Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall by Ken Sparling Page B

Tutti says. “I want Miracle Whip.”
    I get the Miracle Whip out of the fridge. I get a fork and stick it in the middle of the Miracle Whip.
    ~
     
    I decided to go over and see this woman. I wanted to see how she lived. I wanted to see what she ate for breakfast.
    I decided to go over right away. I walked.
    On the way over I saw signs. I looked in the trees and in the bushes, in the clouds, in my shoelaces. I saw a sign in a section of sidewalk on Walnut Grove Boulevard.
    ~
     
    In the morning, he comes down the stairs and he wants me to play with him. He says, “Can we play, Daddy?”
    I tell him I have to go to work.
    He tries to think of ways to make me stay and play with him. He says, “Just a tiny bit.”
    I tell him I have to have my breakfast and then I have to go to work.
    But I shouldn’t have my breakfast, should I? Why should I have my breakfast? On the day I die, when I look back on this, and I remember choosing breakfast over playing with Sammy, how is this going to make me feel?
    ~
     
    God was sitting in a movie theater. It was the early show. The guy sitting next to God was eating popcorn.
    ~
     
    My theory was it was the O-ring which had gone, so I took apart the cartridge. The O-ring looked fine. But you can never tell with an O-ring. Sometimes they will look fine, but then there is a tiny fissure in them which will render them useless. O-rings cost ninety-nine cents for a package of two.
    That night I dreamed I was ninety-three years old and the woman at the desk next to mine at work was calling the paramedics.

P ETRA, WHO works with me supervising the part-timers, likes to tell me stories about how she and her husband bought this old house in the country and fixed it up. I like to sit and listen to these stories, because Petra really knows how to tell them. Petra calls them decorating stories, because they are all about how she and her husband are decorating their house.
    One day Petra has this idea where the part-timers will sign out their elevator keys in pencil. You have to have an elevator key to get on the elevator here. If the part-timers sign out their elevator keys in pencil, we can erase the slips of paper they sign them out on and then use them again. Petra wants to help the environment.
    At the part-timers’ meeting we tell all the part-timers we want them using pencil to sign the little slips of paper they sign to get their keys out, and when they turn their keys back in, they should give the slips of paper back to us and we will erase them. We tell them we are doing this for the environment.
    I think this is an idea you could only get from Petra. This is what I like about this idea. I have no desire to erase the little slips of paper.
    But then one of the managers says she doesn’t like the idea. She says she wants the kids to sign their keys out in pen because she thinks pen will foster a sense of responsibility in the kids. At the next part-timers’ meeting, we tell the kids to go back to signing the little slips of paper in pen.
    ~
     
    Tutti gives me a piece of paper which lists all the food groups on it. We are sitting up in bed. Tutti writes down all the food groups and then draws a bunch of little squares beside each of the food groups. She draws the squares fast, and then hands the piece of paper to me.
    “Each time you eat something from one of the food groups,” she says, “you check off one of the squares.” She reaches over and puts her finger on some of the squares. “When you run out of squares,” she says, “you can’t eat anything from that food group anymore.”
    I look at the piece of paper. I put it on the bedside table, on top of the clock radio.
    ~
     
    The day my mom came to live with us was the same day they came to cut the grass. The guy with the gray hair rode around on the little tractor. The younger guy went around with the weed-eater. It was cool and windy, like autumn, only it was only the first day of August. They drove the tractor up the