Free The Last Word by Lisa Lutz Page A

of orange dust
     onto the carpet.
    There were times when I thought that every move I’d made in the last three months,
     year, decade, maybe, had been a mistake. I had thought the business might thrive under
     my new leadership. Now I wasn’t sure if we could survive. Apparently, the worst had
     not passed. But before it gets worse, and I tell you all about it, how about a bedtime
     story?
----
    1 . Coincidentally I took and lost power in March.
    2 . A great idea, but to keep even recent files up to date would involve a great deal
     of scanning.
    3 . Didn’t yet trust anyone to be my right arm . . . or my left.
    4 . I count my infancy.
    5 . It ended up being incredibly annoying and a directive that was quite difficult to
     shake.
    6 . What was I thinking allowing for such an early time slot?
    7 . Probably shouldn’t have put my feet up on my desk.
    8 . If I went to church, I think this is one of the things I would thank God for.
    9 . See document #4.
    10 . We’re not known for bagels, so I’m not going to provide free advertising for a meh
     bagel distributor.
    11 . Yes, I did write the speech out ahead of time, and the part about the “previous
     state of mutual respect” was baloney.
    12 . Not the best conversation starter, since football season was long over.
    13 . “Why is it so hard for you to understand why I don’t want to follow white people
     around?”
    14 . I blackmailed Gruber a year ago. I kind of had it coming.

PRINCESS BANANA AND HER WICKED GREAT-GRANDMOTHER
    O nce upon a time a modest defense attorney and a slick corporate lawyer fell in love.
     Maggie Mason and David Spellman were their names. At first their differences made
     the match seem improbable. Maggie stashed baked goods in her pocket and wore old dresses
     with the hems coming undone at the seams; David went to a personal trainer a couple
     times a week and would hide sweets in his house, hoping to forget where he put them.
     But somehow they made it work, though not by meeting each other in the middle; David
     bent purely in Maggie’s direction.
    After the unlikely couple married, Maggie had a baby, a little girl named Sydney,
     and it was Sydney who turned David into a shadow of his former self.
    After the child was born, David decided to give up his old life and become a full-time
     father. No one remembers exactly when David stopped looking in the mirror and only
     at his beloved wife and daughter, but it wasprobably right around the time they brought Sydney home from the hospital. The next
     thing everyone knew, David’s custom-made suits had found their way to the back of
     the closet. Jeans, old T-shirts, sweatshirts, pajamas, and bathrobes became his daily
     uniform. He lost his hairstylist’s phone number and eventually the barbershop around
     the corner was just fine. He shaved a couple times a week and he went to the gym as
     often as your average family man. 1
    Sydney grew up with a doting father as her primary caretaker, a working mother who
     managed as much quality time as she could, two adoring grandparents, and two aunties.
     Sydney’s Aunt Isabel tried her best but had never taken a shine to babies or toddlers
     or people at eye level with one’s kneecaps. Sydney’s Aunty Rae, however—shorter in
     stature, which perhaps marks more of a commonality with her niece—generously offered
     to babysit. David and Maggie, sleep-deprived and housebound, like most new parents,
     greedily accepted the free babysitting whenever the opportunity arose.
    All would agree that the first year of Sydney’s life went quite smoothly. She learned
     to say Mama and Dada ; she learned to walk; she learned to eat creamed carrots and applesauce. She learned
     to pick up Cheerios and throw Cheerios. And then there was this incident, mentioned
     in the previous document, 2 when she was about eighteen months old: Sydney learned how to say banana .
    That is when the trouble began for David and Maggie and Sydney and a few other