Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [29]
He stinks like work and whiskey (she wrinkles her nose), is still wearing his carpenter’s apron, pockets with three-penny nails and roofing tacks and little canvas loops for screwdrivers and hammers. “Quikrete” stamped across the front in pale red. He goes to the sink and washes his hands, scrubs them and scrubs and scrubs with the sliver of Ivory soap, stares out the window, up at the sky.
“Is it looking stormy, Carl?” her mother asks, setting the chicken on the table, and she goes to the refrigerator for the watermelon pickles. “On the radio, they were calling for thunderstorms again.”
And her father doesn’t look away from the window above the sink, lathers with the soap again, rinses his hands and dries them on a dish towel.
“Maybe it’ll cool things off some,” her mother says and sits down, starts spooning butter beans onto Lila’s plate.
Her father stands at the sink a long time, after she and her mother have begun to eat. Lila puts Green Eggs and Ham on the floor beneath her chair because he doesn’t allow books at the table. And he’s still watching the sky.
“Come and eat, Carl, before everything gets cold.”
He looks away from the window and slowly lays the towel across the edge of the sink. His eyes are bright and far away and look kind of scared. Lila stabs a butter bean and watches him while she chews it.
Her father takes big helpings of everything, moves slow, doesn’t say anything or look at anyone. Takes two pieces of chicken at once, a drumstick and a breast, and doesn’t eat a bite. There’s no wind or thunder and it’s still sunny outside, and she wonders what her father was looking at in the sky.
He takes a pack of Chesterfields from his apron, lights one and stares at the food, untouched, on his plate. Her mother doesn’t look angry anymore, worried, though, and a little scared, maybe. She wipes fried-chicken grease from her hands.
“Carl, is something wrong? Did something happen at work?”
He turns and stares at her, but his eyes are still not really there. And now Lila is scared, too.
“Carl?”
“I’m all finished, Momma,” Lila says, although she’s still very hungry.
Her mother looks at her plate.
“No you’re not, Lila. You hardly ate a thing.”
“But I’m full,” and she pushes her chair (scrunk) away from the table.
“You sit still,” and her mother is questioning her father again. He won’t answer, smokes his cigarette, taps ashes into his hand.
“Momma, please, I really—”
“I said sit still, Lila.” Her mother sounds very frightened now.
“Leave the girl alone, Trisha,” and her father’s voice is smooth, sleepy, whistles out of him the way air leaks out of a balloon. She imagines her father getting smaller and smaller, drawing in, until there’s nothing left but an empty, wrinkled skin balloon draped over the back of the kitchen chair. “She said she was full.”
She gets out of her seat and retrieves Dr. Seuss.
“Did someone get hurt on the job, today, Carl? Is that what happened? Oh god, was it Jess?”
Lila stands beside the table. Mr. Mouser is meowling and clawing at the screen to come in, and she thinks that if it is going to storm, she should let him inside. But she wants to hear. People get hurt a lot on her father’s jobs; sometimes they even get killed.
Mr. Mouser is climbing the screen door. If she turns around, he’ll be hanging there like a big furry bug.
“For pity’s sake, Carl, say something. Tell me what’s the matter.”
And her father rubs his sunburned sandpaper cheeks with both hands, hides his face behind thick fingers, uneven yellowed nails. And she realizes that he’s crying, even though he’s smiling when his hands fall, plop, on his lap. Shiny tears and a gray-black streak of cigarette ash.
“Lila, go outside and play.” Her mother grabs a napkin and is wiping her father’s face, and her father is smiling even