396
PHILIP ROTH
heard your mother. Don't eat french fries with Sheldon Weiner after
school."
"Or ever," she pleads.
"Or ever," my father says.
"Or hamburgers out," she pleads.
"Or hamburgers out," he says.
"Hamburgers,"
she says bitterly, just as she might say
Hitler,
"where they can put anything in the world in that they like- and he
eats them. Jack, make him promise, before he gives himself a terrible
tsurch
and it's too late."
"J
promise!"
I scream.
"J
promise!"
and race from the kitchen
-to where? Where else?
I tear off my pants, furiously I grab that battered battering
ram to freedom, my adolescent cock, even as my suffering mother
begins to call to me from the other side of the bathroom door. "Now
this time don't flush. Do you hear me, Alex? I have to see what's
in that bow!!"
Doctor, do you understand what I was up against? My wang
was all I really had that I could call my own! Oh, you should have
watched her at work during polio season. She should have gotten
medals from the March of Dimes. Open your mouth. Why is your
throat red? Do you have a headache you're not telling me about?
You're not going to any baseball game, Alex, until I see you move
your neck. Is your neck stiff? Then why are you moving it that way?
You ate like you were nauseous, are you nauseous? Well, you ate
like you were nauseous. I don't want you drinking from that drink–
ing fountain in that playground.
If
you're thirsty wait until you're
home. Your throat is sore, isn' t it? I can tell how you're swallowing.
I think maybe what you are going to do, Mr. Joe DiMaggio The
Second, is put that glove away and lie down. I am not going to
allow you to go outside in this heat and run around, not with that
sore throat, I'm not. I want to take your temperature. I don't like
the sound of this throat business one bit. To be very frank, I
am
actually beside myself that you have been walking around all day
with a sore throat and not telling your mother. Why did you keep
this a secret? Alex, polio doesn't know from baseball games. It only
knows from iron lungs and death and crippled forever! I don't want
