It was as though she had lived thru all the catastrophes that beset on her characters.
A snippet from Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married:
Looking after the two of us seemed an awful lot harder than looking after
just me. a lot more than twice as hard.
And a lot more than twice as expensive.
Before long, money became a real worry. in the past, i THOUGHT it was a
problem, i never felt as though i had enough to buy essentials like new shoes
and clothes. but now i was horrified to find i was afraid that i wouldn't have
enought to cover essentials like FEEDING the two of us.
I couldn't figure out where it was all going. For the first time in my
life, i was afraid of losing my job. I mean, REALLY afraid.
Everything had changed, now that i had a dependent. I suddenly understood
why they say in marriage ceremonies, "till debt do us part."
Except, of course, that i wasn't married to Dad.
It was easy to be generous with money when i had plenty of it. I had never
imagined that i would begrudge my father anything. That i wouldn't have given
him the cut-off lycra shirt off my back.
But it wasn't true. as money got tighter, i resented having to give him
any. i resented him saying to me every morning before i dragged myself off to
work, "Lucy, love, could you leave some money on the table? A tenner if you can
manage it."
I resented the worry. i resented having to ask for an overdraft. i resented
having no money for myself.
An di hated what it did to me - the pettiness, the watching of every bite
that went into his mouth, the wathing of every bite that DIDN"T go into his
mouth. If i go to the trouble of buying food for him and cooking it for him, the
lease he could do is eat it, i thought angrily.
Dad got dole money every two weeks, but i wasn't sure what he did with it.
I rant the househol on my salary alone.
"Couldn't he even buy a pint of milk?" I sometimes thought, in impotent
rage.
i felt increasingly isolated. Apart from the people at work, the only
person i ever saw was Dad.
I never went out with any of the people i used to see. I didn't have time,
because it was important to get home immediately after work.
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