“You see what I have to put up with?” her father said, snatching her up and dangling her by her ankles.
She flailed her arms about and made outraged choking noises while he swung her back and forth like a pendulum, releasing her at the top of one arc so that she flopped onto the sofa in a tangle of thin limbs.
“It’s a madhouse around here,” her father continued as Marci righted herself, knocking Alan in the temple with a tennis shoe, “but what can you do? Once she’s a little bigger, I can put her to work in the mines, and then I’ll have a little peace around here.” He sat down on an overstuffed armchair with a fussy antimacassar.
“He’s got a huge life-insurance policy,” Marci said conspiratorially. “I’m just waiting for him to kick the bucket and then I’m going to retire.”
“Oh, aye,” her father said. “Retire. Your life is an awful one, it is. Junior high is a terrible hardship, I know.”
Alan found himself grinning.
“What’s so funny?” Marci said, punching him in the shoulder.
“You two are,” he said, grabbing her arm and then digging his fingers into her tummy, doubling her over with tickles.
There were twelve boxes of books. The damp in the basement had softened the cartons to cottage-cheese mush, and the back covers of the bottom layer of paperbacks were soft as felt. To Alan, these seemed unremarkable—all paper under the mountain looked like this after a week or two, even if Doug didn’t get to it—but Marci was heartbroken.