Eric, Jody Kaye [well read books TXT] 📗

have trouble making ends meet. I could get a million. It’s a matter of how to go about making my demands.

The car turns and the carrier tips.

“Hush, baby.” I use a soft tone when it cries. Babies liked quiet.

I always made Keely keep her mouth shut and she stayed quiet until her bitch of a grandmother took over raising the girl. She had social security garnish my wages when caught up with me two years after leaving Maine. What a pisser. I hadn’t even seen the child, so why should I give Keely any money?

It was also Diana’s ridiculous idea for Keely to visit. Thank god that’s over. It was damn expensive to bring the girl clear across the country over the holidays. Diana insisted on equal gifts for the girls when I was still expected to provide child support during December. It wasn’t as if her grandmother had an extra mouth to feed for ten days.

“I didn’t know you had two daughters,” the people around town say at Christmas to make me feel like a heel. Judgmental fools. They think no person has been more upstanding than Diana’s first husband. No man will live up to the standard he set.

Everything got more expensive as the girls got older and the life insurance from Ginny’s father petered away. I remortgaged the bungalow when I could only find employment working long hours at a factory. The State revoked my insurance sales license before I left the Northeast. It’s not my fault my wife was dying at the time. Everyone likes to blame me for their problems. As much as I deserve a good job, someone was bound to pry, insinuating I had a questionable past and deeming me unworthy. People enjoy looking down on me.

That’s why, until the afternoon in the study at Kingsbrier, I've never lost my cool in public. Given anyone a reason to turn their noses up. I’m an upstanding citizen, commendable. Diana’s daughter sullied the Adair reputation in town. Dumping Ginny off on the Cavanaughs took the family down a few notches.

By the time I’m pulling at the driveway at the bungalow, the baby is fussing in earnest. I yank the carrier out of the well, forcing the open top where the baby is strapped into the paunch of my belly to hide the squirming brat. It has the added benefit of squelching its cries. I understand why people smother infants. You can’t bitch-slap them the way you can a woman to get her to shut up.

I leave the kid by the couch and kick the seat so it rocks, hoping he’ll fall back to sleep. The sound of him crying is like nails down a chalkboard.

The kitchen reeks from the crusted eggs left in the frying pan. Diana left my breakfast in the pan before she left for her shift at the library. The stove needs a good shining and cleaning up the dishes will remind her. I just have to put up with the smell of uneaten grits cloying at my nostrils until she does. My second wife is a decent housekeeper. The first, Keely’s mother, was a slob. She was always complaining her cancer treatments made her nauseous and never lifted a finger, expecting Keely’s grandmother to take care of the chores instead.

But Diana was only kidding herself telling me county workers didn’t get raises this year. I read the newspaper. She’s selfish, stashing away the extra money and giving it to Ginny to help with the baby. It would have gone farther paying off our bills. Both those women are irresponsible. Least Diana didn’t lie about seeing the bastard after it was born. I hate liars. The Kingsbrier kid has plenty of money. Who the hell do his parents think they’re fooling saying Eric was cut off?

My hand skims across the table. The varnish has worn away after years of Diana scrubbing it so hard. Spots of light wood show through the oak finish. It’s a piece of crap. I lift an envelope marked “final notice”, tapping the edge on the wood and tearing it in half. The mail goes into the round file every other bill lately has found its way into. By the time the garbage collector comes, I’ll be a mega million winner.

The kid is still squirming, so I pick it up to shut it up.

“I’m home. Did you get the—What’s Corey doing here?” Diana cocks her head to the side and places her purse and a recent bestseller on the table. She says she reads to escape. I don’t think she has a fucking clue what escaping means.

“Ginny dropped him off. Said she needed to go somewhere and there was no one to watch him.” I hold her grandson off of my knee with the baby’s feet dangling down. The kid’s been too loud for me to think straight. It smells like shit and is fussing up a storm.

“I think he might need a change.” Diana takes the baby. There’s a sense of relief deep in my bones that I can formulate a plan for the highest payout, until she questions, “Where’s his bag?”

“She didn’t bring one.”

“There’s no way Ginny would leave the baby without a diaper bag. She’s not irresponsible.” Diana turns away, patting the baby’s back, and swallowing.

“She got knocked-up, didn’t she?” I lose my composure. Diana’s getting on my last nerve. I don’t know why she insists on fighting with me about this. Our scuffles have gotten worse each time she stands up for her daughter. I storm over. My fingers pinched around Diana’s lips, holding her jaw tight. “Don’t you be thinking I have to clean up her messes.”

“I don’t.” 

I let go of her face.

She begins telling me about her day. I respond with everything the baby’s done wrong since I’ve had it and inform her for the hundredth time exactly what I think of the Cavanaugh clan. 

Diana smart to bite her tongue when I lay into Eric for not caring for Ginny properly. “Where is all this money? They must be keeping it from your daughter if they’re making her live in a pig pen by the stable. Fucking loose morals will get you nowhere. What a stupid girl she is.”

Diana dances a bit with her grandson, soothing him. She dumps her purse over and searches for a tissue, using it to wipe the kid’s snotty nose and ruddy face. 

“I need a beer.”

“Did you get the milk?” she asks, hearing the fridge slam shut.

“No. I told you, your daughter dropped her kid here. When was I supposed to get to the store?”

I shake my head. My brain jostles for what to tell my wife later tonight when her daughter never comes back to get the baby. The easiest solution is to keep doing what I’ve done all those years to make her scared. Diana is into appearances, too. When I split her lip last summer, finding out she gave fifty bucks to that good-for-nothing, Diana had called into the library for a week feigning a flu bug. She didn’t want to let on to anyone that her new husband wasn’t as good as her old one. 

I am better, and she needs a reminder of how lucky she was that I took her and her daughter in.

“Well, with no diapers or bottles, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to feed Corey.” 

“Change it.”

“Him.”

“Him, change him.” I toss a dirty kitchen towel at her.

Outside, tires screech on the street lined with similar style houses. Diana closes her eyes and breathes out. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Make a fucking diaper out of it.” Is she stupid?

I walk towards the front window to catch a glimpse of what the neighbors are up to. I’m partway across the room when a clicking followed by beeps catches my attention. The display on Diana’s phone reads: lost signal.

Outside police cruisers surround my house.

“I should have put Ginny first,” she says, kicking her chin up in defiance.

“You stupid bitch!” I stormed back toward her as Diana hunches, covering the bastard’s body with hers. 

I go for her face first.