Page 17 - Vol. VI #1

was declining.” She will let the Allen Country Credit Union take the duplex, pay her neighbor to box up her things. She and Rachel will move to Atlanta, or one of its suburbs, new, sprawling, where she can still afford to rent a townhouse, find a secretarial job, maybe go back to school. Everything bright and square.
Rachel ordered tortellini and kept her eyes on her plate. For the first time in her life, she felt like things were beginning. Thrilled and yet ashamed, as if she’d peaked into a cloistered room. If she looked at him, he would read her mind and she would be even more humiliated.
“He’d been declining for six months,” said Roger. “What, you think I got time to sit around as he de- teriorated? That sounded bad. Like I don’t care.”
“Nothing came true,” her mother was saying. “It was stupid, scary really, to say those things to kids. So why do you want the cards, Roger? I kind of wanted them.”
“You care. We all care.”
“Why don’t you just divide the pack?” said Kelly. “That would be cool—you each get part of it and together you make a whole. Or is that corny?” They were sharing a fajita platter. Kelly made an elegant fajita with red peppers and slender slices of beef and gave it to Lily.
Roger brought his face close to Alice’s. “I’m not sure I do,” he whispered. “Old bastard got what he deserved in the end. No, not even.” He drained his beer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. When the server came by, he asked for another.
“Corny!” said Roger. “What’s corny is that word. Corny corny. Who talks that way?” He was eating a mound of fried clams greedily, using his hands to dip them into a soup bowl of tartar sauce.
“I shouldn’t say that,” he continued in his normal voice. “But I want that pack of cards. Stray cats will eat my liver! Do you remember him saying that? Scared the bejesus out of me. I can’t stand to have one around me, any cat, not even now. Isn’t that right, Janice?”
Watching him, Rachel figured he’d pick it up and drink the leftovers. Her uncle was an animal, muscle, bone, hair, humongous. She imagined bit- ing him, tasting the iron of him. Under the table, she moved her leg until her shin pressed against him. She couldn’t tell if she was touching his shin or calf or the wood table leg. It was like being near one of those ancient bulls that they’d talked about in European History last semester. Auroch. The great bull that roamed a continent until it went extinct, pfft, just like that. 8
His wife was helping Michael draw on a pad of paper she’d pulled from her purse. The waitress had brought crayons. Alice could see that Michael was drawing stick figure cats.
“What’s that?” Lily half-stood. “You talking about how grandpa would tell our fortunes? Oh, tell
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Kelly! She doesn’t believe me when I say that they all totally came true. Every word.”
“Her uncle was an animal,
muscle, bone, hair, humongous. She imagined bi ng him, tas ng the iron of him.”
“Can I touch your beard, Uncle Roger?” Rachel asked. From the moment her uncle walked in, Rachel had wanted the beard. So brutally licorice black and yet she knew, her hand knew, that it would be soft, that it would fold back under her hand. Then she saw her mother’s face but her hand was already winging across the table like a white bird.
“Order something,” her mother said.