GUILTY!

Peg got a condolence card from some relative in the Midwest with the usual sentiments including that "Odd is happy now and has gone to a better place". 

Really? How does Sharon know this? Better, how? In what way? What exactly is it that makes it better than Becket, Massachusetts, where Odd was in fact deleriously happy (until he became just delerious period, at the end), does it have pine trees and rhododendrons? Central heating? 'Revelation' brand pipe tobacco? Marinated herring? It doesn't have his Peggy (yet) that's for sure, so it can't be THAT much better or in fact any place he'd want to be for one second, Sharon, just so you know, unless my mother were there too, and she doesn't appear to be remotely ready. 

I, on the other hand am at the door, car keys in hand, just give me directions, because I would rather be any place than here, right now, I swear, because the past 24 hours have not been particularly easy, because a phone conversation I had with my friend Annie last night, in which along with the usual Becket Moans I told her how, tee hee, when Peg's back is turned I throw out letters she'll never answer, including a huge wodge of ones she gets from some fan three times a week (we're having to devote an entire bookcase now to his stuff) and after the call Peg materialized next to me in the office, steaming, saying she'd heard every single word over her the extension next to her bed which apparently was marginally off the hook, marginally enough to land me in deepest water and it's safe to day I feel pretty badly about this and am still racking my brains trying to recall what else I may have said that a mother should never hear. Jesus. What a shitheel. Me, not her. She who is getting so deaf but won't admit it, you have to repeat everything 12 times, and now here's the one conversation you'd prefer her not to hear first time round, not to mention at all, and it's registered clear as a bell.

A two maybe three hour row followed. Which I will detail another time--my "sister" Jennifer just arrived for the night--but culminating in Peg picking up David Sedaris' "Santaland Diaries" (my recommendation) and me stomping off upstairs to bed, but not before texting Annie to say "She's loopy and tonight  I fucking HATE her ". 

Nice. What a nice daughter.