388
PHILIP ROTH
I'm not dead yet either. Beat on! "Lick me, Big Boy-lick me a good
hot lick! I'm Lenore Blatt's big fat red hot brassiere!"
"Alex, I want an answer from you. Did you eat french fries after
school? Is that why you're sick like this?"
"Nuhhh."
"Alex, are you in pain? Do you want me to call the doctor? Are
you in pain, or aren't you? I want to know exactly where
it
hurts.
Alex, answer me."
"Yuhhh."
"Alex, I don't want you to flush the toilet," says my mother
sternly. "I want to see what you've done in there. I don't like the
sound of this at all."
"And me," says my father, touched as he always was by my
accomplishments--as much awe as envy, "I haven't moved my
bowels in a week," just as I lurch from my perch on the toilet seat,
and with the whimper of a whipped animal, deliver three drops of
something barely viscous into the tiny piece of cloth where my sister,
whom I hate, has laid her nipples, such as they were. It is my sixth
orgasm of the day. When will I begin to come blood?
"Get in here, please, you," says my mother. "Why did you
flush the toilet when I told you not to?"
"I forgot."
"What was in there that you were so fast to flush it?"
"Diarrhea."
"Was it mostly liquid or was it mostly poopie?"
"I don't look! I didn't look! Stop saying poopie to me-I'm in
high school!"
"Oh, don't shout at
me,
Alex. I'm not the one who gave you
diarrhea, I assure you.
If
all you ate was what you were fed at
home you wouldn't have to be running to the bathroom fifty times
a day. Hannah tells me what you're doing, Al,ex, don't think I don't
know."
She's missed her underwear! Dead! Dead! I wish I were dead!
"Yeah, what do I do ... ?"
"You go to Harold's Hot Dog and
Chazerai
Palace after school
and you eat french fries with Sheldon Weiner. Don't you? Don't lie
to me either. Do you or do you not stuff yourself with french fries
