Father of the Rain by Lily King

driver’s license. After Mrs. Tabor feeds us, I put my book bag and my suitcase by the back door. My father makes a drink. I wait. He makes another. He snaps at Patrick to turn down the radio. He tells Frank a joke about a black couple going to a costume ball. The punch line is the word fudgsicle. I’ve heard it before. He glances at the clock. I glance at the clock. I play solitaire on the kitchen floor. Elyse kicks all my cards and I tell her to put them back and Mrs. Tabor tells me to pick on someone my own size. Mr. Seeley calls to say the dogs are barking so loud he can’t hear himself think. My father is polite on the phone, then slams it down and marches around the room swearing. My cards get kicked again. He makes another drink. I need to go home and start my homework. The cuckoo clock chirps eight times.
    “I’m putting the steaks on now,” Mrs. Tabor says to him, which is his cue.
    He puts down his drink and moves slowly to the drawer across the room where he keeps his checkbook. It’s a blue binder and he turns the pages slowly. With the ballpoint pen he keeps in it, he writes out the check for my mother. He folds it in half and hands it to me. He looks at me like I’m draining the blood from his veins.
    He doesn’t speak much on the short ride to Water Street. We pull into the farthest spot from my mother’s car. He bought that car for her birthday last year. He doesn’t cut the engine or walk me to the door. He will never once in seven years get out of the car, as if the pavement around my mother’s apartment is radioactive. He keeps his fists clenched on the steering wheel as I kiss him. I get my suitcase out of the back, call out a last goodbye, and walk away. He has driven off before I reach the door.
    My mother has put big pots of plants on the doorstep, and there is a window box outside my bedroom. All the lights are on, even inmy room. The door is unlocked, the air in the apartment warm and moist. I find my mother in the kitchen, boiling up a packet of chipped beef. She is in a new bathrobe, her hair wet from a shower. The bathrobe is white with a striped sash tied tight to one side. Her waist is tiny. There’s an ashtray drying on the dishrack, though my mother doesn’t smoke.
    She hugs me and she feels small in my arms. Her kiss on my cheek is greasy. “How was it?”
    The demolished rose garden, Elyse at the bottom of the pool, Dad feeding between Mrs. Tabor’s legs—it all blurs into a feeling that seems to have no name. “I’m tired.”
    “Have you eaten?”
    “Yes.”
    “Homework?”
    “Tons.”
    “It’s nearly eight-thirty.”
    “I know.”
    “Daley, you’re going to have to—”
    “I can’t do homework over there.”
    “Then come home earlier.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Then call me and I’ll come get you.”
    “No!” The idea of my mother driving that car into the driveway of my father’s house, where she lived for nineteen years, horrifies me.
    She smooths out my forehead. “Don’t make that face. You’ll get wrinkles.”
    I hand her the check and she unfolds it, then chucks it on the counter.
    “It’s fifty less than he owes me.” Her mouth presses into a straight line.
    She goes to her desk, writes a short note that begins
Gardiner
—in her big round letters. When she is done, she rereads and underlines several words, including the word
lawyer
. Then she slides it into an envelope, puts a stamp on it, and shoves it into her purse on a chair by the door. I don’t need to know all the words now—I’ll hear all about it next weekend. Next weekend my father will be waving it around like a flag.
    “Come sit with me while I eat. Then you can start your homework.”
    We sit at the shiny dining room table. I hate chipped beef and the smell of chipped beef. It looks like dog food mixed with phlegm. Bulbs of steam rise from her plate but she doesn’t blow on the food and doesn’t seem to get scalded as she eats. Her mood has shifted since the check. My mood is