“Sit your asses down.”
We all sat around him, and he gave me a grin. “How you been, Peanut? Miss me?”
“Yeah, Dad.” I felt like crying, hated the sound of drink in his voice, his phlegmy cough, his red-rimmed eyes.
He pulled a deck of cards out of his back pocket, started to deal them. When we all had a hand, he pulled a pack of smokes out of his other pocket, lit a cigarette, letting it dangle out of his mouth, one eye squinting from the smoke.
“We’ll play for cigarettes,” he said, throwing a few in front of each of us.
We all looked at each other.
“You think I don’t know you bitches steal my smokes?”
Dani said, “Dad, we don’t—”
“Save your bullshit.” He looked at me. “Get me a beer out of the fridge.”
I got up quickly, yanked a can free from the plastic ring. There were only two left.
I handed it to him and sat down. He opened the can with a loud pop, took a gulp, beer dribbling out the corner of his mouth. He didn’t wipe it off. Courtney and Dani were studying their cards. Dani’s forehead was shiny with sweat. Courtney’s eyes were still scared, flicking to Dad and back to her cards.
He caught her looking. “You trying to see my cards?”
“No.”
He slammed his fist down again, leaned over the table. “You trying to see my fucking cards?”
“No, Dad!” she cried out.
He leaned back, gave her an assessing look. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not smart at all.”
He looked around at us. “Worthless—the whole lot of you. I work my ass off for you three, and all you do is embarrass the shit out of me.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.” I didn’t know what I was apologizing for, but it didn’t matter.
His gaze settled back on Courtney. “Are you sorry?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m really sorry.”
“Then get your sorry ass over to the stove and make me a fried egg sandwich.” He laughed, then started coughing, choking on cigarette smoke.
Courtney got up and turned the stove on, set a frying pan on the burner, got eggs out of the fridge.
“We don’t have any bread,” Dani said, her voice calm, but her hand shaking slightly on the cards.
Dad snatched the cigarette away from his mouth. “You don’t have any bread?”
“We didn’t have any money.”
“Where’s the money I left you?” A hundred dollars. The three of us had stood in the store, studying the prices on the cans and boxes. Apples were on sale—we’d bought a big bag.
“We used it all,” Dani said. “We needed groceries.”
He was shaking his head now, a slow, dangerous movement. “You fucking useless bitches. A man comes home from working for weeks and he can’t even get a decent fried egg sandwich?”
Courtney was frozen next to the fridge, waiting.
“I can make you scrambled eggs, Dad,” she said. “I make good eggs.”
He turned and looked at her. “You make good eggs?” He laughed. “At least you can do something right.”
He was watching her now, staring as she cracked the eggs into the bowl with a shaking hand. She kept giving him nervous looks. He took another hard drink of his beer, sucked on the cigarette, almost biting it with his teeth.
“You better make sure that pan is good and hot.”
“It’s hot, Dad,” she said.
“Really hot?”
“Yeah.” She gave him another scared look.
My heart was up in my throat, and I was getting that sick feeling of dread. Something was going to happen. I could see it in my dad’s face, the way his hand was gripping the beer, his boot tapping under the table.
“What’ve you been up to, Courtney? You working hard?”
“Yeah, every day.”
“What about every night? What’ve you been doing then, Courtney?”
I saw the fear on her face.
“Just hanging out,” she said. Some of the eggs slopped out of the pan and hit the burner, filling the air with the smell of scorched eggs. She frantically tried to brush the crumbled egg away from the burner.
I looked at Dad, who was still watching Courtney. I waited for the explosion, but he was silent, just took another drag of his smoke. She turned the burner off, scraped the eggs onto a plate, then got a fork out of the drawer.
She walked over, carefully set the plate in front of him, and sat in her chair again. We all watched as he took a bite, pieces of egg falling off his fork and landing on the table. His cigarette was still burning in his other hand, the smoke drifting into Dani’s eyes. She didn’t move, didn’t cough.
Dad grunted, gave a nod, then took another bite.
I felt Courtney’s body relax a little beside me, heard her take a breath.
He stopped chewing, got a disgusted look on his face, then opened his mouth and let the whole mouthful slop back out onto his plate.
“These are fucking rotten!”
“We just collected the eggs yesterday!” Courtney said.