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

voice scrapes on. It sounds like he’s choking on his sirloin.
    Mrs. Tabor doesn’t bother to lower her voice. She just says mm-hmm and of course and you’re right about that.
    Outside you can hear BBs slicing through the leaves in the trees.
    If you play all the way to retirement, Life is a long game. My car is full of babies. I’ve had two sets of twin girls and a boy I have to lay down the middle.
    Mrs. Tabor comes into the living room and asks us where Elyse is. We don’t know.
    “What do you mean, you don’t know? I thought she was in here playing with the two of you.” She is speaking with her eyes shut, but when she starts to tip forward she opens them and catches hold of the back of a sofa.
    “Nope,” Patrick says.
    “Nope,” she mocks, badly. “Get off your ass and find her!”
    Her words are so slurred I can’t take her anger seriously. I want her to leave so Patrick and I can laugh about it, but he gets up and leaves the room.
    “There are responsibilities, Daley, if you want to stay here.” Her eyes are shut again. She pronounces my name Day-
lee
.
    I almost say Fuck you. It almost flies out of my mouth.
    “Catherine,” my father calls. “He’s got her.”
    I get up and follow her in. Patrick is holding Elyse, who is sound asleep.
    “She was under the dining room table.”
    “Let me have her, pet,” Mrs. Tabor says.
    “No, I’ll take her up.”
    “I’ll take her.”
    “You’ll just wake her up.” Patrick moves quickly to the back stairs. “Or drop her,” he mutters.
    “C’mere,” I hear my father say. I turn—I thought he was talking to me—just as he is wrapping his arms around Mrs. Tabor. He puts his face close to hers and waits for her to kiss him. Her lips separate and I watch her tongue go into my father’s mouth. He grabs her by the butt with two hands and shoves her into him. “I love this ass,” he says, not even trying to be quiet. “I love this fucking ass.”
    I go out the back door. I have the idea that I will walk home to Mom’s, but then I hear a BB hit the side of the house and don’t want to risk it. It’s too dark to see where Frank is. I push out the little chest of drawers that has some gardening stuff in it from against the wall and sit behind it for protection.
    My father is always in a good mood in the morning. He is up before anyone else, showered, shaved, and dressed in bright colors. He sings in the kitchen as he makes coffee and feeds the animals.
    I can hear him humming below my window in the guest room, on his way to clean the pool. I slept in my clothes, so I catch up with him before he reaches the poolhouse.
    He stops humming; then he says, “Does it look a little cloudy to you?”
    The water is its usual rich clear turquoise, but I want to do the chlorine test with him afterward so I say, “A little.”
    He connects the pieces of the vacuum cleaner, the long silver shafts and the rectangular head, then sidesteps slowly along the edge of the pool, the long pole sinking as the vacuum travels toward the drain in the middle, then rising up over his head as he brings the vacuum closer, directly beneath his feet at the bottom of the pool. He gives me turns, helping me when I let it out too far and don’t have the strength to pull it back, and for brief flashes I feel just like I used to feel when this was my only home and my mother was still asleep upstairs and nothing had changed. Even though it’s going to be a hot day, it still feels like the beginning of fall. The leaves are brittle and loud when they shake in the breeze.
    My father used to sing a back-to-school song he got from an old ad on TV. He changed the words and put our names in it. He always sang it when my mother and I came home with shopping bags in early September. The tune would linger in the house for weeks, someone breaking out singing it just when the others had nearly forgotten. The tune is in my head now, but I know if I sing it, it will be a betrayal. I know—I sense