It’s quiet in our house this morning. My mom is still in bed. Tommy is nowhere to be found. My dad is home and making breakfast but he’s not talking, and I can’t tell what kind of mood he’s in after last night. He’s got a much better poker face than me, my mom, or Svenska. I’m sitting at the table eating my eggs and fried baloney and staring at a framed picture of JFK and the speech he made when he became president that hangs in our kitchen.
All Irish families have pictures of John Fitzgerald Kennedy up in their houses. Grandma from the City gave us this one because she really loved JFK and on top of that, her maiden name was Fitzgerald because her dad was Eddie Fitz, the drummer and stonecutter who broke Svenska’s heart when the dust choked the life out of him.
A few years ago, I tried to look up the Fitzgeralds in the phone book thinking I could call them and see if we were related to the Kennedys in some way, but there were so many Fitzgeralds listed that I figured there’s no way we could all be related. But when I asked my grandmother, she said, “Of course we are, somewhere back in Ireland, long before the famine, long before the English persecuted us, the Fitzgeralds were one family.”
Anyhow, I decide to ask my dad about the JFK picture and the speech as a way to break the silence. Big mistake.
“Do you know what an inaugural speech is?” he asks me.
What the hell was I thinking? I couldn’t have asked him about the Yankee game instead?
“No,” I say.
“Can you pronounce inaugural?” he asks me.
I try and I can’t and now I know what the next hour of my morning is going to be.
“Let’s go check the unabridged,” he says.
That means we’re headed over to a giant unabridged dictionary that sits on the radiator cover in our dining room to look up inaugural. He does this every time me or Tommy mispronounce something or we don’t know the meaning of a word. Inaugural is a double whammy—I don’t know what it means and I can’t pronounce it. If he tries to do it to Tommy now, Tommy just ignores him and walks out of the room.
“Being a moron isn’t something to be proud of,” my dad will yell after him as Tommy heads up the stairs. “Advertising your stupidity to the world is not an asset. Broadcasting your ignorance isn’t a redeeming personality trait. Do you understand any of that? No, of course you don’t because you don’t care enough to learn!” he adds.
My guess is Tommy does understand but doesn’t care.
“Antidisestablishmentarianism” is the longest word in the dictionary, by the way. I know that because one night during dinner I had the bright idea of asking my dad what was the longest word in the dictionary. After looking it up in the unabridged, it took me almost three months to finally be able to pronounce it. When I challenged Louie to see if he could pronounce it, he said I was an idiot because everybody knows “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is the longest word in the dictionary. Again, I asked my dad about this and he tells me to look it up and when I do, it’s not in the unabridged and my dad says, “Of course it’s not because it’s not a real word.”
Another word that got me into a lot of trouble was “aluminum.” A few years ago, I asked for an aluminum bat for Little League, but I couldn’t pronounce that one either. As you can tell, I’m not so good at pronouncing certain big words and it drives my father crazy because he says I just rush right over the word instead of taking my time and sounding it out.
“Pronounce the words as you speak the words.” He repeats to me over and over as I try to say “aluminum” but it comes out as “aliminum” or “alnominum” or “anilunim.”
“How can I buy you something if you can’t even pronounce it?” he asks me.
So, I practice over and over, breaking it down. Al-um-in-um. When baseball season is almost over and we’ve got one lousy game left I finally pronounce it properly and I get my new aluminum bat, only to strike out every time I used it.
Anyway, we look up inaugural which means “marking the beginning of an institution, activity, or period of office” and it only takes me a few tries to learn how to pronounce it.
My dad is pleased. He gives me another nod, another smile, another piece of fried baloney and then asks, “So what did you want to know about JFK?”
At this point, I want to say “I could care less about JFK. I just want to go out and play with my friends.” But I don’t. So instead, I decide to take this moment to finally ask him about my mom.
“How come mom didn’t come with us to Rockaway last weekend? And how come you didn’t go with us to Friendly’s yesterday? And how come you slept on the couch last night? Is it because you guys are getting divorced?”
“Divorced? Where the hell did you get a nutty idea like that?”
I shrug. Then he says, “When two people are married, sometimes they fight because they don’t see eye to eye on everything. That’s normal. But that doesn’t mean you get divorced. Let’s say you got a bum knee. What are you gonna do? Cut your leg off? Be a peg leg? You think you’d walk better with a half-a-leg than with a bum knee? No, of course not. So, you walk with a limp, and you live with it.”
I nod. “And I don’t even want to hear that word come out of your mouth again. Now do me a favor and go out and play with your friends, will you? I think you need some fresh air. Jesus Christ!” He barks at me.
I know Catholics don’t usually get divorced, but I guess they don’t even like to talk about it.
But that night, my mom was packing a suitcase. I watched her from the bedroom door, but she didn’t see me. I knew we weren’t going on a trip so I knew her suitcase could only mean one thing—she was leaving. I guess she’d rather have a peg leg than a bum knee. I was about to knock on the door and beg her to stay when the phone rang. My mom answered it.
“Hello,” she said.