Page 18 - Vol. VI #1

People (continued from preceding page)
“God, you’re an asshole, Roger,” said Lily. “What’s mended. Rachel’s top three were chicken farmer, your problem, anyway?” probation officer, and social worker, in that order.
Roger heaved himself up and went to where Kelly sat at the end of the table. He rested a thick hand on her shoulder. Clam breading quivered in his beard. “Sorry, Mrs. Lily. No offense intended. I totally support you and your kind. I’m behind you all the way.”
Humiliating. Who the fuck wanted to be a chicken farmer? So when it was her turn, she’d said, “So- cial worker.” But Arden Pike, sitting beside her, had peeked at her screen. “Chicken shit farmer! She’s supposed to be a chicken shit farmer! Says so right there!”
“For god’s sake, Roger, sit down. No more drink- ing.” Roger’s wife spooned corn chowder into the mouth of their son.
“Chicken farmer, you asshole,” She’d said to Ar- den Pike, confirming publicly that CareersPlus predicted her future lay in Rhode Island Reds. But he’d started calling her chicken-shit-farmer or just CSF and for no good reason, it caught on as a nickname. Hey, CSF, can I use your calcula- tor? Why you wearing that ugly-ass t-shirt, CSF? Could be worse, she figured. Still, all she wanted was to take her place in the adult world, free from her peers. She’d get a job, move out, move away, especially from her mother, who refused to see how big she’d become, how big she could be.
“I know why he wants it,” said Alice. “Probably for the same reason I do. And Lily. To set it on fire.”
“I don’t care,” said Lily. She was holding Kelly’s hand across the table and looked very happy. She was happy. She suspected that she was the only truly happy one at the table. Possibly in the whole restaurant. Kelly a close second.
Atlanta, her mother said. Good enough. ~
~
Rachel had only met her great-grandfather a few times. He lived in Indianapolis, where her mother grew up until she went to college in Chicago and then moved to Fort Wayne. That was where her parents had met. Her father was an even more distant memory, limited to a single photograph
The next morning, they began cleaning out the grandfather’s condo. He’d made Lily the execu- trix, a slight to Alice, but not unexpected, since Lily was right there in Indy and Alice way over in Fort Wayne, wasting her life making Spin- lux great. Everyone knew Roger was not to be trusted. The will was simple: Split everything three ways. They convened in the grandfa- ther’s musty living room, amidst the furniture of their childhoods. In the middle of the coffee table, between the thick, translucent, protozoa- shaped ashtray and a stack of old New Yorkers, sat the pack of cards.
in her bottom dresser drawer. He wore a pirate costume, very cheesy, a gold earring and a stuffed parrot lopsided on one shoulder. He also had a dagger between his teeth, which was the only thing about him that looked real. Her mother told her they were moving to Atlanta after the memo- rial, that they weren’t even going back to get their stuff. None of it meant anything to Rachel, only that she never, ever has to go back to school. The Bully Palace. Or Prison. Yes, that’s it. Bully Prison.
“Let’s settle this first,” said Roger. “I don’t give a shit about anything else. You two take all of his crap, but I want that deck.” He was sitting on the edge of the sofa, causing it to sag forward, his knees bent sharply against the front of the coffee table, big hands dangling between them. He was still in the olive suit he’d worn to dinner the night before, collar undone, tie hanging loose, stinking
She’d been in Career Planning, a one-credit elec- tive her mother had pushed her into, taking an online skills assessment which was supposed to calculate your natural proclivities on some kind of matrix and then say what careers would be ideal. Ms. Perez, the teacher, went around the class, asking each what CareersPlus had recom-
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