Biting the bullet is very difficult; some of my teeth are already shattered. When I called the other day, my father said, Don't get pregnant. [pause] And your mother is mad at you. Don't call when she's home.Thanks to my tattle-tale sibling, my mother knows that I am living with J.

Father is the practical one of our family, the sort of person who would go to church with a little black Buddha dangling on a necklace under his best shirt. He knows very well that after the storms of history has raged, there will be domestic refuse to pick up, damaged limbs to bandage, e-mails offering advice to send.

Everyone else has their obsessions, particular passions which mirror particular styles of self-absorption. Deth has drawn cats and little boys in animal suits for the last few years. Mummy loves God. Father? He has his habits, his haunts. But he keeps them private. The others will lecture, rage, meddle, threaten suicide, deliver monologues on their cherished victimhood. Melodrama ensues.

Nothing new: the self-absorbed have their morals to guide them in the darkness of their emotions and the practical know that morals are unremarkable except for how they are delivered or resisted.




<<