Free The Full Cleveland by Terry Reed

was probably dying to buy anything in the picture. That is, if Dad had just bothered to mention what was up for sale. But at the last minute, I guess he refused to mar his masterpiece with words. There was no mention of any product. Not even a logo.
    Cabot shook her head. “He went too far. This is only a picture tells a story.” But, she told me, the client must have calmed down, seeing as Dad won an award for the ad anyway. There was a photograph of him accepting it on the last page in the portfolio.
    After that, Dad got promoted to senior senior executive vice president or something, maybe the one sure way to get him to stop creating concepts and driving the clients crazy. Now he could afford to express himself in the purest sense, in utter artistic silence.
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    The Tower was over the kitchen, and I could hear Clarine banging pots and pans around downstairs. I could hear Dad too. Laughing. He loved Clarine. They got along well together. I took my crutch and went back to my room and my chair.
    But the minute I got there and got started trying to remember how to make everyone rich, just as Grandfather already knew, another car comes screeching up the driveway. I dragged myself to the window. Far below, in the circular part of the driveway, was the beautiful Mickey Knight in her father’s hot-wired antique red MG convertible.
    It was truly shocking. She was only fourteen, but no matter how hard her father, the brain surgeon, tried to lock up that car, if she really wanted it, she got to it anyway. I watched her jump out and run to our door.
    I heard the doorbell peal. I heard Clarine, who preferred Mickey Joslyn to Mickey Knight and didn’t make the slightest effort to conceal it, answer the door. I was still at the window, still amazed about the MG, when she burst in my bedroom. And just stood there, blankly looking around. As if she’d never been there before. “Mickey,” I said sternly, “you stole your father’s car.”
    She put up her hand. It was wavering weirdly. “Don’t even.” Her lower lip was quivering.
    â€œI came to make you over!”
    She threw herself on the bed, plunged her face in the pillows, and burst into tears.
    I got my crutch and hurried over. “Mickey, what happened?!”
    â€œL-L-L-L …”
    â€œWhat? What? Are you saying ‘love’?”
    She picked up her face and looked at me angrily. “L-L-L …! L-L-L …!”
    â€œLove!”
    Her head rose and fell limply up and down.
    â€œBut who, Mickey? Which one?”
    â€œT-t-t-t…,” she sobbed.
    â€œNot Thomas.”
    Her shoulders heaved in assent.
    I sat in my armchair and sighed, “But you didn’t love him last week.”
    â€œI d-d-did so.”
    No. She didn’t. Last week she loved Charles. We’d been at the club, and she’d spent the entire day in the locker room avoiding Thomas, and trying to track Charles down on the phone.

    In bits and pieces, which I must say took almost as long as my entire meditation on world hunger, I got the story out of her. She knew now that she loved Thomas, but she had found out too late. Just moments ago, he had told her she was self-centered, self-absorbed, self-serving, and selfish. He’d called her “almost a man.”
    â€œBut, Mickey,” I said gently, “maybe you only think you love Thomas because he doesn’t love you.”
    It was the right idea but the wrong way to put it. She went from shallow hysteria into deep hysteria, charting whole new waters in the expression of devastation and grief. Her face turned pink with clover-shaped patches, her neck turned blue, and her hands blanched from red to white. I debated whether to call her father. Maybe he had some kind of miracle drug that could restore his daughter to her lovable, selfish self. As it stood, Mickey Knight was totally humbled, and I didn’t think it was