The Corrections

he were a monster of spousal cruelty.
    “Dad,” Caleb said, “if you’re not talking to Grandma, can I ask you something?”
    “No, Caleb, I’m talking to Grandma.”
    “Then can I talk to you right afterward?”
    “Oh, God, oh, God,” Caroline was saying.
    In the living room Jonah had settled onto the larger leather sofa with his tower of cookies and Prince Caspian .
    “Mother?”
    “I don’t understand this,” Enid said. “If it’s not a good time to talk, all right, call me back, but to make me wait ten minutes —”
    “Yes, but here I am.”
    “Well, so, and what have you decided?”
    Before Gary could answer, there burst from the kitchen a piteous raw feline wailing, a cry such as Caroline had produced during intercourse fifteen years ago, before there were boys to hear her.
    “Mom, sorry, one second.”
    “This is not right,” Enid said. “This is not polite.”
    “Caroline,” Gary called into the kitchen, “do you think we can behave like adults for a few minutes?”
    “Ah, ah, uh! Uh!” Caroline cried.
    “Nobody ever died of a backache, Caroline.”
    “Please,” she cried, “call her later. I tripped on the last step when I was running inside, Gary, it hurts —”
    He turned his back on the kitchen. “Sorry, Mom.”
    “What on earth is going on there?”
    “Caroline hurt her back a little bit playing soccer.”
    “You know, I hate to say this,” Enid said, “but aches and pains are a part of getting older. I could talk about pain all day long if I wanted to. My hip is always hurting. As you get older, though, hopefully you get a little more matoor.”
    “Oh! Ahh! Ahh!” Caroline cried out voluptuously.
    “Yeah, that’s the hope,” Gary said.
    “Anyhow, what did you decide?”
    “The jury’s still out on Christmas,” he said, “but maybe you should plan on stopping here—”
    “Ow! Ow! Ow!”
    “It’s getting awfully late to be making Christmas reservations,” Enid said severely. “You know, the Schumperts made their Hawaii reservations back in April, because last year, when they waited until September, they couldn’t get the seats they—”
    Aaron came running from the kitchen. “Dad!”
    “I’m on the phone, Aaron.”
    “Dad!”
    “I’m on the telephone, Aaron, as you can see.”
    “Dave has a colostomy,” Enid said.
    “You’ve got to do something right now ,” Aaron said. “Mom is really hurting. She says you have to drive her to the hospital!”
    “Actually, Dad,” said Caleb, sidling in with his catalogue, “there’s someplace you can drive me, too.”
    “No, Caleb.”
    “No, but there’s a store I really actually do need to get to?”
    “The affordable seats fill up early,” Enid said.
    “Aaron?” Caroline shouted from the kitchen. “Aaron! Where are you? Where’s your father? Where’s Caleb?”
    “It certainly is noisy in here for a person trying to concentrate,” Jonah said.
    “Mother, sorry,” Gary said, “I’m going someplace quieter.”
    “It’s getting very late ,” Enid said, in her voice the panic of a woman for whom each passing day, each hour, signified the booking of more seats on late-December flights and thus the particle-by-particle disintegration of any hope that Gary and Caroline would bring their boys to St. Jude for one last Christmas.
    “Dad,” Aaron pleaded, following Gary up the stairs to the second floor, “what do I tell her?”
    “Tell her to call 911. Use your cell phone, call an ambulance.” Gary raised his voice: “Caroline? Call 911!”
    Nine years ago, after a midwestern trip whose particular torments had included ice storms in both Philly and St. Jude, a four-hour runway delay with a whining five-year-old and a screaming two-year-old, a night of wild vomiting by Caleb in reaction (according to Caroline) to the butter and bacon fat in Enid’s holiday cooking, and a nasty spill that Caroline took on her in-laws’ ice-covered driveway (her back trouble dated from her field-hockey days at Friends’ Central, but she now spoke of having “reactivated” the injury on that driveway), Gary had promised his wife that he would never again ask her to go to St. Jude for Christmas. But now his parents had come to Philly eight years in a row, and although he disapproved of his mother’s obsession with Christmas—it seemed to him a symptom of a larger malaise, a painful emptiness in Enid’s life—he could hardly blame his parents for wanting to stay home this year. Gary also calculated