Ben knew how his father’s soap would smell, but he didn’t know what the old man was thinking. He’d never been able to get inside his head.
Atticus reached for the sugar and knocked over a glass of orange juice—an impertinent advance of vivid color across the white Formica tabletop. The boy’s eyes shot to his father’s face. “I’m sorry! It was an accident.”
“Clean it up,” Dean said.
Marnie wet a cloth under the tap, her movements slow because time had become stiff, starched with tension.
This was the same, then. His father wielded his expectations, his disappointments, like a mallet, and everyone around him cringed, waiting for the blow.
There was no love in this room. No affection. Just a cold man who’d found his first wife and kid so disappointing, he’d given up on them and started over again.
He didn’t seem any more pleased this time.
Atticus mopped at the orange juice, but he didn’t seem to know that he had to change to another part of the rag when the first part got saturated, so he spread the sticky dampness around. He knocked the cloth into a new part of the puddle, and juice spilled over the edge onto the floor.
“For Christ’s sake,” Dean said.
Ben stood and held his hand out for the rag, forcing a smile that he hoped would reassure. “It’s all right,” he said. “I want to help.”
Atticus gave it to him, but if anything he looked more frightened than before.
Ben ran the rag over the edge of the table to stop the spill and then maneuvered around Marnie to the sink, where he rinsed it, wrung it out. “It’s only orange juice,” he said as he finished mopping it up.
His father’s eyes lifted from his plate, and the hard gleam in them woke an old, buried terror in Ben.
Don’t make him mad.
But his father had already stolen his childhood. He’d taken the farm away, kicked him out of his life. There was nothing left he could take.
“Don’t you start,” Dean warned.
All the kids had gone quiet around the table. Marnie wrung a dish towel, her eyes on her husband’s face.
Ben could feel his jaw thrust out, the tightness spreading up his neck from his shoulders and down to his fists. This was what he’d tried to tell May—how good it could feel to be angry. It was right that he should have some power in this place, at this table, where he’d never had it before.
What did I ever start? he wondered. What did I ever do to him?
The wide eyes of the three boys on the other side of the table answered both questions.
They’d done nothing. He’d done nothing.
It was their father who was the problem.
Ben’s fist relaxed.
There was no fight in this kitchen worth getting into. Any angry words he exchanged, any violence he brought here would only be visited on these three boys. They didn’t deserve it.
He resumed his seat and took a polite bite of the scrambled eggs Marnie had placed in front of him.
“You expecting me to give you something?” his father asked. “Hand you money? Beg forgiveness?”
“No. I’m … I just wanted to look around.”
His father dropped his balled-up napkin on top of his plate, signaling that his meal had come to an end. “Look all you want. I’ve got things to do.”
The kitchen door slammed behind him.
Through the screen, Ben watched him walk across the yard toward the barn, a stiff hitch in his step that hadn’t been there the last time Ben was home. More than ever, his father was a rigid son of a bitch. A demanding, difficult bully who’d developed high standards and spent most of his life measuring everyone he met against them and complaining when they fell short.