The Whore's Child

used to be pretty before I met your stupid family.” And suddenly it seemed to Lin that she might cry.
    â€œYou still are,” his father said. “Why do you think you’re knocked up all the time? Because you’re ugly?”
    This brought a small smile. “Yeah, but what about later, when he decides I’m too fat.”
    â€œCome find me, darlin’,” his father suggested. “Looks like I’ll be free.”
    â€œI might, just to see the look on your face when you open the door and see me standing there with four brats in tow,” Aunt Melly said, though Lin could see that she’d cheered up when she tossed his father the keys.
    â€œI’ll have it back by supper,” he said.
    At Lin’s grandmother’s, things began where they always did. “Why don’t you ever come visit your grandmother?” was what she wanted to know. Lin understood that the old woman was really asking his father, not him, but it was still weird and embarrassing to stand there in her kitchen and hear this same question first thing.
    â€œGive it a rest, Ma,” his father said, sinking onto a kitchen chair. “We just walked in the door and already you’re at it.”
    Lin didn’t like his grandmother’s house, where it was always too warm and full of food smells he didn’t recognize—because according to his mother, she was “ignorant” and insisted on cooking with onions and never opened the kitchen windows to air the house out.
    â€œYour grandmother’s not going to live forever, you know,” she said, still fixing him with her stare. “When she’s dead, you’re going to wish you came to visit her.”
    No I’m not, Lin thought.
    â€œTell her she’s full of it,” his father suggested, stretching his long legs out in front of him, crossing his feet at the ankles. Since Lin had not been offered a seat, he was still standing there in the middle of the bright kitchen. “Tell her if they dropped an atom bomb right in the center of town, she’d be the only survivor.”
    The old woman looked her son over. “What’s that?” she finally said, pointing to a purple swelling under his right eye. Lin was glad she’d asked, because he’d been wondering about it himself.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œNothing,” she repeated. Then, “Why don’t you go work for your brother Brian?”
    â€œWhy don’t you mind your own business?”
    â€œHe called yesterday. Said you could come to work for him whenever you want.”
    â€œGood. It’s settled, then,” his father replied cheerfully. “When I want to, I will. Right now, I don’t want to. Right now what I’d like is a cup of coffee, if that’s not too much to ask.”
    â€œI hope you don’t talk to
your
mother like this,” the old woman said to Lin. “Is this any way for a man to talk to his own mother?”
    â€œGo ahead and take her side,” his father suggested. “If you don’t, she’ll be mean to you too.”
    â€œYou want a soda?” she said. That was the only good thing about Grandma Hart’s house. The refrigerator was always full of orange sodas, a brand he’d never seen anywhere else. At his other grandmother’s he got one glass of name-brand cola, after which it was fruit juice. Here he could drink all the off-brand orange soda he wanted.
    Later, back home, sitting at the curb in Uncle Bert’s car, his father was pensive, as he usually was when they returned from their weekend afternoons together. “They’re not bad people, you know,” his father said, though when he said it he was staring at the house where he used to live, so Lin didn’t understand who he was talking about. And he couldn’t help wondering if Uncle Bert had called his mother again, since instead of returning the car when he’d promised, his father had driven to a tavern where he knew everybody and their dinner kept getting interrupted by people who wanted to know where Lin’s mother was and how much longer they were going to stay separated. “You’d have to ask Evelyn,” his father said. “Call her up right now, in fact. If you find out anything, let me know.”
    â€œWho?” Lin said now, responding to his father’s remark about bad people.
    â€œYour grandmother. Your Aunt Melly.”
    Lin shrugged. It