SIMON remembered Sarah screaming wheried to turn off the televisiohe thing had captured her and anyone who laid a hand on it was subject to a full-scale tantrum with kettle drums and on. She was, for some reason, inordinately fond of Daffy Duck, although the Road Runner was also a fa?vorite. She was queenly in expressing herself. At two, she produced a sentehat Simon still marveled at. Whes were not marg to her satisfa she would say, gravely, "You are making me angry." After this sentence joihe households sentence-hoard Simon ceased to worry about language acquisition. In the early ms she would rush into the bedroom and climb into bed with Simon and his wife, settling iween them with soft little groans of satisfa. When she grew up, she said, she wao be a balle?rina. Her mother made her a tutu out of some pink gauzy material and she pranced about the house in this, white Danskins, and a cardboard tiara on which gold stars had been pasted, exhibiting all the grace of a tall gesturing cactus. When she was fourteen she icked up for shoplifting, frightened as thhly as possible, and released. The item iion was a tube of lip gloss called Penumbra.
He remembered Carol jumping on him for using the mitt to hold the end of the veal bone while he tried to cut meat from it. "Thats not what the mitt is for!" He had told her to shut up, it was his mitt, hed use it for any damhing he cared to including ing the grease trap if he cared to. Mitt nights. After dinner she told him not to eat onions from the pot. The baby standing o table and singing
Im pretty
Im pretty
And I dont care
Memories of mitt.
"This guy slapped Veronica."
"Why?"
"She doesnt know. She went out for pizza and stopped at the Korean market. She had a big cauli?flower in her hands, she was kind of feeling it to see if it was --"
"And he slapped her?"
"A black guy. Walked up to her and slapped her in the face. Knocked her sunglasses off."
"Whatd she do?"
"He was a Vietnam vet."
"How do you know?"
"He said so. He said, Im a Vietnam vet and Im crazy. Then he slapped her. Then he asked her for money."
"Did she give him any?"
"Of course not, she threw the cauliflower at him."
"Did it hit him?"
"No it hit an old lady. Right in the mush. She didnt throw it so well?"
"What happehen?"
"The Korean guy behind the ter had a fit. Fell down and foamed at the mouth."
"Is he okay?"
"The paramedics took him away."
"What happeo the black guy?"
"He split."
"Is Veronica okay?"
"Sure. Shes used to it. Being bashed around. This is a great town you have here."
Dore is angry. Shes holding the box that the frozen pizza came in.
"Youre actually going to feed us this pizza?"
"Whats the matter with it?"
"This frozen pizza?"
"So its frozen."
"Do you know what its got in it? Enriched flour."
"Whats the matter with enriched flour?"
"The enriched flour has in it flour, nia, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, and riboflavin."
"All great stuff. I remember riboflavin from my childhood. They put it iies or something."
"Were just getting started. Were just going into our windup here. We get water, hydrogenated soybean oil, yeast, salt, and something called dough ditiohe dough ditiot sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium sulfate and sodium sulfite."
"Soybeans are good. Ied by Martin Luther King."
"M