The Big Shuffle Read Free Page B

the bedside table and his wallet and black pocket comb sit atop the dresser, all waiting for him to get up in the morning. Eventually I grab a blanket out of the linen closet and hunker down on the couch in the living room. There's nothing left to do but sit and try not to think anymore and wait for morning.
    However, sleep doesn't come for a long time. The house creaks as if it's badly docked at a rickety old pier and about to come loose. And tears continue to roll down my cheeks as I stare up at the ceiling.

FIVE
    T HE TWINS CRYING IN STEREO WAKES ME FROM A DEEP BUT DISTURBED sleep filled with upsetting dreams. There's a foggy moment when I'm not registering all that has just happened and then it quickly rushes back and I remember that Dad is dead. Those howling children will never know their father. Maybe they're the lucky ones, since you can't miss what you didn't really have in the first place.
    Their cries grow and it doesn't appear to be the moment to philosophize about the rest of our lives. Climbing off the couch I feel like the monster being raised from the dead in a late-night creature feature, as if I haven't moved a muscle in years and it's an effort just to lift my arms. Thrumming inside my head over and over like the bass notes in a heavy metal song are the words: “Dad is dead, Dad is dead, Dad is dead.”
    I turn on the hall light and peer down at the red faces and grasping fingers. There's no point in trying to isolate the problem—they both need to be changed, held, and fed. The hall clock says half past seven. At least I had a solid fifty minutes of sleep.
    To Mom's credit she doesn't dress the identical-looking boysalike, and she also keeps a little blue ribbon around the ankle of one of them. Though that's for Dad, since Mom can always tell her kids apart. Only I can't, and therefore don't know which one is Rodney and which is Reginald, nor are there any labels on the cribs. But I suppose at this age they don't know the difference either and so “Hey, you” won't exactly trigger an identity crisis.
    Dawn is tinting the horizon pink and I'm halfway through feeding the second twin his bottle when ten-year-old Davy comes crawling into the kitchen on all fours, apparently motivated by his Spider-Man pajamas.
    “Where's Mommy?” He quickly glances around the room as if she may be trying to hide somewhere.
    “She took Daddy to the hospital.” I give the reply that I've been going over and over in my head all morning. “He doesn't feel well.”
    I have absolutely no desire to break this news to the kids. Hopefully Mom will be home this afternoon and she can do it.
    “Oh,” says Davy as he climbs up the counter in Spider-Man fashion to retrieve a bowl for his cereal. “Does Daddy have a stomachache?”
    “Yeah.” I wipe the faces of the boys with their bibs. “He has a stomachache.”
    “That's because it was Francie's birthday last night and we ate cake and ice cream,” Davy informs me. “It was really good.”
    “Hey Davy, do you know which one of the twins is wearing the blue ribbon on his ankle?”
    “Roddy,” answers Davy.
    He scoops generic cereal into his bowl from a big plastic bin on the counter. The minute Davy tips the full gallon of milk toward the bowl I can see what's going to happen, only I'm trying to burp Roddy and don't make the save in time.
    “Whoops,” says Davy as the milk washes over the top of the bowl like a giant wave, taking half the cereal with it.
    “Don't worry, I can still eat it,” he assures me while sliding the bowl through the puddle, which is now trickling between the leaves in the table and creating rivulets across the linoleum floor.
    I put Roddy back in his cradle and look on the counter for paper towels, briefly forgetting that the only disposable items allowed in this house are diapers, and reach for one of the many neatly folded rags under the sink.
    Darlene comes bounding into the kitchen trailing six-year-old Francie and twenty-month-old