Rise and shine! 6:23AM. There were two quick knocks on his bedroom door followed by the lights being turned on. The warden stood opening the gates with a cup of coffee in her hand.
"Let's go, George! Big day! Time to get up! Let's go, George!" And she left the door open to indicate The World Has Come! The Time Is At Hand! and daylight flooded the room.
George busied himself dressing: brown pants, and old t-shirt, and a sweater. The smell of bacon and coffee and the sound of his parents talking over the morning news brought George out into the kitchen. There was toast and eggs and milk and fruit. His father was eating a bit of melon when George sat down.
I'm a fool, thought George, looking at his father. This man knows everything—much more than he will ever cop to knowing. It's through. I'm had. He watched me humiliate myself in front of him and now he sits there eating melon as if nothing passed.
George's father smiled and spit out a melon rind, "That's my boy!" Mr. Taylor gulped down some hot coffee, "That's my college graduate!" He smiled again and pushed a forkful of eggs covered in hot sauce into his mouth for a good chew.
George piled the food on his plate—this might very well be my last meal, he though. His mother poured him a cup of coffee.
"Now, it's a long time from all of that!" she said. "Let him get a good breakfast before he goes."
Mr. Taylor promptly ignored his wife.
"What you do," he said, "is get yourself situated. Find out Who's Who and What's What! Check out the internships and other programs that they might offer. I can tell you one thing, I wasted too much time with comparative literature and philosophy. Some of these companies are willing to pay off your student loans!—Mr. Taylor made a quick snap of his fingers to demonstrate, "Like that!" He swallowed some bacon and grinned over his plate.
George began to fidget. He cut open an egg and pushed the runny yellow goop around his plate before putting it in his mouth. He blew on his coffee several times.
"Oh, stop it!" said Mrs. Taylor coming to his rescue. "Meet a nice girl and get married."
"A career!" his father shouted and slammed his hand down flat on the table—fin!
George felt a terrible itch beginning at his groin. It felt like a thousand tiny bugs were assembling around the base of his penis. He yearned to scratch, but some thing stopped him. Sunlight brightened the kitchen; however, it was the same bright light that prevented him from scratching himself.
"It was a career I was after when I found you!" stated George's mother. She held a coffee thermos at an angle while she poured hot coffee into it. It was for his father's morning drive to the office—blowing steam over the dashboard of his car.
"Some career that turned out to be!"
"But I got you! Didn't I?" She handed Mr. Taylor the thermos full of coffee and kissed him on the top of his head. Mr. Taylor smiled like a schoolboy, sopped up the last of his meal and pushed his plate away from the edge of the table—belching softly into his yolky-napkin.
An excellent portrait of domestic life! George wished it could all stop right then and there: dirty yellow dishes, smell of burnt coffee, morning's light, kiss on the top of the head, schoolboy smile—George distinctly heard the birds chirping.
Just a couple of kids who met in college, fell in love, and started a family of their own.
George watched Mr. Taylor butter up another piece of toast—he could tell that his father hadn't finished speaking his mind. "Specialists!" was the word his father was searching for. "That's what the economy needs and that's what a man has got to become! A man has got to learn a specific skill, some thing he can hold over society. Some thing he can barter with in the job market! He has got to become a technician! Whether that man be a doctor or a lawyer or a scientist, or even an accountant, like your father, he must cultivate a technique and get certification! Long gone are the days of the self-made man, or, if he does exist, to whatever extent he does exist, he is not so much self-made as extremely lucky! We have progressed too far! Society has made too many leaps and bounds! Now a man must make a choice—to live by struggle and insecurity his whole life or steel himself against the multitudes by acquiring a specific skill. To become groomed to the needs of the desperate! This, George, is the real reason we are sending you to college. Not to meet a girl, not to read a poem, but to prepare you for the rest of your life. Until retirement, you know?
"Oh, stop it. You're scaring him," Mrs. Taylor said. "He's still a boy."
True enough, George had become nervous and pale during his father's diatribe—which was out of the ordinary. In fact, George had always appreciated his father's flair for the dramatic and thought he would have made a fine preacher in any House of God, much more in his own. It wasn't so much what Mr. Taylor was saying that had caused George's blood to run cold and his feet to become damp in their socks, as it was what he wasn't saying. George was convinced that his father had seen everything—perhaps he had even followed George down the dark hallway to the bathroom where he listened quietly from the other side of the door.
"He's fine," said Mr. Taylor. "He understands. He'll thank me for it later. You got me, didn't you, George?"
"Yes," George muttered back. "Doctors, lawyers. Men of means and substance. Uh-huh, I got you." You old goat!
"Fine!" Mr. Taylor took out his checkbook and wrote out a sum for two hundred dollars, signed his name, made a little record in the back of the book, tore out the check and handed it to George. "For books," he ended.
George folded the check into his wallet. Cash! If only the old man had given me some cash!
Mr. Taylor stood up and opened his arms to embrace his son. "Give us a hug! Your father's late. The last thing I need is another demerit!"
George stood and hugged his father.
"Good luck! Take care! Call us! And remember that your mother and I did our best to raise you! The worst thing a child can do is embarrass his parents! Remember your mother. And call us." Mr. Taylor kissed George on the cheek.
The jig is up! flashed through George's brain. He's been waiting to finish his performance as The Loving Father, The Doter of Children and Sacrificial Family Man! Now, and by my own doing, he is bound to reveal—and in front of my own mother!—what a spoiled and disturbed creature I am! No more university! It's straight to the couch for young George Taylor! Interminable hours, at a great cost, will have to be spent discussing how I will never make love to my mother and how I must not kill my father—what rot, you know? Endless sessions with one of his prized specialists in some drab office where thoughts of The Anus, of Impotence, and Treachery dominate like an impenetrable haze of childhood fears to pleasure oneself. The circle will remain unbroken.
However, George was wrong again. Mr. Taylor put on his sport coat and, with his thermos of hot coffee in one hand and his briefcase in the other, called out one last time, "Be sure to say 'goodbye' to your sister!" And he left through the front door. A couple of minutes went by and George heard his father's car start up and drive away.
That, thought an unbelieving George Taylor, is the very last time I will ever see my father off to work—and a great weight was lifted from his shoulders.
Only George and Mrs. Taylor and George's sleeping sister were left in the house. Mrs. Taylor quickly cleared the table by putting the dishes in the sink and then busied herself getting ready for her own day at the office. Somehow Mr. Taylor's departure had the effect of a church bell ringing and a factory whistle blowing all at the same time.
George decided to make his break.
"Goodbye, mother!" he called through the house. George stood waiting with his duffle bag to give his mother a kiss.
Immediately his mother appeared.
"But you haven't said 'goodbye' to your sister!" The look of panic that came over his mother struck George as particularly absurd. Mrs. Taylor held up both hands to keep George from leaving. "I'll wake her! She'll be so disappointed if you go without saying 'goodbye.'"
"No, let her sleep," said George. "Give us a hug."
Mrs. Taylor fell on her son and wept.
"Oh, Mother!"
"I'm sorry, George! I'm sorry! But it hurts so much, George. I love you so much!" Mrs. Taylor took a half-step back and composed herself, brushing down the edges of George's old t-shirt.
"Don't worry, mother. I'm not disappearing. I'll still be living in The City. The University is right here in The City. I'm not going far."
"And your things?"
"What things?"
"The boxes with all of your clothes and your books?"
"Oh. Mail them anytime. Now or later, it doesn't much matter."
And with that, George kissed his mother on the cheek and left in the same direction as his father—through the front door, out in The World.
