page 1: After her husband died
page 2: The neighbours began to question early on
page 3: The children had a little more trouble
page 4: A couple of weeks later
After her husband died, all of Julia's energy went into keeping up appearances.
Her sister Angela would come over with a jell-o molding, saying, "Oh, where's
Harry, he gets so excited about my gelatin treats!", and Julia would say
something like, "Oh dear, he's gone to have the tires changed on my bicycle
for me", or, "Heavens, didn't i tell you that he won a free trip to
Chicago?".
The neighbours began to question early on.
"Where on earth has Harry been, suddenly Chester is mowing the lawn and
he's only 10 years old? We never see Harry's car leave the drive-way!".
Julia told them all that Harry had a sprained foot and was confined to the house,
so all the neighbours started baking for poor Harry, but when they came to the
door bearing their wonderful-smelling gifts, Julia said that Harry couldn't
be seen because he hadn't shaved in weeks. Luckily, the neighbours were very
supportive of Harry's vanity, and left it at that.
The children had a little more trouble.
Alice drew nothing in class but pictures of her mother, with fire and little
men with x's for eyes coming out of her mouth. When questioned Alice knew she
couldn't tell the truth, so she explained to her teacher that this was what
real unicorns had looked like before the media missconstructed them for mass
consumption.
When Chester's teammates asked him why his father never came to his baseball
games anymore, Chester said morosely, "He's underground".
"What, he's dead??" asked Jimmy.
"No, no no um, his office was transferred onto the subway, so now he works
on the subway as it goes underground, and when he gets off work he need to take
a bus to where he parked his car and then he needs to drive all the way across
the city to get home, so he can't make my games anymore, yeah".
"Oh", said Jimmy, "do you get a free subway mug?"
"No" said Chester.
A couple of weeks later, Chester was riding the subway home from Jimmy's house
when he saw his father on the other side of the car. "Chester!" said
Harry, waving his arms. Chester rubbed his eyes, he was dreaming! "Chester,
thank God, I've been chained to this car for a month, thank God you're here,
you've got to untie me!" Chester stared at his father until he got to his
stop, then he got off of the subway and walked home.
"Hey," he thought to himself, "if I'm dreaming, I can do anything
I want!". So Chester climbed up the fire escape of the bank building on
the corner of his street and threw himself off into traffic.
At Chester's funeral, all of Julia's family members asked where Harry was. She
said that he was in hospital, having his foot amputated.