Read Online Fellow Mortals by Dennis Mahoney - Free Book Online

says.
    He doesn’t know.
    *   *   *
    “It’s guacamole,” Peg tells Danny, the younger of her sons.
    They’re together in the dining room, parents on the one side, children on the other. She was late coming home because the order wasn’t ready and the credit-card machine had “started acting up.” Now she’s sitting in her work clothes, barely out of the car, and the meal feels rushed before they even settle in.
    “What are the chunks?” Danny asks.
    “That’s guacamole, too.” She scoops some onto a chip to set a good example, but they’ve overdone the lime again and Danny sees her grimace. “It’s good for your cholesterol.”
    “That’s okay,” Bob says, shrugging at his wife. “They don’t have to worry about cholesterol yet.”
    “That’s because I feed them well.”
    Takeout every night. It’s a fortune but she never has time to cook dinner. She forgives herself. She always buys organic at the market. Greek yogurt with granola. Juice for antioxidants. Bob likes to joke about her cage-free eggs, how they love to roll around when nobody can see.
    “It’s iguana,” Ethan says, savoring the guac.
    “The cheaper places use frog,” Bob says. “They have deals with the local biology labs.”
    “It’s avocado,” Peg says, as if it’s seriously in doubt.
    She’s so annoyed she fails to notice Danny loading up a chip; he’s not convinced to try it yet but closer than he was. Bob begins to concentrate closely on his food, acting like it’s something genuinely foreign. He does it every meal, be it Mexican or pasta, and it drives her up the wall to see him furrowing his brow.
    “Did you get the right order?”
    Bob nods in affirmation, shattering his taco with the very first bite.
    “I wanted refried beans,” Ethan tells his mother.
    “They’re with the rice in your burrito.”
    “These are pinto beans.”
    “Here,” she says, sliding him a dish.
    She makes him wait until she’s rolled another place mat down because she doesn’t want lid steam dripping on the table. Danny spills milk and everybody jumps, backing up before the puddle starts pouring in their laps.
    “Paper towels!” Peg yells.
    Bob hustles to the kitchen. Danny’s goggle-eyed in fear because it isn’t just the milk. The guacamole fell, too, facedown on the carpet. Ethan sees it while their mother’s still distracted by the drink. He takes a round paper lid, slips it underneath the Styrofoam, and puts it on the table virtually intact. They rub the rest of it away with the bottoms of their feet and Danny smiles at his brother, terribly relieved.
    Half a roll of paper towels and the table’s back in order, though it takes Peg and Bob a few more minutes to clean the dribbles between the dining room and the kitchen, wash their hands, and get the boys settled in their seats. Peg doesn’t lecture when she pours another milk, but she puts it in a sippy cup and Danny’s forced to use it.
    They sit and try the meal again and no one says a word.
    Except Peg. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to have a nice dinner for a change. I remembered that we all liked Mexican the last time we got it.”
    “It’s great.” Bob smiles.
    The boys nod in agreement, though it all feels obligatory to Peg, who finds a little bone inside her enchilada verde .
    “Looks like Billy’s hard at work,” Bob ventures through a bite.
    “He had better clean it up before it rains,” Peg says, referring to the drywall piled out back. “It’s bad enough he hasn’t finished with the siding or the lawn. At least before the fire they were hidden up the block. Honestly,” she says, “between the damage and the two empty lots, I couldn’t move a property in this neighborhood if they were giving it away.”
    “Sam bought land.”
    “And if he’d gone with me instead of Marcie Ross, he would have saved five hundred dollars an acre.”
    The family falls silent at the name Marcie Ross—a nemesis of Peg’s, rosy and repellent. Bob will never