Hothouse by Chris Lynch Read Free Book Online Page A

for you.”
    â€œWell they are doing it for us.”
    â€œYes. Yes, of course they are. And because people do something nice for you, you do something nice, for them, by attending. Everybody thinks they are doing the nice thing for somebody else, while all parties would probably rather stay home and watch TV, but in the end something nice has probably been achieved even if it might be hard to identify what that was.”
    It’s a different sound coming out of my mother now. Weary. Burnt.
    â€œIt will be great,” I say, slowly rising from the couch. “I know there has been a lot of stuff we have had to do, but this one feels different. This one’s going to be about the good stuff. I don’t think people would rather be at home watching TV than doing this, and I know I wouldn’t. I’m going to let myself get a little excited about this one.”
    She smiles. “Okay. I’m just glad I don’t have to go.”
    â€œLike hell you don’t have to go.”
    â€œOf course I’m going to go,” she says, still weary, but a little less weary. “I wouldn’t want to miss your happy, beaming little proud face.”
    â€œOkay, lady, if you need to mock me to feel better, that’s fine with me.” It’s a price I’m willing to pay.
    She slowly tips over sideways on the couch, tucks her legs up, and settles way deep in. Sweet and innocent is how she looks as her smile turns vertical on me.
    â€œI wasn’t mocking. I do see your happy, beaming little proud face. And it is making me want to go now.”
    I make a point of beaming just a bit more as her eyes close and I leave her, surely with the both of us thinking about the fine Outrageous Courageous t’do to come. Outrageous Courageous was also not my phrase. It is common speech now, in the newspapers, shouted at us from cars, even spray-painted huge on a wall of the fire station, erased, and painted right back again. It is the shorthand for my dad and DJ’s, used as often as people speak their names. I love to hear my dad’s actual name, and don’t want it ever to fade away.
    But I love Outrageous Courageous.
    â€œHow come you’re not a better bowler, Dad?”
    â€œI am a better bowler.”
    He gets in moods like this, where he doesn’t make any kind of sense at all. It tends to be a funny nonsense, but I can never tell where it comes from or where it goes to again, so the erratic part I don’t care for. Sometimes it makes me a little angry.
    â€œBetter than what?” I ask, deliberately interfering with his release.
    His fourteen-pound ball squibs off right and just barely clips one pin before toddling off into the gutter.
    â€œBetter than that,” he says, staring for a long time at the lane and the confident pins and what went wrong.
    â€œIf you’re better than that,” I insist, “then bowl better than that.”
    His ball rolls back up the feeder. He collects it and turns to me.
    â€œAre you angry with me?” he asks, holding his ball up high like a big fat second head.
    â€œI just want you to be better,” I snap, gesturing for him to address the lane instead of me.
    I see sad disappointment flicker across his face, then he turns toward the pins again and I feel like crap.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I call out, again just in time to wobble his release, only this time unintentionally.
    He knocks down three more.
    I have no idea. I have no idea why I need him to be better at this. I have no idea why his weird slanted smile at knocking down only four pins in a frame of tenpin bothers me so much.
    â€œRelax,” he says, taking the seat next to me at the scoring desk. “That’s why they call it bowling.”
    I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I have no idea why it makes me so angry to hear it that I want to just walk right out and leave him there.
    But I don’t. I do the better thing, and I bowl. I