364
L. WOIWODE
"... not normal," his mother was saying. "A normal person
wouldn't act like this."
"How would he? What the hell's normal?"
"A normal person would accept it."
"I did, once."
"This is something I just remembered."
"Remembered, hell! How many more are you going to remem-
ber, and at what opportune times?"
"Look at your own past.
Do
you like what you see?"
"At least I've been truthful about it."
"And so have I, now."
"Now, now, now! When the hell will now ever stop?"
"Stop it! Don't you see what you're doing?"
"Do you see what
you're
doing, for Christ's sake?"
There was a sound of rapid footsteps, a clattering sound, and
Owen started trembling.
"Is this what you want?"
When cries of fright came from his mother, Owen was con–
vinced there was a third person in the room and he ran into the
kitchen. His mother was just inside the door, standing against the
table, her back to him, and his father was at the far end of the
room beside the refrigerator. He held a knife in his hand.
"What are you doing down here?" his father said. "Get up–
stairs !"
"Now look what you've done," his mother said to his father.
"Just look what you've done! Aren't you proud of yourself?"
"Get back upstairs!"
Owen ran across the room, took hold of his father's pants leg,
and started kicking his shins and screaming. His mother pulled Owen
away, wrestled and dragged him upstairs, got him into his bedroom
and gave him the hardest, most prolonged and most painful spanking
he'd received in his life. It was only after
his
mother left the room
and locked the door behind her that the details of the scene in the
kitchen registered in Owen's mind, and he realized (or was this a
distortion caused by time? by the growing bitterness between Owen
and his mother?) that his father wasn't threatening his mother with
the knife. He held the blade against his own heart.
•
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