“I’ll go, Dad,” Anna said, trying to please him.
“Ah, no,” he said, not letting his disappointment show. “If this is what you’d all prefer to do.” He remained with them, telling himself it didn’t matter what they did as long as they were together.
*
The door to the boys’ bedroom stood ajar. Billy shuffled past Michael’s empty bed and opened the wardrobe, its hinges creaking. He ran his hands over the shoulders of Michael’s shirts, and down the empty arms. He pressed Michael’s favorite gray sweatshirt to his face, breathing deep. With each passing day, Michael’s earthy, almost spicy scent was fading.
Billy recovered and moved into his room. He was looking forward to a long, hot shower and washing away as much as he could. After he stripped, he dropped onto the side of his bed to remove his socks, his stomach heavy on the pale, hairy slab of his thighs. He clapped his hands to the sides of his huge belly and jiggled it. He tried to lift its mound off his lap. He slapped and squeezed its rolls. Grabbed hunks of himself in his hands and twisted the fistfuls of fat till he hurt. It felt good. It felt awful.
He pushed himself in front of the full-length wardrobe mirror. His reflection appeared pale and sickly, older than forty-seven. His eyes looked bruised, too, as if he’d taken punches. The man of himself was hidden behind the droop of his purple, stretch-marked belly. Thanks to the press of the steering wheel, a permanent purple bruise also marked his middle, like a supersized sneer. His breasts hung larger than Tricia’s. He raised his arms out from his sides, their sagging flesh quivering like two blue-veined jellyfish. He turned away from the mirror and rushed into his clothes.
In the days after Michael, a social worker had come out to the house. A brunette, save for the single blond curl at her forehead, and her eyes soft and kind. One of her pamphlets maintained that people lost weight with grief. That was true of Tricia, but not of him. He wasn’t even getting grief right. He recalled the anorexic woman earlier, trying to escape her skeletal body. He was the opposite, hiding inside his massiveness. He returned to the wardrobe mirror. His reflection stared him down. He raised his hand and made of his thumb and finger a pointed gun. His reflection aimed. Fired.
Beyond the window, the crows cawed, as if mocking. He lumbered across the room, lifted the net curtain, and watched the birds’ black flight. The view of the village and the town beyond rarely changed. Except for the birds and the weather. The furling and unfurling of the Meath flag from windows. The sometimes hurtle of an airplane, streaks in its wake like ocean whitecaps.
The haphazard scatter of the buildings in the village made them look thrown down rather than built up, like dice shaken and rolled, landing where they may. Billy’s childhood home stood on the hill, the straight line between him and the farmhouse just five hundred yards across the fields. It seemed much farther away. Smoke puffed from the kitchen chimney, as gray as rain clouds. He dropped the curtain.
*
Billy followed the smell of oil and fried meat to the kitchen. Tricia stood at the stove, prodding the chops with an orange spatula long deformed by the heat. The oil spat and sizzled, filling the small room with the distinctive waft of browned lamb and rosemary.
Tricia moved to the door and called the children. The three filed in and took their places. Billy avoided looking at Michael’s empty chair. Tricia plated the food. The meat pink and juicy. The fried potatoes black-gritted and glistening.
She carried more food to the table. So much food, as if she were still cooking for a family of six. Billy sliced open his lamb chop and found himself hesitating.
Tricia took her seat opposite him. “How is everyone?” she asked, trying to sound casual. The social worker had emphasized the importance of checking in.
“Yeah, what did you all get up to today?” Billy asked. The school counselor had said the children seemed to be doing as well as could be expected, but he and Tricia would never again trust the surface of things.
John gripped his knife and fork hard, his knuckles yellow-white. “Why do you both keep asking how we are? All the time now, it’s the same old thing—”
“Hardly all the time,” Tricia said, still trying at casual. John’s attention remained on his meal, but his cheeks flared red. Anna and Ivor looked out from wide, sad eyes.
“Eat up,” Billy said gently.
John’s knife and fork tore into his chop, as though he were killing it again. He had his grandfather’s hard, square jaw. His temper, too. The boy’s knife screeched across his plate, making the roots of Billy’s teeth hum.