When he turned to start back to the bedroom he forgot (for all possible reasons) that he had just the one leg and, instead of hopping, did what everyone else did in our house-began to walk and of course toppled over. He was standing braced against the kitchen sink, where, without the aid of his crutches, he’d gone for a glass of water. So it happened that on that first Monday morning alone, when the amputation was still a limitless loss that he assumed would impede and torment him forever, he took the fall that no one in the family knew about other than me. “Come on,” Alvin says, “own up to it, kiddo-pissing’s not something that’s as easy as it looks.” Pissing is hard enough to do as it is.” I’m laughing uncontrollably now not only because the story is especially funny as he half whispers it in the darkened room, but because never before has a man revealed himself to me this way, using the prohibited words so freely and openly cracking toilet jokes.
Know what I say? ‘I’ll sit when you do, Herman.’ Fucking crutches. Your father tells me to sit down to piss. You lean one way or another, you splatter all over the place. You go to the bathroom, you’ve got these crutches, you try to get your cock, and you can’t get your cock because your crutches are in the way. “You go to the bathroom,” Alvin said, “and they’re always falling. At night, when we were in our beds and the lights were out, Alvin would get me laughing by explaining why crutching wasn’t so simple as my mother thought. But Alvin so despised being on crutches that he refused even by himself to submit to the stability they provided. Before leaving him alone on the morning of his first Monday back, my mother had made Alvin promise to use his crutches to get around on until one of us was home to fetch for him.
Here’s how Alvin came to have it in for Sandy.
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