Museum of Old Beliefs by I. Peter Lavan (classic books for 7th graders .TXT) 📕

Museum of old beliefs

1

As the artificial-wood house door slubbed shut behind him, he closed his eyes in anticipation. Peter would have shaken his head, but his neck hurt, and not being into masochism there was no point, so he didn’t. He knew what was coming though …definitely not for the first time, oh no no no!

“That you, Dad?” A pleasantly ample Amy tucked her chin around the kitchen door, rubber-gloved hands clutching scouring cloths either side of her head in a rather poor imitation of Chad.
Instantly, she morphed into whinging fat Amy. “Oh, Dad, what happened?”

“Don’t fuss, it’s only beans.”

“Dad, what happened? You've been spilling food again?”
“Don’t talk to me like a child, Amy, it’s the stupid woman at the café near the bus station.”

“Oh Dad, what happened?” Amy’s newly acquired O.C.D. had spread to her language. She crossed the hallway just in time to miss a bean dropping onto the hall carpet. She started circularly sponging his coat as best as she could with scouring pads.

“Stop it.” He shooed her away, with a similar movement he saved for next-door’s dog, only difference, Amy wasn’t trying to hump his leg. “Stupid old…” he bit back the expletive; the hallway seemed to be succeeding in invoking a super-ego effect today. “Stopped for a cup of tea before I caught the bus back, asked her if she’d had her hair done, and wham, half a catering can of baked beans over the head, thinking about it, could have been more than half.”

A concerned look crossed Amy’s face. “The police weren’t involved again?” She really had perfected her agains, and it was with some skill, she faded the again into the question.

“They should be, she attacked me.”

“You sure? After last time.”

His stare would have done Methuselah proud.

“Sorry Dad, it’s just your memory, it’s… well it’s…well it’s you know… oh just forget it.”

He nearly said, ‘what is it I’ve to forget again,’ but he’d found irony was totally wasted when Amy was in a clucking condition.

Amy nearly had a panic attack as he took off his hat dripping two more rogue baked beans onto the hall carpet. “Stop it, Dad, you’re going to have to get undressed outside. No, no wait, not after your last exposure to the neighbours. Just wait there, I’ll get some newspaper.”

As Amy turned it was with an accident rationale he pressed the three baked beans carefully into the carpet with the toe of his right shoe.

Amy returned along with the start of another series of diminishing, “Oh Dad’s.” She scraped up the severely squashed pulses with her fingernails before laying down, only just in time, yesterday’s Times.

Hanging up the fox walking stick and his coat, no matter how he tried, he could only manage to drip seven out of twenty-three cold beans onto the hall wall.

“Oh, Dad.” Echoed.

As Amy bundled the coat up, he stood on the newspaper, and managed to create a satisfying sound of crunching and ripping before dropping his tomato-juice laden jacket onto the carpet.

“Oh, Dad!”

She got to the waistcoat and shirt before they made the floor. Undoing shoelaces, he managed to flick the shoes down the hall. As Amy’s attention attended to the shoes, he quickly took off his trousers and placed them on the telephone table, causing maximum bean damage.
Amy turned. “Oh, Dad.”
Mimicking of his best pal Tom, Peter, gave the side of his right testicle a scratch, with beans about; Peter knew Amy dared not look away. He felt the back of his hair with his left hand and squeezed a few beans out; being a kind of gentleman he’d taken his hat off as he entered the cafe. “Need a bath,” he called, he couldn’t help a chuckle as he managed to leave at least four steps worth of tomato handprints on the handrail and walls. “Should give me a peaceful bath,” he mumbled dropping his boxer shorts on the penultimate step. Suddenly he felt the balance in his ears lurch, everything went black, and Peter found himself falling. “Damned drugs.”


2

Amy’s oh-Dadding downstairs was soon overlaid by images and thoughts of the day. He lay back, warmth taking him into profound reflection. The image of the girl he met earlier came to mind, he shifted his weight, warmth tickled his groin, he gave himself a hopeful rub, there appeared to be a little interest, however not enough for a long endeavour.
He hadn’t had sex for some time, it had all gone down hill when the penile blood started wildcat strike action around seventy, all that hard, hard work for even less pay unavoidably led to a total all out strike at seventy-two. He still thought of sex though, only he thought about sex well… about… mmm… forty-eight and a half percent less time, then he did when he was twenty-two. That made it about forty-eight and a half percent of the time now he was seventy-two, or at least it felt that way, funny how scarcity grows things large in the mind.

