Mari

It’s Saturday night and I’m trapped beneath a monster’s hairy sweating pit, glaring daggers at Ginny who’s laughing so hard she keeps spitting all over her poor husband while ‘little fucking Joey’ slings his arm over my shoulder pretending I’m not on the verge of death.

Christ, lay off the freaking onions, man!

“Stop it!”

“Aw come on Mari. Your ma said it’s okay if we date.” He says, wheedling, as if those adorable baby blue eyes make any sort of difference.

“No. I have standards chunky butt and those do not include having your ten pound babies just so my mother can get free meat from your place. Christ Lizzie, is it a disease in this family?” I mutter, going quiet when the devil herself points her fork at me with a glare and shushes me.

The woman is scary. I’m talking ‘things of an unspeakable nature live in her eyes’ and that’s no joke. Ginny told me when we were five that the devil lived in her mama’s eyes and I didn’t believe her. Until I looked into them one day when she caught me drinking the church wine behind the altar.

Unspeakable things. Live. There.

“You be nice now Mari! If you’re too good for a good boy like Grayson, then you can look to sensible love like Joey. He’s a good boy. Now behave yourself or you know what will happen.”

I want to spit in her eye and tell her off but it’ll probably just sizzle under the saliva and go redder so I huff out a breath and keep my mouth shut, praying that my skin stands up under the acid sweat coating my shoulder.

God help me, I totally get what Ginny was gabbing about when she said Joe has a mountain of hair. How does he survive the freaking summer? Unobtrusively so as to not incur Lizzie’s wrath again, I slowly slip my drenched shoulder out from under Little Joe’s arm pit and glare at Ian.

If he laughs again I swear to God…

“So, your mama called me yesterday and started telling me about that heart thing. Sounds to me like she’s one of those condria people, Mari,” Lizzie says, shoving the bread basket my way.

I take one when she gives me the gimlet eye and pray that I won’t need dentures because as it stands I can’t afford the dentist and I’ll be known as gummy blow job Mari if this bread fells me.

“It’s hypochondriac, Liz, and I agree though God knows the one time I mentioned it she dished my food in the dog’s special plate and I only realized after I’d started eating.”

My mom is a bad, bad woman.

Ian chortles, spluttering to silence when my laser eye gets him and pretends an interest in the damn bread I know he’d rather take a bullet than eat.

“That woman has no mothering instinct! Why if I ever did something like that to my Ginny-”

Laughing at Lizzie is like taking your life into your own hands, but I can’t help it and it seems neither can everybody else. Ian starts first, setting off Ginny, Rox and Ing and before I know it I’m laughing so hard I go weak and face plant in Onion Joe.

It feels so good to laugh after the week I’ve had I don’t realize the table is silent, or why, until I look up to see Gray sitting opposite me, his eye ticking like crazy. Now I could play this one of two ways; I could sit up and start de-hairing the right side of my body-and believe me, I am almost sweating I’m so desperate to do it-or I can play to the crowd and watch Gray silently fume.

Oh why did my mom have to raise such a vindictive heifer, I wonder when instead of moving, or slapping Joe when he scoots his chair closer, I just block my nose and eat with nary a care in the world.

“Mari, say hello for God sakes,” Lizzie grumbles.

“Yeah, hi,” I mutter, ignoring Blay’s red faced mirth and shaking shoulders.

The man, I love him, but I will dump his body in daddy’s ‘truck’ if he keeps this up. I hate being laughed at. I’m more of the laugher myself but for once it seems people find me amusing. Assholes.

Lizzie huffs, Ginny’s eyes start twinkling because for once she’s not being targeted and dinner just degenerates from there. I keep flirting with Joe, because I am a stubborn, stubborn woman. Gray’s face keeps getting redder. And the damn hair ends up in my dessert.

I have less than no dignity left when I feel one on my tongue, reach in to pull it out and start gagging loudly seconds later, working hard not to yack all over the table.

Oh thanks God. Thanks. I really needed this.

 

Gray

The need to laugh is so hard that my face is burning up from keeping it in. I know Mari and the day she lets Joey boy so much as get a twinkle of that ass is the day Lizzie stops cranking out the bread from nineteen seventy five.

Her lips has been curled since Joe slung his meat slab over her shoulder and I don’t even think she realizes she keeps muttering onions under her breath all the way through dinner.

Blay’s in hog heaven, shitting himself with laughter, has been all night and her friends are so evil they keep unobtrusively scooting closer so she can’t move away.

Davey boy though, he’s my hero. At one point he let off a silent but deadly, Rox’s face turned green and she wobbled, clearly fighting a faint. Mari smelled nothing since she’s become personal best friends with Joe’s pit stink.

Don’t laugh at your wife Gray. You want sex and babies and the use of your legs boy.

It’s hilarious though, it truly is because instead of being hurt that she’d prefer that guy to me, it’s just making me want her more. I am a sick, sick boy.

“So you tell her and that father of yours you’re not moving home?”

My eye ticks at that and I feel one bulge out drastically when Mari glares at Lizzie and mutters an answer.

“Speak up! None of us are getting any younger, Mari!”

“I said, no. Okay. I’m thinking about it.”

“Liar. I found your resignation letter on your kitchen counter when I broke in yesterday,” Ing snarls, flashing her teeth.

There’s obviously been a break in the friendship there from the way she’s looking at my wife, but hell all I can focus on right now is Mari and the thought that she’s moving in with her family.

A family I want to murder with my bare hands. How could I have been so wrong? I met Rowena Byrd. Rowena Byrd loves me. I loved her. And now I have to face the thought that my sweet, innocent little Mari has been hiding her terrible childhood.

“You can’t, Mari. You have a new life and so much potential.” Lizzie scowls.

Ian starts saying something and I hear him moan when a piece of bread sails across the space and hits him in the head, almost knocking him off his chair.

“You eat your dinner Ian Egan and let us girls talk.”

Mari rolls her eyes, though I notice she’s careful not to let my Lizzie see her and huffs, gagging as she reaches into her mouth and starts rooting for God alone knows what. Blay really pisses himself when she comes away with a hair and turns puce.

He laughs so hard he falls off his chair, getting himself a kick and hiss from Ginny.

“Liz-ech. Hairball. Ahem. Lizzie, she could be really sick and I don’t want anything happening to her. At least the terrible two aren’t living at home anymore. I even realized I can keep working and still live there. It’ll save me rent and I can maybe get someone to come in during the day to keep an eye on her.”

My temper stews and it only reinforces my will to go through with my plans. If Mari thinks I’ll let her go back to that house with her father, who seems to have a problem with decency and a mother who’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing she’s got another thing coming.

And Lizzie. Why’s she being so blasé about it. I want to yell at them all and spread it all out on the table in its ugliness and demand a chance to kill them all for her.

“Hush, boy. Don’t go airing that in public. She’ll be angry and you’ll ruin your chance,” Lizzie hisses at me.

“Fine. We’re on for tomorrow. You still taking care of the thing?”

“Yep. Got it all covered. I’m going to tea with Ro and Mari in the morning. I’ve got it covered, boy.”