Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs Read Free Book Online Page A

me even a brief personal note, especially considering I took the time out of my own busy life to inform you of your hairy earlobe problem, not to mention expressing my concern over your health in terms of smoking.
Zoe :|

    After reading the letter, Peggy Jean once again sent her standard reply in return, making no apology and adding not a single personal comment. She then phoned her husband at his office and asked if he wouldn’t mind picking up a can of cream of celery soup on his way home. She thought she’d try out a new recipe for canned salmon casserole she’d clipped from the back of Soap Opera Digest. Peggy Jean then opened the box of homeopathic medicine she’d purchased, pushed one of the pills through the foil backing, and placed it under her tongue, letting it dissolve.

four

    “T a da!” Trish sang, extending her finger so that Leigh and Peggy Jean could admire the gigantic diamond engagement ring.
    “Oh, Trish, congratulations—he finally asked, you are just . . .” Peggy Jean stopped midsentence, rendered speechless as her eyes fell on the rock .
    Leigh simply gasped. Then, taking Trish’s hand in her own and bringing it closer to her face, she said, “Trish, this stone is enormous , it must be like seven carats. How . . . ? I mean . . . ?”
    “Seven point five,” Trish said gleefully, “ but who’s counting! ” She squealed and stamped both little feet.
    Peggy Jean discreetly turned her own diamond engagement ring around so that the small stone faced the inside of her hand.
    “I had no idea your fiancé was so, well, loaded,” Leigh said. “This ring must have cost him a fortune.”
    Trish tilted her hand slightly from side to side, dazzled by how the ring just soaked up all the light in the room. “Huh?” she said, looking up. “Who?”
    “Your fiancé ,” Leigh said again. “This must have broken the bank.”
    “Oh, him! ” Trish laughed. “This didn’t cost him a penny.”
    And it was true.
    When Trish’s Price Waterhouse boyfriend had presented her with the original engagement ring, it had been in front of Trish’s father, Walter Mission III. Trish and her boyfriend had flown to Dallas to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, an event Trish would not have missed for the world.
    As the only child, Trish was not only the apple of her father’s eye, but also the sole heiress to the entire FlushKing Toilet Bowl and Urinal fortune.
    “Daddy!” Trish cried the moment she saw him, running to the front door of the estate toward her beaming father’s outstretched arms. Her boyfriend was left behind to collect the luggage from the trunk of the rental car.
    “My baby princess!” he gushed, scooping the girl into his arms and giving her a great big bear hug. He was a large man, in every way. Even his white eyebrows seemed twice as thick as an ordinary man’s. And he didn’t speak, he boomed.
    “Oh Daddy! Happy birthday, happy, happy birthday.”
    Porcelain, the white Maltese, scampered to the door and began yapping.
    Trish’s boyfriend arrived and set the luggage on the flagstone steps.
    Mr. Mission released his daughter and extended his beefy hand for the boyfriend to shake. “Hello, Stan,” he said.
    “ Steve ,” Steve corrected, shaking Mr. Mission’s hand. Mr. Mission squeezed hard and Steve winced.
    Trish playfully slapped her father on the arm. “Oh Daddy, stop teasing him. You know his name.” Then she bent down and scooped the little lap dog into her arms. “I missed you, too,” she said, laughing as it licked her face.
    It was after dinner when Trish’s boyfriend presented her with the engagement ring and asked for her hand in marriage. He had placed the simple one-carat ring on Trish’s finger, and she said, yes.
    Trish then leapt up off the mahogany leather sofa and dashed to her father, who was seated in a matching wing chair. “Look, Daddy,” she cried, “isn’t it pretty?”
    Her father placed his reading glasses on the bridge of his nose and peered at