He relaxed, deeper, reminiscing away the day…

It had started as a good day. His head was fairly clear from the effect of the damned drugs. He had got up early, and he was going out, not coming out, not that he was against anything like that, he had a maxim; you should always try something twice (except Brussel sprouts), he’d just never met a man who he fancied. No, he was definitely going out for his daily grind… ho no-no no, not that type of grind, although he did wish. And the daily grind wasn’t his walk, no not the walk; he enjoyed the walk, although he often wondered why his feet hadn’t rubbed the ruts of routine into the pavement that he had pulverised for the last few years. What he was referring to was his joints… it was as if seventy-two plus-ish years of bending, along with over a repetitive sixty-nine pages of unusual Karma Sutra contortion motions, appeared to have sucked sap from the centre of his skeleton, leaving joints taut, tendons tight and bones insightfully sensitive to the years of use. In fact they’d become so insightfully sensitive they had created the need for a walking stick, not that that mattered, not at all, the silver fox-head handle of the cane added to the general bearing, plus, it had been said by more then a few, his performance. He turned his mind to how the day’s matinee had begun.

His eyes were glistening; they were hungry eyes, warm as breakfast brown toast, flecked with mischief, framed with life’s lustre. His hair lived its own existence in a total topiary nightmare, salted with years, peppered with pleasure, curled with confusion. He’d served his servitude to the pressed collar, cuff and neatly tied tie and it was his time, his me time, his here and now time. He stopped and checked himself in the mirror, not a day over forty. The clarity had brought about one of the better tone down days. The perfectly straight creases in his lime green flared seventies trousers followed the slight curve of bowing legs nicely, the twice adjusted, professionally put pop-star bulge was in the right place, and his shoes that would have one point been so highly polished they were like mirrors, useful for looking up ladies skirts, weren’t any longer. The sex union’s intervention had had many by-products, including carefully chosen odd coloured socks. He tugged down his black-watch tartan waistcoat with its professionally undone bottom button, brushed at the open double-breasted dinner jacket, thought about a red cravat and smiled. Eccentric? Oh no, the supposed effect of drugs and dotage allowed him to create his own unique conventions that others couldn’t always get their heads around. And now was the time for today’s chuckle, time to go and challenge some ridged squares with a few odd oval holes. He started for the door carefully. Would have been on tiptoes if it hadn’t been for an arthritic metatarsal. He moved quietly and slowly, with sloth like stealth, predictably it was the right-hand Quisling shoe that creakily gave him away. He stopped, listening, watching, waiting, and it came…

“Going out, Dad?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, what’s happening tomorrow?”

Quietly, so not to catch her out for at least the fifty-sixth time in thirty-seven hours, he whispered. “Tomorrow I’ll be even more handsome than today,” Amy’s lack of retort was becoming boring, so slightly louder he added, “no, I’m out today.” Waiting, he groaned in his head, it was as if the ritual he and Maureen had gone through with their then teenage daughter had developed revenge reciprocity. He loved his Amy, and was grateful for her insisting he lived with her, things had definitely been slipping at the old family home since Maureen had gone. But her behaviour was beginning to confine his behaviour, restricting his need for ridiculous, definitely beginning to grate. Five seconds from now there would be the caution of caring.

“Be careful.”

Three seconds to a spectre of sensibility.

“Watch out, you don’t know who’s about.”

If he didn’t answer, it brought to what was supposed to be humour.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

He shook his head to the incredulous repetition. Unfortunately words sprang forth before consequential thought kicked in. “But mummy that leaves me,” he nipped the start of the expletive, ‘ck all’… to do.”

“What was that, Dad?” Sing-songed out of newly acquired compulsive cleaning.

“That’s funny,” he covered. “Love to all… of you.” with this he grabbed his Crombie with the silk lapels from behind the doorway and opened the groaning gate of Casa Alcatraz.
“Dad, have you...?” He deliberately closed the door to the budding question, enjoying the knowledge that it would over stimulate Amy’s afternoon worry quota, and entered the external world of supposedly free subservient Stepford suburbia.

In his mind’s – eye he skipped to the bus stop, in reality, well... not quite. Through twisted ‘tache ‘o’ formed lips he whistled; well he kind of whistled his favourite song. ‘Money for nothing and your chicks for free’. “If only,” broke the whistling into a smile, it always did, ‘if only’ his ex-colleagues at the bank had really known him. Leaning heavily on the fox he tried to lever himself up to creakily click his heels together by his side, something his knees instantly and rather irritably regretted; yet their complaining was soon lost to the massive joy quotient of his life.

Rain shadowed the bus to the stop and he just beat both of them. The Chaplin spinning of the fox and the now daily (since they complained) rattling of the railings at number eight hadn’t speeded things up, but it felt good and the giant daisy for his lapel, one of many he’d permanently borrowed from number fourteen, enhanced the feeling. He reverted to age as he climbed on board, just in case there were no seats left.
The bus was grey and depressing; it had a lanoline smell of damp humanity. People were huddled in hoods and hats, heads bowed in deferred defiance to the rain, drops dripped off noses and brims into puddle patches on gloves, shoulders and knees. He was contemplating what psychological testing masterpiece to create to liven the journey up and was preparing himself for a reverberating rectum ripple