Every Happy Family Read Free

too.”
    Kenneth hasn’t been home since their father’s funeral. Calls Nancy on her birthday and at Christmas. “Men,” the department secretary said after Jill vented about her brother’s lack of help. “They get looked after. Women do the looking.” Her cheerful resignation pissed Jill off. Will Pema stick around when she needs looking after? The letter came in a brown, wrinkled envelope, the address painstakingly printed and the ink smudged on one side. An exotic mess of stamps fills one corner. She feels the base of her neck tighten. It’s not like Pema even remembers her birth mother.
    â€œI’m glad you’ll have company, Mom, but please, don’t wear yourself out.”
    â€œI sure miss Lucy. It must have been terrible for her.”
    â€œLook, I need to go but I’ll call you next Sunday.” Jill’s sorry but she can’t hear again how her mother’s best friend collapsed in the bathroom, no one finding her until the following evening.
    â€œOkay, Jillian dear. Goodbye till then.”
    â€œBut do call, Mom, if you need to,” Jill adds, though she knows Nancy never would, for fear of interrupting . “I’ll call you next week.”
    â€œI’m pleased about John Early coming,” Nancy says as if to herself.
    Jill hangs up. Something else to worry about. Didn’t even get a chance to bring up the letter. She hears the creak of a door upstairs and thinks she should make Pema and Beau do their own dishes for a change. Then imagines the excuses, the procrastination over whose turn it is, their need to eat breakfast first, which’ll mean more dirty dishes. She pulls on her rubber gloves.
    â€¢â€¢â€¢

    Sunday morning and heavy rain blurs the backyard. Jill didn’t sleep well last night and arranges the pillows on the couch in the family room in order to lie down before calling her mom. Her hand hits something hard wedged between the seat cushions and she draws up an empty mickey of vodka. For a moment, she’s sixteen, on a bottle hunt, out to prove her mother’s ignorance. She’d found three: one in his workshop, one in the hall closet, one in the trunk of the car.
    Quinn had Lauren over last night, and when she and Les came home from the movie, she thought he was unusually talkative and looked a little...stupid. All teens experiment with booze, she tells herself; it’s the sneaking around she can’t, won’t, tolerate. She gets up and places the bottle on the mantel where he’ll see it. So they can talk about it.
    â€œVodka,” she says into the quiet. “Vodka.” Two hard double consonants followed by the open, feminine ah , like a cough of frozen air. The name sounds like a toast to Slavic health. “Wodka!” She’d like to know who bought it for him. Remind him he’s an example to his brother and sister. And that, while his brain’s still developing, it’s just not smart to drink too much.
    She stands at the picture window in the family room, dials her mother’s number. The line rings twice before Nancy picks up.
    â€œMom, hi.”
    â€œJillian, dear. Hello.”
    â€œHow’s your week been? You taking your pills?” Besides her thyroid issue and an arthritic hip, Nancy is borderline diabetic.
    â€œI fill up my days-of-the-week container each Sunday after your call.”
    What happens if I don’t call? “So how’s it going with John?” she asks, though she wants to skip right to the letter and get Nancy’s advice on how to respond. She pushes up the volume on the phone.
    â€œJillian, it couldn’t be more pleasant having him around. He was up and moving after two days. But then he’s still nice and trim. Your father had that stomach of his. I never understood how something made of fat could be hard as a clenched fist .”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œHe built a little cage for my planters, out of