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for misplaced keys.
    “Why the hospital? Are you okay? Is it your foot?” I asked.
    ‘‘No, I’m okay. I want to get my stuff. I should go back,” she said, but there isn’t a reason good enough for anyone to go anywhere around here if they didn’t have to.
    I helped her back into her seat, “No, you can’t. I mean, it’s dangerous out there.
    Dangerous because it’s a long walk to the hospital, and you should rest your foot. It’s getting late, and we can always get your stuff, tomorrow, in the morning.”
    “Tomorrow, are you sure?” she asked, looking hopeful.
    “Promise, maybe, I don’t know—whatever.”
    The night came and went without a hitch. Jane slept 16 hours, and she never mentioned the hospital again.
     

TOUGH LOVE
    Saturday, January 4 th , 2014
     
    My mother passed away from ovarian cancer in the summer of ’93, and I will never forget how hot it was that afternoon, 97 degrees in the shade, to be exact. My father was too stubborn and cheap to buy an air conditioner.
    His theory was if we left the front and back windows of the house open, we had cross ventilation and that should’ve been good enough for us. The same went for the Buick.
    With forty-plus friends and relatives crammed in together, the three fans propped in the living room pushed and recycled hot air, creating a circulating wall of body odor, cheap perfume, scotch, vermouth, and cigarette smoke throughout the house.
    The only time you get the Dudley family under the same roof with each other was when there was a new member of the family or one less.
    We’d spend our time exchanging awkward small talk and making empty promises of “catching up.”
    At Dudley family gatherings, the women would congregate in the kitchen to prepare the food and trade the latest gossip on their degenerate husbands.
    The men would go hide in the garage to drink, talk sports, and complain about how much they hated their wives and kids until the novelty wore off. Then they started turning on each other.
    At least the women had the decency to do it behind each other’s backs and didn’t wreck our patio set.
    You can count the seconds to when the men started beating their chests and started slinging shit at each other.
    Someone would storm out of the house in a drunken stupor with family in tow, ranting and raving about kicking someone’s ass and hauling off in their automobile.
    The arguments were always about money, because my uncles were compulsive gamblers and frauds. It seemed like the rare occasions they did come around, it was to mooch and fleece my dad of his savings.
    The biggest problem with my uncles was that they suffered from memory loss whenever my father would bring it up.
    “Hey! Fuck you, pal!”
    “No, fuck you!”
    “Go fuck yourself!”
    “I’ll kick your fuckin’ ass!”
    “I’m getting the fuck outta here”
    “Good, then get da fuck out, ya bum!”
    “Where’re my keys, goddammit?”
    “Woman! Kids! Get in da fuckin’ car! We’re leaving!”
    My father’s side of the family couldn’t care less about my mother, and to them, a memorial meant a free lunch and a doggy bag. My uncles were alcoholics and chauvinistic slobs. My aunts were emotionally battered and repressed Suzy homemakers, while my cousins followed by example down the same greasy Dudley slope.
    The last thing I needed was to hear about someone’s carrot cake recipe or the size of some new intern’s tits at my uncle’s jack-off job.
    This wasn’t a social call. Fuck your cheap condolences and shallow tears, assholes. 
    I learned how to play their games, as I got older, managing to detect those who were full of shit or genuine like Tommy Maroni—he was my father’s wingman at Clinkers—the neighborhood watering hole.
    He stopped by the house after my mother’s funeral but didn’t stay very long. He never did when the cave dwellers were around making asses out of themselves. He was an honest man and never minced words with anyone.
    “Your