“So how did she get to heaven if she didn’t die? Did you tell Chez she flew United?”
Barb plucked the magnetized notepad off the fridge and began jotting a grocery list.
“See, if we tell her now, there’s less chance it’ll knock her silly. I can smile while I’m talking about it, tell her you guys ought to have a party to celebrate me going to the most bitchin’ place.”
“Oh sure, that’ll make up for her daddy leaving her.” With a reproachful frown, she asked, “Have you given up praying for a miracle?”
He shook his head, a half-truth. He hadn’t quit praying, but he’d quit believing when he began to sense that God figured his work on earth was done. Though how God could reach that conclusion was a mystery. For all his good intentions, Greg thought, he hadn’t done much except mess things up.
She gave him the list and two bills, a ten and a five. “Don’t stop and talk with the street people, okay? I’m pretty hungry and Chez said she’s starving.”
“She’ll eat about six bites and say she’s stuffed.”
“I know.” Barb went to the sink and ran hot water to wash the dishes Greg had forgotten about.
Outside the Safeway, he ran into Chad, a homeless amigo who needed five of his dollars. He returned with one bag of groceries. Barb had already called Chez home and was helping her with Sunday school homework about daily life in biblical days.
While passing the couch, Greg kissed the crowns of his girls’ heads. He set the groceries on the sink-board, reached to a top cabinet for corn oil, and grabbed the cast-iron frying pan that hung from the wall behind the stove. Rust had formed along the rim. He hadn’t used the pan for months. He poured the Mazola oil, turned a burner to medium high, and set the pan on the burner.
He was chopping lettuce when Barb came in. “What’s that smell?” She went past him to the counter. “You bought a precooked chicken?”
“Yep, faster.”
“Not much faster than the microwave. What’re you making?”
“Tacos.”
She frowned. “Well, all right, but you can’t fry the tortillas.”
“I already started.”
“Then stop and microwave them. You can’t eat greasy tortillas.” She leaned closer and whispered, “They’ll kill you.”
“Yes, dear.” He winked at her.
He was turning to the stove when she asked, “Did you get the milk and Cheerios?”
“Nope. Ran out of money. I’ll go back later. Say, Chad’s hanging around the Safeway. How about I run back and invite him to share the feast I’m preparing?”
“Darn it, Greg,” she whined. “We have to watch every penny.”
He might’ve argued, if not for the fire. Flames spurted up from the corn oil, orange and blue, two feet high, to the cabinet. “Oh no!” Barb shouted, and pushed him aside. While she jumped to the fridge and opened the door, he grabbed a potholder from its hook. He meant to grip the handle and carry the flaming pan to the sink, pour off the grease, and let the fire burn itself out. But again, Barb pushed him out of the way.
Standing arm’s length from the fire, she poured heaps of baking soda from a box into her hand and slung them at the fire, until it died out.
The stove looked like a winter scene, Greg thought, and stalactites spiked down from the cabinets where the wood-grain plastic veneer had melted. Barb stomped out of the kitchen. Covering his eyes and leaning on the counter, Greg listened to her footsteps drum the wood floor, all the way to the bathroom. He knew she would lock herself in, sit on the edge of the tub, and weep.
As he lifted his hand from his eyes, he saw Chez beside the table, shooting a laser glare at him. Then she turned and marched out, stiff legged as a Nazi on parade.
He fought a chill. Bright flashes blinded him for a minute. Then he returned to preparing dinner. He was going to the fridge for lettuce and tomatoes when he noticed, on the door, a flyer from the Roxy Theater. A blurb for the movie that inspired James to dream up the murder game.
Night before last, when they were goofy, James on liquor and Greg on his prescribed sinsemilla, they rehearsed bumping off Maurice, the creep whose lawyers would steal James’s little sister’s nice home.
As Greg threw open the fridge, he recalled the rush of excitement and purpose he had felt beneath the stairs to Maurice’s apartment.
He finished chopping the lettuce and tomatoes, put out the mild salsa fresca Chez liked, for which he always remembered to make special trips to the People’s Co-op. He zapped tortillas in the microwave, wrapped them in one of the red, orange, and yellow napkins they had bought in Tijuana. He set them on the table alongside the chicken meat he had peeled off, shredded and piled neatly on a serving platter. Before he called them, he poured Barb’s red wine, Chez’s lemonade, and his own juice.
Barb must’ve prayed for patience and coached Chez, reminding her that Daddy was sick and needed their love. Four times, Barb told him what a special dinner this was. Every time he glanced at Chez, she beamed a phony smile. But their acts played out. By the end of the meal, Barb was staring dreamily out the window or sneaking furtive glances. Checking to see if he had died yet, Greg imagined.
He wondered if Chez had, on her own, guessed he was dying. While she dipped her last hunk of chicken in salsa and gobbled her peanut butter cookie, he caught her staring at him as though at a strange and scary creature. Maybe she already saw him as a ghost.
His girls watched Veggie Tales. He washed and dried the dishes, put them away, cleaned the stove and polished it shiny white. Then he fetched his pillbox and picked out two tranquilizers. A Restoril and a Soma. He tried to decide which he should use then laughed and swallowed both without washing them down. Feeling a new pain like steel teeth biting his liver, he opened the box again and debated between one and two Vicodin. Might as well use them up. “Waste not, want not,” he muttered, and made himself chuckle.
In the living room, he flopped on Chez’s beanbag beside the sofa where his girls were snuggling. He pretended to watch the adventures of a cucumber and a tomato. Actually, he peered out the corner of his eye at his pretty family and grieved doubly, feeling sure that his life meant nothing to them anymore except trouble.
Chez complained of a headache. Barb said, “That’s funny, I have one too.”
Yeah. Me, Greg thought.
They gave Greg his goodnight kisses, brushed their teeth, and retired to Chez’s bedroom. He listened to his daughter read a couple pages of Charlotte’s Web before Barb took over for a minute then stopped in midsentence. When he summoned the energy to heave himself out of the beanbag, he went to Chez’s room and found both his girls asleep, tucked under the covers of the skinny bed, where Barb spent half the nights these past few weeks. To escape Greg’s snoring, she claimed, as if he snored worse now than ever before, which he didn’t believe.
The only cure for self-pity Greg knew was to shift from brooding over his problems to thinking of somebody else’s. The effort delivered him to memories of James’s sister.
Since Greg’s ninth grade year, when Olivia was in seventh, he would’ve quit surfing or anything else to please her, if she’d asked. But she never even hinted. After high school, she moved to Vegas, pranced onstage in a feathered costume, and met Maurice, an older guy whose smooth talk and fists full of cash she fell for, Greg supposed.
Every summer, he saw her at the beach with her kids. The last time was two or three Saturdays ago. He sat with her awhile, thinking he might not see her again. But he didn’t tell her about his disease. She didn’t need any problems of his.
A few times, Greg had invited Olivia to the One Way Inn to watch his favorite Christian musicians. She would pat his hand or arm and say, “Not this time.” He knew what she meant was I’ll go when Jesus shows up at my door and drags me kicking and screaming.