As Dog Is My Witness by JEFFREY COHEN Read Free Book Online Page B

the cabinet. Crumbs landed on his
shirt, and, in a single motion, he wiped them onto the floor,
smearing his white shirt with chocolate. “Yes, Dad?”
    “What happened in science?”
    He scowled, knowing Wilma had dropped a dime (or,
allowing for inflation, thirty-five cents) on him. “Nothing.”
    “Nothing? Throwing a pen at a teacher is nothing?” I
waved my arms over my head and smoothed my hair back like the
primate I was becoming. “Ethan Atticus Tucker
. . . 
    He hates his middle name, which was his mother’s idea
(he doesn’t know the only reason it isn’t his first name is
because I ran interference for him). Ethan clenched his teeth,
which is exactly what I do when I get angry, and snarled. “I didn’t hit her with the pen,” he growled. “Nobody got hurt.”
    “Not for lack of trying! Ethan, this is something
I’ve been telling you since you were two, for chrissakes! You can’t throw things at other people! You can’t hit other people!
You can’t choke other people! ”
    “I know, I know . . .  How dare I
belabor the point that he shouldn’t commit violence. “You don’t
have to tell me again.”
    “Apparently, I do. And why wasn’t your science
homework done yesterday?”
    “It was ! Why doesn’t anyone believe me?” Exasperated, he stomped to the living room couch and flopped
down, causing an audible crack in the frame of the old sofa.
    I advanced on him, my temperature rising by the
second, which wasn’t a bad thing, considering how cold it was in
the room. “Do you have enough money for a new couch?” I asked
him.
    This caught him off guard, so he answered honestly.
“No.”
    “Then don’t destroy the one we already have, because
I don’t, either!”
    One way in which AS kids are just like all other kids
is that they have virtually no patience for their parents. Ethan
rolled his eyes and pursed his lips in the universal symbol of
almost-teenagers who know so much more than the people who’ve been
doing their laundry for twelve years. “Oh, give me a break,” he
said.
    The door burst open and Leah bounced in, heading, as
she always does, directly for the dog. “Hello, Warren,” she cooed.
“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?”
    “Not me, according to Dad,” said Ethan. “He thinks
everything that ever goes wrong is my fault.”
    “That’s not true,” I told him, “and you know it.”
    He ignored me entirely, which I’ve grown used to.
Ethan sat and stared into the blank television screen as if
watching a fascinating film that demanded his complete attention.
He was actually watching his own reflection, but as a tactic, it
had the desired effect. It annoyed me.
    “Do your homework,” I said.
    I’d been speaking to Leah, but it was the opening
Ethan had been waiting for. He stood up and faced me with the
blatant, pointless rebellion of youth.
    “No,” he said.
    Leah, sensing a storm on the horizon, grabbed up her
backpack from the floor and went upstairs to her room, taking the
dog with her.
    “No?” I said, eyebrows raised. “What the hell do you
mean, ‘no’?”
    “I’m not doing my homework.” He had a smile on his
face that said, “Go ahead. Make my day.” So I did.
    I firmly put both my hands on his shoulders. “You’re
going to do your homework, Ethan. And when you’re done with each
page, you’re going to bring it over to me so I can see it, and then
I’m going to watch you put it all in your backpack, so what
happened today won’t happen again.” All the while, I tightened my
hold on his shoulders.
    “Ow!” Ethan is especially sensitive to touch, and a
tiny bit of pain produces a reaction similar to what most people
would experience if a cheetah was chewing off their legs. “Stop
choking me!”
    Reflexively, I took my hands away. “Choking you?
That’s not choking you. My hands were nowhere near
. . .  As usual, I fell into a typical parent trap:
addressing the side issues and losing sight of the main point. He
still