{ ... }

 

۞

  The Dowager, rearing the head of the birch-end shag-pull sweeper, was hindening about her grandson maddening.  

  “You behave, monsieur, you savvy savoir?  I'll be pitching you to the old apple tree in the garden and you'll live out there with the dogs, only, all you'll have to survive on is apples and leaves.  The dog food's too good for you in this present state,” she said.  

  The dowager couldn't get it up, some mornings.  The hip operation was giving her pins.  Pins-and-needles, walking on broken glass.  That son of a pike, her grandson, had smashèd another glass.  

  The night previous, he'd got wreckèd on cider and smokèd about a million cigs.  

  “There's a million graves in that ash tray,” said the dowager.  

  {turning her nose up at it}  

  The dowager preferrèd candles.  Anything but alcohol, tobacco, and raisèd arms in protest.  

  She'd seen enough, during the civil war.  

  “Despite things, things just seemed more civilized back then, even despite the struggle,” she dotèd, “this nation-state's got no hierarchy.  No organic tree.”  

  {casting a glance to the apple tree}  

  The dowager rememberèd how good her long-gone hubby used to keep it.  

  °I thought he was delusional about participating in the Parisienne movement° she dotèd, °but he was a true revolutionary.  I mean, he helped them with the dead bodies.  A true revolutionary he was, not like these skin-heads these days.  Oh dear, our children married into the wrong families.  Apples-and-leaves…°  

  {looking to the tree in misery}  

۝