Flesh and Blood Read Free Page B

I feel is exhausted.”
    “You work too hard,” he said. “You should let up a little.”
    “Well, it all has to get done,” she said. “Doesn’t it?”
    The baskets were nearly finished when Billy appeared, blinking, wearing his cowboy pajamas. Mary had insisted on the pajamas, from Macy’s, never mind what they cost. Billy stood barefoot in the doorway, and when Mary looked up and saw him her face filled with a mute, smiling panic. The baskets could not possibly be hidden. Constantine heard the ragged intake of her breath.
    “Honey, what’s the matter?” she said.
    “What are you guys doing?” Billy asked.
    “Nothing, honey,” Mary said. She went and knelt before him, blocking his view. “Just sitting here. What’s the matter? Did you have a bad dream?”
    Billy strained to look around his mother. Constantine felt a hard little pellet of anger forming in his throat. “Go back to bed,” he said.
    “What is all that stuff?” Billy asked. “Are those our Easter baskets?”
    Constantine fought to contain himself. This is my little boy, he told himself. My boy is just a curious kid. But another voice, a voice not quite his own, railed against the boy for unnatural smallness, for a growing tendency to whine. For ruining Mary’s surprise. These new traditions were important and precarious, these visitations by bearded saints and fairies and rabbits. They had to be carefully guarded.
    “No, honey,” Mary said brightly, thinly. “Well, the Easter Bunny was here, but he forgot a few things. He’s very busy tonight. He left the baskets with us, and he told us that we absolutely, positively must not show them to anybody until he comes back.”
    “I want to see” Billy said, and the pellet of anger in Constantine’s throat grew harder. This was his only son. At five, he had a scrawny neck and a squeaky, pleading voice.
    “Back to bed,” Constantine said. Billy looked at him with an expression at once craven and defiant.
    “I want to see” he said again, as if his parents didn’t comprehend the simplicity and logic of his demand.
    Constantine rose. The look of fear that crossed Billy’s face further tightened the constriction in his throat. Mary took Billy’s scrawny shoulders in her hand, saying, “Come on, sweetie. This is just a dream you’re having, you won’t even remember it in the morning.”
    “No,” Billy screeched, and then Constantine was on him. He lifted him up, amazed at how little he weighed. Billy was like a sack of sticks.
    u Bed,” Constantine told him. He might have conquered his own anger if Billy had remained defiant. But Billy began to cry, and without quite having decided to, Constantine was shaking him, saying, “Shut up. Shut up and go back to bed.”
    “Con, stop,” Mary said. “Stop it. Give him to me.”
    Her voice was distant. Constantine had lost himself in his own fury, and with ferocious clarity he shook Billy until Billy’s face grew twisted and blurred.
    “Oh, God,” Mary said. “Con, stop. Please.”
    “Bed,” Constantine shouted. He set Billy roughly onto the floor, where he collapsed as if his bones had dissolved. Mary reached for him but Constantine blocked her. He pulled Billy to his feet, held him upright, and aimed him toward the stairs. “Go,” he shouted, and he slapped his son’s bottom hard enough to send him stumbling halfway into the living room before he fell again, howling, gasping for breath. Constantine’s hip bumped against the table and one of Mary’s colored eggs, a limpid blue one, rolled unsteadily across the polished wood. Mary paused. He saw the shadow on her face. Then she ran to Billy and covered his body with her own. The egg hesitated at the table’s edge. It fell.
    “Stop,” Mary screamed. “Oh, please. Just leave him alone.”
    Constantine was in a passion now, a crackling white glory. Delirious, he knocked the baskets off the table. Jelly beans sprayed like stones against the walls. Chocolate lambs broke on the