Free Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur by Mordecai Richler Page B

wouldbe grateful for something so good for them. Thank you, Jacob Two-Two would say, because his mother was watching him closely. Thank you, Aunt Ida. Yum, yum.
    On birthdays Aunt Good-For-You usually came with books that would help the children choose a sensible career or improve their table manners or teach them to be very, very nice to everybody, including obvious stinkers.
    Aunt Good-For-You, who had never married, had no children of her own. She was thin and tall and wore her gray hair in a bun. She didn’t drink beer or wine or whiskey, which was no good for you, or ever lie down on a sofa to daydream, which was even worse for you.
    Immediately after Jacob Two-Two’s parents flew off to Kenya, Aunt Good-For-You opened all the windows to clear the house of the foul smell of Daddy’s cigars. Then she went on a tour of inspection. She took down Daniel’s
Sports Illustrated
bathing beauty calendar, saying it was bad for him, and she did the same with Emma’s poster of Robert Redford, saying it was no good for her. Noah was told he couldn’t play his David Bowie records, which were bad for him, and Marfa was made to do without her red nail polish, which was no good for her. They weren’tallowed to watch just about everything on TV, because it was too violent. Or read lying down, because it was bad for their eyes. Or eat standing up, because it was no good for their digestion. But the very first night in the house she did promise to read aloud to Jacob Two-Two before he went to sleep. Aunt Good-For-You had brought along the first volume of the
Britannica Junior Encyclopedia
. “Tonight,” she said, “we will begin with the letter A.”
    The first Saturday afternoon, sensing unrest in the house, Aunt Good-For-You surprised them, announcing, “I’m willing to take you out tonight for a real treat. Any ideas?”
    “Dracula and the Nose-Pickers are playing at the Palace tonight,” Daniel said. “They’re really great! They chop pianos to bits, whack each other over the head with guitars, and spray the crowd with hot pig’s blood.”
    “Don’t you think,” Noah asked, “that in view of how violent city life has become it would be good for us to learn something about self-defense?”
    “Well, I’m not sure about that,” Aunt Good-For-You said. “Why don’t we take in the new kung fu movie at Cinema V,” Noah asked, “if only for educational purposes?”
    “I’m all for a hockey game,” Emma said, but of course she intended to play for the Montreal Canadiens one day.
    “Why don’t we eat dinner at the Ritz,” Marfa said, “really pigging it, and then sign Daddy’s name to the bill?”
    The last time they had been to the Ritz it was their father who had taken them there for Sunday brunch. As she had lined up at the buffet table for her fifth helping of dessert, Marfa had earned a very dirty look from the waiter. “It’s not for me,” she had said, fluttering her eyelashes. “It’s for my kid brother. My poor parents. It’s very embarrassing for them to take such a greedy-guts to a real restaurant.”
    “What would you like to do, Jacob Two-Two?” Aunt Good-For-You asked.
    Absolutely anything, Jacob thought, except listen to another page of the
Britannica Junior Encyclopedia
. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said.
    “What we are going to do,” Aunt Good-For-You said, “is dine at the Contented Vegetarian Snack Bar.”
    Oh, no, Jacob Two-Two thought. Not mock hamburgers again.
    “And then,” Aunt Good-For-You said, “we are going to a lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts on ‘The Life of the Dinosaurs.’ The lecture will be illustrated. Now, isn’t that fun?”
    Everybody groaned.
    But to Jacob Two-Two’s surprise the lecture was better than fun – it was fascinating.
    Like him, he learned, dinosaurs had a reputation for being dimwitted. Even so, they had been lords of all life on earth for something like seventy million years. Their name came from Greek and meant “terrible lizards.”