Yesterday I come in, and my parents are reading the Sunday paper together, heads bent in consternation, having a civil yet troubled conversation. This is remarkable, since usually they are fighting, so whatever they're reading has brought them together in shared worry. I figure it's something horrible like last spring's "Father shoots mother, son shoots father" stories. But no, thankfully, it's just the Tom Cruise
Parade article.
My father knows nothing of celebrity gossip or Scientology. He believed until yesterday that Tom Cruise was still married to Nicole Kidman, and has never heard of Katie Holmes. My mother knows a bit more, but her commentary on and attention to this story was a simple "ew" when I told her about the pregnancy. I only rant to my sister and friends about what a freakshow this whole thing is, the parents are untainted by my opinion. Even so, just the
Parade Cruise propping fluff piece made them feel "disgusted", "creeped out", and that "this isn't right, something's wrong with that man." Both brought to my attention, separately, later in the day, that the description of Katie as "dazed, passive, and vacant" and "always smiling" (in a crazy way, as the article had implied) had alarmed them, and they wondered where her family is in all this.
I took the opportunity to show them some pictures, without setting them (the pictures
up, just saying which were taken first. Some from the Australia trip, when Katie was bloated all over, and needing assistance while walking in every single picture. Then some of the recent ones, with her thin everywhere but her oddly shaped and ever changing belly, and happily shopping unaided. My mother, who's had four pregnancies herself, and been around dozens of others, gasped and said, "She's not pregnant anymore! There is no way!" My father wondered if the baby would be crawling when it was born. And then he was silent for a moment, and asked, "Does Tom Cruise have a movie coming out any time soon?"
I
my parents
