“If I had my choice, trust me, I wouldn’t be living on your dime.”
“Then go!” Dad said, waving his hand.
“Stop it, both of you,” Mom said.
“Gladly,” I said. “In fact, I think I’ll go to Canada.”
“Oh, Jesus…” Mom muttered, and flicked Dad in the shoulder.
“She’s kidding, G.”
“I’ll walk to fucking Canada,” I said, and stuck my straw through a clump of ice. “Stay with Nana. Learn how to fish.”
I sat very still, letting hot blood pump through my broken body. We were both kidding, right? But the truth behind all of it hung over the booth.
“Don’t joke about Sammie going away,” Mom said quietly. “Either of you.”
“No, of course not,” Dad started, holding out his hand. “Sweetie.”
Mom started to cry. She held on to my arm. “It wasn’t funny,” Mom whimpered.
“I know,” I said, and I took Dad’s hand.
“I’m sorry.” Dad’s lip was shaking. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I know,” I said again.
Mom’s tears unsettled a big boulder that was sitting in my stomach, and I tried not to cry, but I was leaking them at a quick rate, I couldn’t hold them in fast enough, and Dad suddenly spit out air into a sob, and we were all trying to keep it together. We were all trying not to look at the other Molly’s patrons, staring at us.
The server approached like she was walking on glass. Dad lifted his palms, imploring. “I’m a full-grown adult,” he said, shrugging, sniffling. “What can I say.”
The family next to us looked away, eyes on their food, trying to pretend like they weren’t staring.
“Whatever,” Mom said. “People can cry.”
We ordered. We didn’t get pizza.
After a while, the heaviness that had been pressing in on us was gone. Instead, the air was blank and clear. Mom and Dad dried their faces on their restaurant napkins. We ate. It was delicious.
Mom told us about one of her co-workers, a pregnant lady named Denise, who had offered to come over and show us how to raise bees.
Dad and I agreed that Davy would be an excellent beekeeper’s assistant. Bette would probably set them all free, and Harrison would get bored.
Mom asked Dad and me what we thought about her getting a tattoo, a hexagon for the six of us. I said no, Dad said yes. Mom said, too late, she already got it, but we knew she was lying because she started laughing before the end of the sentence.
Dad moved to my side of the table, so that Mom and me and him were all in a row in the booth, his stocky legs sticking out into the aisle.
Mom laid her head on my shoulder.
Dad confided to us that he would probably ask Stuart to stop feeding the chickens, since he’d always find the food piled in one place, as if Stuart had ran into the coop, tossed it, and left as quickly as possible. I laughed and told him that’d be a good idea, that Stuart probably liked the idea of feeding chickens more than actually feeding them.
Mom said she had a confession, too, that she was a little tipsy. And that her burger had made her fart.
“Gross!” Dad and I said at once.
“But it doesn’t smell!” Mom said.
“It truly is a miracle of science,” Dad said, cracking up, his face scrunched up with mirth just like Harrison’s when farts are mentioned. “That Mom’s farts don’t ever really stink.”
After our bellies stopped shaking with laughter, we sat in silence for a while.
Until I said, “Is anyone getting dessert?”
Dad replied, “I doubt they have entire gallons of chocolate milk, Sammie, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Mom and I snorted. They probably didn’t. Dad checked with the server, anyway.
We walked out of Molly’s with their arms around my shoulders, my arms around their waists. I had the urge to hang on to them, like I used to do when I was a kid, with my legs dangling as they carried me. But I got the feeling that after what we’d been through tonight, we were all feeling a little too old for that.
THE MCCOY SIBLINGS: AN UNOFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 3: DAVY
Surprise! Hahahahahaha. But seriously Davienne Marie McCoy was not a planned child, but I wasn’t a planned child, either. All the yellow and orange Bette will never eat, Davy eats it. That is to say not that she has a big stomach but also that she takes in the yellow, you know what I mean? She is happy and sunny and sweet.