Read Online Father of the Rain by Lily King - Free Book Online Page A

It’s my brother’s Davis Classic he’s been playing with.
    “Why hello, Master Frank,” my father says, bowing. “How kind of you to grace us with your presence this fine evening.”
    Frank smirks, about the nicest response you can get from him.
    “And what, pray tell, has become of your opponent?”
    Surprising me, Frank plays along. “He has entered an insane asylum, so profound was the psychological blow of losing to me.”
    “You beat him?” my father says, no longer in character.
    “Six–three, six–O.” Frank looks like a little boy then, waiting for my father’s reaction. Their father, Mr. Tabor, hasn’t been around in a long time. He moved to Nevada even before Elyse was born.
    My father’s face lights up. I remember that face. I remember what it feels like to receive the full glow of that face. “Six–three, six–O. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You clocked him. You really got his number. He couldn’t get a game off of you, could he, once you figured him out.”
    Frank shakes his head and then takes his enormous smile out of the room before too many people see it.
    We are all handed our portions of the casserole and some sliced cucumbers on pink plastic plates. We eat in the pantry; the plates clash with the tablecloth. My father and Mrs. Tabor take their drinks into the sunroom. You can see the backs of their heads through a window in the kitchen. They’re watching the news. It’s weird to see my father and all the dogs in there. It was always my mother’s room because there was no TV in it.
    “So, Daley,” Frank says. “Here you are, after—what—three months?”
    “Two.”
    Frank and Patrick are over three years apart in age but, because they’re nearly the same height and have the same straight brown hair, people always get them confused. I never do; Frank is mean, and his meanness is the only thing I ever see.
    “And now you’re here, back in your old house. Looks pretty different, doesn’t it?”
    “Never ate in this room before.” I scrape another forkful of noodles together and hope he’s done with me.
    “You like my mother’s taste?”
    My heart begins to thud. “It’s different.”
    “You think your mother is classier, don’t you?”
    “Leave her alone, Frank,” Patrick says.
    “Protecting your girlfriend, Weasel?”
    “Shut up.”
    “Well, she can’t be your girlfriend now, can she? Pretty soon she’ll be your—”
    “Shut the fuck fuck up!”
    Frank laughs at the two fucks.
    I’ve never heard Patrick swear before.
    Elyse eats. She finishes her casserole and moves on to the cucumbers. Her mouth does not reach the table so all her food has to be brought down to it unsteadily. She’s spilled all over the place. I ask her if she wants a cushion but she shakes her head without looking at me.
    After dinner Frank goes outside to shoot things with a BB gun, and Patrick and I play the game Life in the living room. Elyse comes through every now and then, dragging a little beagle on wheels by a string. Sometimes she drags it right through our money piles to get our attention, but we don’t give it to her. Through the swinging door I can hear Mrs. Tabor making her and my father’s dinner, and Dad mixing more drinks at the bar on the other side of the door. Their voices rise, as if drinking made them deaf.
    “Oh, that ass. I can’t believe she said that to you!”
    “I was just minding my own business. Standing in line at the drugstore, for chrissake.” My father is enjoying himself. “But I set her straight.”
    “I bet you did, pet.”
    A while later his voice drops to a scratching sound, his attempt at a whisper. All I can hear is something like alcar over and over again.
    “What’s alcar?” I ask Patrick.
    “You don’t know who Al Carr is?”
    “No, obviously.”
    “He’s your mother’s lawyer, and he’s trying to take Gardiner to the cleaners.” Patrick says this wearily, without accusation, as if he’s tired of the sentence.
    My father’s