Anthony Tognazzini


Family Scandal

A blizzard of white lines obscures the family picture. My father waves the aerials like a drowning person's arms, cursing like grandpa. The last time my father "fixed the T.V." he put his foot through the screen. Then for two months we had no T.V.
     I go to my room and listen to the radio. The DJ has a voice like my friend's whose father is a telephone repairman. My friend's father looks like mine, except for the tool belt and the toothpick in his teeth. Once he came to our house to fix the telephone, which hadn't worked in two months. My mother thought he was my father in a tool belt and accidentally embraced him. Unfortunately my father walked in right then. He put his foot through the screen door, then moved out. We didn't talk to him for two months. The telephone was broken.
     Miserable in his lonely hotel, my father began to write songs. He wrote "Static in My Heart" and "Miscommunication." They were instant Top 40 hits. The DJ with my friend's voice plays them through the night, fighting bad reception. In low, mellifluous tones he dedicates the songs to me. I listen, wishing my mother would come by to talk.
     Instead I call my friend. (His father had since fixed the telephone). My friend comes over to watch T.V. I tell him my grandpa was an actor in the early days of television. "A family scandal cost him his job," I say. "He had to go back to working in radio."
     On the back porch my mother sings "Static in My Heart."
     "Oh," says my friend in his deep, sweet voice. "How embarrassing."