If I could just learn to keep my mouth shut.
He even tried it for the next couple of hours, being absolutely silent, sayingnothing to anybody. But of course the moment he wanted to shut up, that was whenall the aunts and uncles and the older cousins had to come up and pretend tocare about him. No doubt Mother had noticed that Paulie was by himself and toldthem to go include Paulie. People did what Mother said, even her older brothersand sisters. She just had a way of making suggestions that people startedfollowing before they even had a chance to think about whether they wanted to.So when Paulie tried to get by with nods and smiles, he kept hearing, "Cat gotyour tongue?" and "You can't be that shy" and even "You got something youshouldn't in your mouth, boy?" to which Paulie thought of about five funnyanswers, one of which wasn't even obscene, but at least he managed not to saythem out loud and completely scandalize everybody and make himself thehumiliated goat of the whole reunion, with Mother apologizing to everybody andsaying, "I can assure you he wasn't raised that way," so that everybodyunderstood that he got his ugly way of talking from Mubbie's side of the family.Of course, Mother would no doubt end up saying that sometime before the week wasover, but maybe Paulie would get through the first day without having to hearit.
Dinner was bad. The dining room table was huge, but not big enough foreverybody. Naturally, they had to have Nana, Mother's grandmother, at the table,even though she was so gaga that she had to be spoonfed some poisonously bland