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I’m content, though, to do this work and then leave. George apparently has other plans. His heavy gait announces him like war drums. The counter creaks when he leans on it.
“Can’t even socialize with your own brothers?” he asks.
“Is that what they were doing?” I wonder out loud. “I thought it was a dick-measuring contest.”
“You didn’t have to come, you know.” From his tone, he could have been telling me I didn’t have to be born.
“Yes, I did,” I mutter, and put the next to last plate in the rack to dry.
“I’m not the one who invited you,” George growls. “You don’t have to be pissed at me about being here. For once, you could just show a little respect.”
It’s a bad time to say those words. I feel an itch in my hand, and nearly drop the plate instead of throwing it at him like I want to.
“You just make your mother worse, showing up like you do,” George goes on, oblivious to the imminent threat of concussion. “Just like your father.”
It stings. I know how to keep from showing it, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling it.
He’s wrong, though. My father made my mother’s craziness worse by leaving—not by coming around. Not that he caused it. He could only take so much of it, I guess, because eventually he got fed up and left her to go play out his midlife crisis with a rich Somalian supermodel.
At least, that’s the story I was told. Lately, I’ve been gradually getting back in touch with my father—not much, just a few Facebook messages and one or two short calls that amounted to small talk. I had tried to get Chris and Derek to join me in that, but they both refused. I suppose I can’t blame them, but… there are times when I feel isolated from the rest of the family for it.
What I can tell of my father so far? He’s a better man than George. Of course, that isn’t saying much.
“If I’m more like my father,” I tell him, “than I am you, then I’m proud of it, George.”
He snorts at me and when I turn I get the rare chance to sneer at him. “Jesus, you're pathetic.”
He trembles with anger as I pass him by to get to the dining room, and from there drop in to say goodnight to my mother. Chris and Derek both stay seated, and give barely interested waves when I announce that I’m leaving.
I swear, one day I have got to stop getting mired in this bullshit.
Chapter 50
Jake
Reginald’s plan, after I failed to snag Janie Hall, was worse than the one before. Leaning on the corner of Ferry Lights just an hour after getting the text that it all went off without a hitch, I watch as Janie comes tearing up to Red Hall’s curb and doesn’t even bother to hand the keys to the valet. Instead, she dashes inside.
There, I know, she’ll find the damage. A busted water main. It’ll put her place out of commission for up to a week depending on who she can find to fix it, and unfortunately my father already ensured that it wouldn’t be anyone local.
Reginald’s text was triumphant and banal. It took no effort to get one of his thugs in there, of course. It is a restaurant. His man simply made reservations.
My father has no real reason to harass Janie this way. Ferry Lights is doing fine, and so is Red Hall. It’s ridiculous to prey on a woman like Janie just on her own merits, though. She worked hard to get where she is and she did it with no significant investors, a single Facebook page, and a dream.
And me? I don’t have much of a choice but to sit front and center to watch this train wreck happen. The fact is, Reginald gets what Reginald wants. So do I, normally, except where it conflicts with his interests. Right now, my father wants to crush an innocent woman’s dream—more so now than before she turned me down.
It’s easy to tell when Reginald is getting impatient. He stops being subtle.
Though, in truth, I can’t really blame her for turning me down. Most people have a price tag on them somewhere, and the fact of the matter is it’s usually not that high. That Janie doesn’t seem to have one is… intriguing? Refreshing?
The door to Red Hall swings open, and I reach for a cigarette. Guilt gives me cravings. I light it, and puff it slowly as I watch her dialing one- handed while she presses a hand to her forehead, then shakes out her hair, and then plants the fist on her hip. Here it comes.
She talks to someone, frantic and animated, and then hangs up. She flicks the screen one, twice, looking for another plumber nearby. Another call, another cry for help. I can’t hear her from where I am, but I know what the conversation is that’s taking place each time she calls another plumber. She needs someone asapASAP. There’s no slot available until next week. That’s not soon enough. Nothing the plumber can do about that, mMa’am. Maybe call this other place…
And on and on, until she runs out of options and realizes she’s going to have to shell out big bucks to get someone in from out of town—maybe out of state.
Every time she hangs up, she looks more and more distraught. She’s heaving breaths, and pacing in front of the place. It would be better for her to do this inside, but she probably needs the air.
Funny;, it reminds me of my mother, when she gave her grand speech the day she finally divorced Reginald. She looked like that—crushed, frantic,; furious as she screamed at him, and at the small entourage of enablers he kept at his beck and call—his “‘cronies”’ she called them all. I was in that room when it happened.
