They drove up to the Larchmont house. The rhododendrons had half a dozen mounds of clippings on the grass in front fo them. Dad must’ve come over to trim the bushes and forgotten to clean them up.
“Your damned father,” Jerry’s mother said as she put the gear into park. “He never cleans up after himself when he comes over here to do something for me. If I’ve told him once, I’ll tell him again, the reason I kicked him out is he’s a lazy good for nothing. Just like his own damned father.”
Jerry groaned and felt the stifling air in the car. Mother would never allow the air conditioning in her ten-year old Impala, and of course it had black leather seats and of course it was August in New York. And of course she wouldn’t allow Jerry to open the windows, might mess up her blue-rinse body wave.
“Now you just stay there,” she ordered. “No sense in you hurting yourself again. Can’t you listen? I said don’t move. Doctor said complete rest, four weeks. Do you hear me?”
Jerry sighed and looked out the window. The house was the same as always. Boring, boring, boring. Nothing to do here but lie in his bedroom in that tiny single bed they’d gotten for him when he was seven. And stare out the window. And avoid Mrs. Molinsky, who’d try to get him to call her daughter Joan out on a date. Jerry hated Joan. She had a nose that could open a coke bottle and smelled of mothballs whenever she wore a dress, one of those off-white chiffon things with a hoop skirt.
His mother opened the car door and Jerry turned around to get out. He felt a sharp jab of pain from his ass up to his neck, but not as bad as he thought it’d be.
“I can get out on my own steam, Mother,” he said, putting out his arm to her. “Just give me a pull, will you?”
“You stay there. I’m going to get your grandfather’s walker out of the closet.”
Not that closet – Magee’s closet was less disorganized.
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