My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie She always walks with a limp on Sundays, and she won't tell most people why. She's a very private individual, and therefore not everyone has the privilege of her spilling her personal stories to her over tea or a warmed up chocolate croissant. But she tells me, it's at a small French-influenced restaurant, where I feast on rabbit chasseur with scalloped potatoes and she cuts into a chunk of cheese-smothered cordon bleu. We both drink White Zinfandel. She tells me that the limp is nothing to worry about, that it has been with her for a very long time and she has dealt with it for so long that it really didn't impede the speed of her walking. The question remains, though, as to why the crimp in her step only seems to occur on the Sabbath day. "I don't know," she replies with a small smile. "God's vengeance, I guess." She calls it His vengeance. I call it an alcoholic father mishandling a baseball bat. I call it th

The husband and wife were polar opposites, married with the cold snout of a shotgun as their minister. They stayed in different parts of the house, ate different meals, slept in different bedrooms, and even watched separate television sets. What the two of them did not realize, until twenty-three years later, was that every Saturday they would watch the same sitcom, routinely, without thinking about sharing the experience with each other. In fact, it wasn't until their disenchanted son pointed it out that they understood it.