Farewell, Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker Ellen Meister - Farewell Read Free Book Online

just got a
pedicure,
” Delaney said, rolling her eyes. “He gets
pedicures
now.” She pronounced the word like it was covered with drain scum. “Could you gag?”
    Yes, I could, Violet thought, feeling a little queasy at the image of some poor woman on her knees scraping at Malcolm’s feet.
    “Seen any good movies lately?” Malcolm said, when he reached the car.
    It was his standard greeting to Violet, and, apparently, it never ceased to amuse him.
    Violet forced a smile. “How’ve you been, Malcolm?”
    “I got a new car,” he said, pointing to a red SUV in the driveway.
    “That’s
yours
?” Violet was surprised. As long as she had known him, Malcolm never drove anything but pre-owned Lincolns.
    “It’s a RAV4,” he said, beaming.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that color before.”
    “Salsa red. Special order.” He looked as if he might burst with pride.
    “Well, that’s great. Congrats.”
    “Can we
go
?” Delaney asked.
    Malcolm laughed. “Teenagers. Always in a hurry.” He patted the top of the car as a signal to take off. “You two kids have fun,” he said, and stepped back.
    As Violet pulled away from the curb she heard Sandra yell, “Don’t forget the digoxin!”

Chapter 6
    “He’s so clueless he can’t even get a midlife crisis right,” Delaney said when they were under way. “I mean, a RAV4? That’s a lesbian car. Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to get a sports car when he’s trying to impress chicks?”
    Violet glanced at her niece and then back at the road. “A lesbian car? Where do you get this stuff?”
    “It’s common knowledge.”
    “Doubt that,” Violet said, laughing. “And what do you mean, ‘trying to impress chicks’? Malcolm is trying to impress chicks?”
    “What do
you
think?”
    Violet didn’t consider herself naive, but it had never occurred to her that Malcolm might be on the make. “I think he’s too impressed with himself to worry about what anyone else thinks,” she said.
    “Yesterday he came to my track meet. I wanted to
die.
”
    “He’s not
that
bad,” Violet said.
    “Aunt V, he was wearing
skinny jeans.
”
    Violet almost did the driving equivalent of a spit-take, but somehow she managed to stay on the road. “He was not!”
    “He was!”
    She patted her niece’s knee, laughing. “At least he’s happy.”
    Delaney folded her arms and got quiet. Violet waited a few minutes for her to say something and finally asked if she was okay.
    “Everyone deserves to be happy but me.”
    Coming from another kid it might have sounded like ordinary adolescent petulance, but Dr. Susan, Delaney’s therapist, had explained that overcoming survivor’s guilt was often a long process.
    “Of course you deserve to be happy,” Violet said.
    “Then why am I living at Casa de la Puke?”
    You shouldn’t be, Violet thought. You should be living with me.
    After the accident, Violet dropped everything in her life for Delaney. There wasn’t a moment of soul-searching about it, or even time to grieve her old lifestyle. She simply abandoned her Manhattan apartment to move into her sister’s house and try her damnedest to give Delaney what she needed. Of course, what she needed most was the one thing Violet couldn’t deliver—her loving parents. So she did everything else—took a hiatus from work, ignored phone calls from well-meaning friends, stopped everything and anything that didn’t relate directly to Delaney’s well-being. She barely even ate for three months.
    And what did the Webers do? They hired a lawyer.
    Of course, it wasn’t just the unfairness that brought Violet’s blood to near boiling, it was the threat to her niece’s fragile progress. Violet knew, without equivocation, that Delaney was better off with her than she was with the Webers. Nothing else mattered.
    She counted silently to ten so that she could respond calmly to her niece’s question.
    “You know I’m not allowed to talk about that, Del,” she said.
    She