my fist began to splatter the dusty ground with aslapping sound. A meager breeze swept the room, offering little in the way of relief. Just for the record, should my mother and Valerie decide to reincarnate themselves into my next life, I hoped they would get along better than they did in this one.
    “Since you’re up, will you pour more iced watah, J.D.?”
    “Yes, Mother,” I said, moving around the table with the silver pitcher to refill her glass. “It is hotter than usual today.” The frost on the pitcher felt good on my hands and I wiped my forehead with the moisture.
    “It’s as hot as I can evah recall,” Mother said, fanning herself dramatically with both hands. “The air is so close! Thank you, dear. So close! The skies look grimly and threaten present blustahs …”
    “The Mariner? The Winter’s Tale ?”
    “My smaaart son! Yes!”
    Mother loved to quote Shakespeare.
    Then Valerie piped up with one of her crazy non sequiturs. “Hmm. Do you all think the rain’s gonna hurt the rhubarb?”
    Faces blank, Mother and I looked at her, waiting for Valerie to answer her own question.
    “Not if they put it up in Mason jars!” Valerie began to laugh hysterically.
    “Ah don’t believe Ah understand the punch line,” Mother said, drawling her annoyance.
    “You don’t get it?” Valerie said, genuinely puzzled. “J.D.? You get it, don’t you?”
    I scrutinized Valerie’s face, her eyes in particular. She was having some difficulty in focusing on mine. Something was wrong. She seemed to be growing drowsier by the second.
    “Sure, Val. I get it. You feeling all right?”
    “Nope.”
    “Poor child!” Mother said, with a tsk-tsk. For very good reason, I doubted the genuineness of her concern.
    “I feel a migraine coming on. Behind my eyes. I took a Vicodin. It wasn’t doing a thing so I had a li’l bitta vodka.”
    “Dahlin’?” Mother said. “That’s not a good idea, especially when you all are trying to conceive…”
    The gloom of failure filled the humid room and I knew at once that Valerie’s and my latest attempt at in vitro fertilization had been unsuccessful. How many times had we tried? Nearly a dozen. All of them resulting in heartbreak.
    Valerie began to weep a little, as she always did when the announcement was made that she was not carrying the family’s heir. Mother looked up to the ceiling for relief. I’ll admit, even I was really weary of it all.
    “Why don’t you just go on to bed, Val,” I said, passing her my handkerchief. “I can bring you something to eat later on.”
    “It’s probably best,” Mother said.
    Valerie looked back and forth across the table at us, wiping her eyes, uncertain if she was being dismissed in anticipation of poor conduct on her part or if we thought she would actually be better off resting in bed, in a darkened room. The truth was somewhere in between, and I knew how this act would play itself out. If Valerie stayed at the dinner table, Mother would become infuriated by her slurred speech and trancelike behavior, Valerie would feel like a small trapped animal, and I would be completely frustrated by my female bookends of discontent. And once more, I would be embarrassed by my wife.
    I stood and went around to the foot of the table to hold her chair so that Valerie, my blond bobble-headed, bubble-witted Barbie, could leave the room with her dignity intact. That gesture also closed the door on what I knew from experience was Mother’s brewing criticism.
    “It’s all right, Val,” I said. “It’s too hot to eat anyway.”
    “Thank you, J.D. Mother. I’m sorry…”
    “Don’t think another thought about it,” Mother said, and flicked her wrist in