Retribution Read Online Free Page A

straight, corrected mouth forever after this.
    â€œJesus, kid!” Dad said. “What happened to you?” I wrote the explanation out and showed the pad to him. He said, “Oh, braces. Good for you. Good for you.” He was grief-stricken and wasn’t worried about money or even about his car yet. He had lost his license for several months because of his poor driving record and wouldn’t start wanting his car back until he knew that he couldn’t have Mom. Then he wanted his car.
    We took a cab to a diner called Lambs. Little woolly lambs stood on the front of the menus, cute and vulnerable-looking, despite the fact that they were also featured inside the menu as a dish. The waitress was very cautious—people pitied me, thought I was fragile—and set the milk shake in front of me as if it were an explosive. I waited for it to melt a little, thin down.
    Dad said, “I’m trying to change. Tell your mother that, will you? I’m feeling under control. Look at me, Mikey. I look good, don’t I?” He wore freshly laundered clothes and so much cologne that the abrasive scent of it hovered in the air—all things I was supposed to tell and tried to tell Mom later. But his face was swollen and his hands shook as he lifted his orange juice. “She’s seeing other men, isn’t she?”
    I wrote “I’m sorry” on my pad and showed it to him.
    â€œSo she is seeing other men?”
    I showed him the words on the pad again.
    â€œTell her that I’m going to that group—AA, right?—and that I sit there and say, ‘My name’s Bill and I’m an alcoholic.’ Will you remember to tell her that?”
    I wrote “Sure, Dad” and showed him the pad.
    â€œGood kid,” he said. He laughed. “How are you going to tell her anything? Look at you. You can’t say two words.” Then, right out of nowhere, he said, “I love you, kid,” and I looked at my pad and pen and didn’t know what to do with them.
    When he reached out to touch my cheek, I blocked his hand with mine and wrote out another message: “Not my face, Dad. It hurts.”
    â€œOh God, kid,” he said, taking my shoulders and squeezing them so hard that I felt the trembling from his swollen hands enter me. “We’ll be okay, won’t we?”
    *   *   *
    I stood in front of my house, watching Mom and Winnie and Jim turn the corner in the Mustang, and thanked God I wouldn’t have to sit around while they had their stupid drinks and asked me to smile for them.
    When I walked in the front door, the phone was ringing. I knew it couldn’t be Dad, not yet. He would be driving across the city in a cab. Ben had gone down to the basement, and, from the kitchen, I could hear him burrowing into some boxes. He was somewhere beneath me. I could hear the small, struggling sounds he made, creepy sounds, and I moved into the living room. Ben would disappear in the basement all night sometimes, not emerging until the next day. He liked the closeness of it, the dark down there.
    It was Sarah on the phone. “Look,” she said, “these people who want to hurt me have knives, Mikey. They may not kill me, but they’re going to cut me.”
    I felt my face heat up. I hated her for doing this to me. “Don’t give me that shit, Sarah. We all know what you’re up to.”
    â€œJesus, Mikey,” she said. Her voice had become defensive and vulnerable. “What’s your problem?”
    I hung up the phone and started to put my hat and coat back on. I thought maybe Dad would be at Winnie’s by now. I didn’t want to talk to him and I didn’t want him to see me, but I wanted to see him. The phone began ringing again. I closed the door and locked it. Outside, snow flurried in the bright circles of streetlamps. Trees bent sideways, cloaked in white. I put my gloved hands to my mouth because