5. A Telephone Call from Outside Waffle, New York

5. A Telephone Call from Outside Waffle, New York 

You could almost see the muted television playing Judge Trudy or some late-morning talkshow or any of the several dozen shallowly-written soap operas of the day going like an animated road sign in Gertrude Winchester's living room. Her glazed eye/pupils and her draping jaw/lips and her dementia-swallowed heart. Grandma Winchester fiercely independent but ultimately sedentary and lethargic. She didn't receive many calls or visitors. Having been married without interruption since her late-twenties and then in her 80s when the American Techno-Industrial Empire had seemingly reached its violent and hubris-infected peak, it was unlikely she was going to alter anything about herself in her twilight years.

The phone rang. It was Dorothea McEntyre. He daughter and only child. Dorothea was always contending with one frivolous or another. "Mom?" 

"She's the one who pays the rent on this dump." Actually, the U.S Government paid the rent, but the senior Winchester had in fact contributed to the workforce as well as being married to a war veteran and in that polycratic system and its mutually-beneficial arrangements of decency and care, it can be said that she paid the rent; the quality of its condition can be discussed in some other forum.  

"Listen, Mom, I think I need to talk to you about something." Easy to see Dorothea McEntyre scanning Andy Witzberger's place: its clean, homey façade possessed with some intangible dread. 

"Oh," said Grandma Winchester. "The perfectly modern Dorothea McEntyre has run into a wall. Whatever could be the problem this time." 

"Listen, Mom. I know, I know I haven't always been the greatest to you. I know I've done things you don't like -- and you don't have to approve of them." 

"You're damn right, I don't." 

"But I could really use your help right now. With the Prophet or whoever as my witness, I really need us to talk to each other."

"Well, I don't have a lot to say, Dorothea. I just don't. You know, I'm a very old woman--" 

"Mom, please, I'm begging you. I'm down on my knees begging you. There are things going on in my life right now that are racing down a hill like a volcano to end the crazy world, and I really need to talk to you and get all this nonsense off my chest." She said, "Okay?" 

And the smallest measurable artery in the history of earthly time opened in Gertrude Winchester's heart. "So who gave you the wedgie." 

She involuntarily made a very small laugh. "No one." 

"It got pretty far up there for no one." 

"I thought you'd say so." 

"You know your mother's not always the dingbat you make her out to be." 

"I... You've got a lot of different qualities, Mom." 

"Well, I married your father, didn't I? I gave birth to an ungrateful daughter who's run into one silly problem after another for her whole life, haven't I?" 

"Yes," said Dorothea McEntyre, newly crestfallen and slightly abhorrent to her mother's tone. "You've gone through life's trials with flying colors." 

For whatever reason, an image that came to Gertrude Winchester on multiple, largely unrelated occasions came to her addled mind then. The image was this: her grandson, Spook McEntyre, typically without variation age 13, with a hatchet in each hand and dressed in hiking shorts, boots, a formal vest and stomping and dancing and slaughtering every enemy in sight in some foreign, outback landscape she'd personally never visited. "It hasn't always come easy." 

"Listen, Mom, the guy I'm living with now...he's... Oh, what can I say? He's a loser, Mom. I mean, you know, he works like Dad and he's definitely trying to take care of me. But...but I really need to do better than this."

"Mm-hmm." 

"I thought if I... They put me out of the house in Waffle -- you know, the letter-writers?"

"Mm-hmm." 

"And it was either here or a motel and you know I can't put up with a motel since..." (The question of Spook McEntyre running away to become a traveling salesman who depended on motel rooms went undoubted and undiscussed.) "So, I'm here. In this-- In this-- This God Bazzah-denied rat dump of a squathouse." 

"Mm-hmm." 

"Oh, what's the use...." 

"You feel sorry enough for yourself yet?"

"I guess I do." 

"Then I've done my job." 

"Alright. If there's nothing else, I'd like to watch my shows, now." 

"I get it." 

"Take care of yourself, Dorothea." 

"I love you, Mom." 

"Goodbye." And she hung up. 

And Dorothea McEntyre hung up Andy Witzberger's phone. 

And if you listened carefully even the crickets had something to say. 

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