My father [to my mother]: I was just trying to get a rise out of you. [Pause.] My dad loved that expression, ‘Get a rise.’ That’s what he’d always say, “I was just trying to get a rise out of your mother.”
My mother: No, that was just his lame-ass excuse for why he made her mad all the time.
My father: That is exactly the right word. It’s an immaculate word. [Pause.] That was another of his favorite expressions, ‘immaculate.’ Strangest thing. He barely used adjectives at all otherwise. He’d always say, “This restaurant is immaculate.”
Me: By which he meant it was clean?
My father: No. That was the thing. That’s not what he meant at all.