Nickle and Dimed
29 May 2007 | Gerry | Stories
She wants to change his mind.
“Jesus, Dad, are you even listening to me?”
“I am, I am. What were you saying?”
“I was saying that you shouldn’t live at the shore. You should stay in your house and sell the shore house.”
“I like the shore. If I live there then that will be my house and my house will be the shore house. So to speak.”
“Why the shore, though? It’s too far from everything. I can’t pick you up and take you places if you live at the shore.”
“What places do you need to take me? Where do I need to go?”
“We’re at the doctor’s now, Dad, the doctor I drove you to. If you live at the shore then I can’t take you to the doctor’s.”
“No doctor’s at the shore? There’s plenty.”
“But they’re all on vacation, Dad.”
“Even better. They’ll be rested. Who wants a busy doctor? This guy here is plenty busy, judging from the people in this room. He’s maybe too busy. Needs a vacation. I’ll see him then.”
“Why do you want to move to the shore. Huh, Dad? Why?”
“I like it there. Thing is the town now is nickle and diming me to death. Now I have to pay for garbage pick up. Can you believe that? Thirty years the town pays for garbage, now I have to.”
“But nickles and dimes don’t add up to dollars, Dad. The shore is all dollars, everywhere. It’s all dollars. You should be worried about that, Dad. Not the dimes.”
“Eh.”
“Don’t eh me, Dad. You eh’d Mom for all those years she couldn’t take it anymore. I’m all you’ve got, and if you move to the shore I won’t be there. I’ll be here, with the kids. The kid’ll miss you, Dad.”
“Eh. I like the shore. I like the sky.”
“We got sky here, Dad. It’s the same sky. Everywhere you go around the world, it’s all the same sky. Everybody’s looking at the same sky.”
He juts out his lower lip.
“You’ve been to war?”