UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
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ROBERT LAUGHLIN Bribery They bribe him. He’s the only child of mine and I’m the only child of theirs. My mom: she wishes for no daily company but that of her philodendrons. The thing, among so many, that cut her loose was finding that the other woman was a man. My dad: he’s alone too, now. The man for whom he got divorced had a bad cardiac history. My dad has been a same-sex widower these last four years. They broke up when I left the house, and I’m sure their love for me was all that kept them together that long. It’s a rare week I don’t get an invite from one or the other to visit and bring my son along. My husband says it’s not nice to freeze the old folks out of our lives. I never argue, I won’t allow it in my marriage... so we go. They’re competing with each other for their grandson’s love. My mom bakes him a cake, three layers high; the frosting is smothered with every kind of candy he likes. My dad keeps us overnight and lets him stay up late watching old horror films on the DVD. It’s an arms race and I can’t stop it. Fishing trips; rented ponies; rolls of arcade tokens; trips to ice cream parlors; ever bigger, ever better presents for Christmas and his birthday. Hate is verbal, love is material: that’s the way my parents have figured it. They used to bribe me too, but in a completely different spirit. Whenever I had to do something awful that wasn’t punishment, like getting my teeth fixed, or going to the vet with an old dog or cat and coming home alone, afterward I’d be treated in some way. They would take me out to dinner or let me propose our next vacation spot. And it made me happy— not because of the payoff. I got to see them, just once, unite behind something other than the shared goal of finding each other’s faults. No daughter knows for sure what her parents were like before she was alive. But there must have been a time, however briefly it outlasted the ceremony, when they were really man and wife. I was the product of that state, a conscious one, I think, and they bribed me, sparingly, in the spirit of true love. They bribe my son, still a link to them, trying a route to his heart through his stomach, eyes, ears, hands, or any organ they can take in gilded, syrup-dripping talons. This bribery is not love. |
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