“No, Bobbi Jo. That’s just it. It is thinkable. It’s highly thinkable and that’s why I’m thinking it.”
Irving and Sadie both said, “Amen, Brother!”
Conrad paused. “What are you talking about? What lovey-dovey mush?”
Bobbi Jo turned around and pointed her sauce-covered wooden spoon at the white board.
Conrad stood stock-still. “I never wrote that.”
“Are you saying you don’t feel that way?” Bobbi Jo demanded, her voice thickening.
“No. I’m just saying I didn’t write that. If I didn’t, then it must have been you. That is so sweet, my little cornpone.” He reached out for her.
“Are you insane? Why would I ask you about it if I’d written it?”
“I don’t know, maybe you didn’t want to take the credit for making a sweet gesture since we’ve been arguing. Maybe you just want to drive me nuts. You’re good at that. ” They stood staring at each other, motionless. Finally, Bobbi Jo broke the spell.
“Dinner,” Bobbi Jo called out to the children. “I am just going to ignore all that gobbledygook you just puked up so we can all have a nice peaceful dinner.”
“It was a good idea, Sadelah,” Irving said.
“Thanks, Irv, but it turned out to be a dud.”
When Conrad and the children sat down to dinner, Bobbi Jo served spaghetti with meat sauce to the children and ladled one big meatball for each of them. She cut up Tyler Sue’s on her plate. Then she placed a sauce-free plate of spaghetti noodles in front of Conrad and set down the canister of Parmesan and Romano cheese in front of him.
“Thank you, honey. This looks great,” Conrad said, surprised. And he picked up his fork to eat. Before he could swirl any spaghetti onto his fork, Bobbi Jo ladled a big portion of sauce all over his noodles.
“That’s what you are doing to our children’s souls,” she said.
“Woohoo!” Irving said. “That girlie has chutzpah! I’ll give her that.”
Irving and Sadie laughed and slapped each other ineffectually since their hands kept passing through body parts.
“I know we’re supposed to be helping them but sometimes they’re just so entertaining,” Sadie said.
“Fine,” said Conrad, and got up and dumped the entire thing down the garbage disposal. The children thought it was very funny and laughed too. “This is what I plan to do every time you serve me any meat products from now on. I told you Bobbi Jo, if you want war, then you’ve got it. And I am going to win this one.”
“War!” Tyler Sue screeched gaily.
“War! War! War!” the other two children banged their forks on the table.
“That’s enough,” Bobbi Jo told them. “Simmer down.”
Conrad served himself some plain noodles and sat down again.
“Bobbi Jo,” Conrad said, after the children had been excused from the table, “I know we’re supposed to fly out to L.A. tomorrow but I do not want to go on Dr. Phil. What is he going to tell us? We simply do not agree on this issue and I don’t see how he can change anything.”
“He’s billing our segment as ‘My Husband is an Atheist and a Vegetarian.’ And you promised you’d go.” Bobbi Jo sounded so excited, like someone about to dig into a prime Texas steak cooked rare. “I do not believe in divorce and I do not want my husband to go to hell.”
“Oy, what these Christians don’t know about God and the afterlife is a lot,” Sadie said.
“There she goes with the hell again. There is no hell. If there were, we’d all be there, everyone ever born, and there’d be no room to breathe,” Irving said.
Sadie sighed. “I know that. You know that. And Conrad seems to know that. Although I don’t know who’s worse. Conrad thinks we’re all some gigantic cosmic error. And those snake oil ministers of Bobbi Jo’s have turned her brain to wet matzoh meal. They’re both like those hospital machines that get turned off. Bleep, bleep, bleep. If they didn’t have propaganda filling their heads with thoughts, they couldn’t think on their own.”
Mazel Tov on being a published author.
Al