Free Naked by David Sedaris Page A

like a cloud of spent gunpowder.
    My father sighed and shook his head in disappointment. This was the same way he reacted to my mother when anger and frustration
     caused her to forget herself. Lisa was not a daughter now but just another female unable to control her wildly shifting emotions.
    “Don’t mind her,” he said, wiping a thin coat of pollen off the windshield. “She’s just having lady problems.”
    Throughout the years our father has continued his campaign to interest us in the sport of golf. When Gretchen, Amy, and Tiffany
     rejected his advances, he placed his hopes on our brother, Paul, who found the sprawling greens an excellent place to enjoy
     a hit of acid and overturn the golf carts he borrowed from their parking lot beside the pro shop.
    Our father bought a wide-screen TV, an enormous model the size of an industrial-sized washing machine, and uses it only to
     watch and record his beloved tournaments. The top of the set is stacked high with videocassettes marked 94 PGA and 89 U.S.
     OPEN — UNBELIEVABLE!!!!
    Before our mother died, she put together a videotape she thought Lisa might enjoy. The two of them had spent a great deal
     of time in the kitchen, drinking wine and watching old movies on the black-and-white portable television that sat beside the
     sink. These were just a few favorites my mother had recorded. “No big deal,” she’d said, “just a little something to watch
     one day when you’re bored.”
    A few weeks after the funeral Lisa searched my parents’ house for the tape, finding it on the downstairs bar beside my father’s
     chair. She carried the cassette home but found she needed a bit more time before watching it. For Lisa, these movies would
     recall private times, just her and our mother perched on stools and reeling off the names of the actors as they appeared on
     the screen. These memories would be a gift that Lisa preferred to savor before opening. She waited until the initial grief
     had passed and then, settling onto her sofa with a tray of snacks, slipped in the tape, delighted to find it began with
Double Indemnity.
The opening credits were rolling when suddenly the video skipped and shifted to color. It was a man, squatting on his heels
     and peering down the shaft of his putter as though it were a rifle. Behind him stood a multitude of spectators shaded by tall
     pines, their faces tanned and rapt in concentration. “Greg Norman’s bogeyed all three par fives,” the announcer whispered.
     “But if he eagles here on the fifteenth, he’s still got a shot at the Masters.”

true detective
    My mother had a thing for detectives, be they old, blind, or paralyzed from the waist down — she just couldn’t get enough.
     My older sister shared her interest. Detective worship became something they practiced together, swapping plotlines the way
     other mothers and daughters exchanged recipes or grooming tips. One television program would end and then the next would begin,
     filling our house with the constant din of gunfire and squealing tires. Downstairs the obese detective would collect his breath
     on the bow of the drug lord’s pleasure craft while up in the kitchen his elderly colleague hurled himself over a low brick
     wall in pursuit of the baby-faced serial killer.
    “How’s your case coming?” my mother would shout during commercial breaks.
    Cupping her hands to the sides of her mouth, Lisa would yell, “Tubby’s still tracking down leads, but I’m betting it’s the
     Chinesey guy with the eye patch and the ponytail.”
    Theirs was a world of obvious suspects. Looking for the axe murderer? Try the emotionally disturbed lumberjack loitering near
     the tool shed behind the victim’s house. Who kidnapped the guidance counselor? Perhaps it’s the thirty-year-old tenth-grader
     with the gym bag full of bloody rope. It was no wonder these cases were solved so quickly. Every clue was italicized with
     a burst of surging trumpets, and under questioning,