My mother left us when I was twelve. She found a man who was not as parsimonious as my father and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada which is two thousand five hundred miles away. She doesn't visit. She doesn’t call. She sends me a card on my birthday with fifty dollars in it, which my father nags me about until I finally go to the bank and deposit it. And so, for all six years she’s been gone, I have $337 to show for having a mother.
Dad says that thirty-seven bucks is good interest. He doesn't see the irony in that. He doesn't see the word interest as anything not connected to money because he’s an accountant and to him, everything is a number.
I think $37 and no other and no visits or phone calls is shitty interest.
