A Call From Paul

12/27/09

Last week my brother Paul called to check, to see how I am. I didn’t lie to him. He knows me too well, so I said I was miserable and wept into the phone. He’s not a man of words, so he listened and didn’t know what to say. He’s an emotional coward, my brother, but he is a good man. When I’m crying, sometimes I can make myself stop and others I can’t. I think he understood about the crying, and he invited me to go to his house for Christmas. I didn’t want to go. His wife is crazy, and that house isn’t big enough for both of us to be crazy in it. I was too crazy to be on the road, I said to him. I don’t think he understood that part, but he didn’t call me on it.