Happy Family Read Free

her. Was she doing the same to him? Billy Beal runs past their mailbox, might have kept going but for Pops yelling and holding up his stopwatch: “Made it by three-tenths of a second. Sometimes I think you’re somewhere else, I swear to Christ.” They’re walking in the front door, which has a perennial Christmas wreath nailed on it, and Billy Beal’s mouth is a desert. “Peg? Peg? Did that goddamned Ralphie take the extra keys, because I couldn’t find them. Peg, goddamn it!” Pops looks up and there’s Moms with that crooked smile of hers, holding out the extra keys to the deli. Her long silver hair is still restrained in its nighttime net, and her face is rumpled like an unmade bed. “Well, why didn’t you say something?” Pops says, barreling past her toward the kitchen, where breakfast is ready and waiting.
    Billy Beal is at the icebox, guzzling milk from the bottle, leaning into the cool electric air, when it occurs to him: they should take the girl’s baby. “We should take the girl’s baby,” he says.
    “What?” Moms says.
    “We should take her baby,” he repeats, because it makes perfect sense.
    “What the hell are you talking about?” Pops says, looking up from his plate of bacon and eggs.
    “He’s not talking about anything, close the door, Billy, you’re using the electricity up.”
    Billy Beal wipes milk off his mouth with the back of his hand, “Just for a little while, until she comes back. It’s the right thing to do. That’s what you’d say, Moms—”
    Pops jumps out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box. “Jesus Christ, you know about this, Peg? I can’t believe it! I can’t believe you snuck behind my back and knocked someone up…who is it? Who’s the little slut? How the fark did this happen, you son of a bitch? ” “Hey, now,” Moms says, moving her body between Pops and her son. “Get the hell out of the way, woman. You can’t protect him on this.” Pops puffs his chest out like an ape. “I’m going to kill you, Billy Beal. You’re going to wish you’d gone to jail by the time I’m through with you!” “Al, Al, Al, you’ve got it wrong.” Moms waves her hands. Pops pushes her out of the way and thumps on his son’s chest, pushing him backward into a chair. “What’s the matter with you, huh?” Thump. “Are you a moron?” Thump. “You got a baseball scholarship to think about, you farking idiot, you farking fool. You got shite between your ears—” Pops jumps on the floor and wrestles with Billy, trying to get him in a headlock.
    “Al, Al, Al,” Moms screams, pulling on his shirt, “it’s not his baby!”
    “I’m going to farking strangle you…” Pops uses weight to his advantage—he’s about to sit on his son when Moms screams in his ear: “Al, stop! I said it’s not his baby!” Pops looks up at Moms, and Billy gets out from under.
    “Jesus, Pops,” Billy says, holding up his hands in disgust.
    “Are you trying to kill me?” Pops says to Billy. “You scared the shite out of me. I should pop you one just for that.” Billy Beal looks down at the floor, pictures all two hundred and thirty pounds of his father running while he drives the station wagon up his ass. Die, he thinks, die .
    “Farking baby, what’s he got to do with a baby?”
    “It’s a good idea,” Billy says, staring into the mid-distance.
    “If I were you, I’d leave well enough alone…”
    “Okay.” Pops slams down his cup, sending rivulets of coffee out into the universe. “Since when does he have ideas that I don’t know about? What the fark’s going on?”
    “Get upstairs, Billy.”
    “But you said I have to eat—”
    “The two of you are stepping on my last goddamned nerve…”
    Moms swoops up Billy’s plate of food and hands it to him. “Go,” she says, waving him off. “Shoo, shoo…” Moms’s eyes mean if he has any hope of getting her on his side he better scram right now.
    “Lucy, you’ve got some ’splaining to do,” Pops says