Lullaby for the Rain Girl by Christopher Conlon Read Free Book Online Page B

sound happy to be there.
    “Supposed to start. On the pre-game now.”
    “Oh, I see,” I said, glancing at the screen and noticing a couple of beefy-looking guys in suits standing on the sidelines of a football field wearing headphones and talking into hand-held microphones. Judging from the uniformed players passing behind them, it appeared to be a college game.
    Alice’s eyes met mine. She silently mouthed the words I’ll be in the kitchen and stepped away.
    I sat down next to my father, or rather this husk that had once been him. Watching football games on television with him were some of the only peaceful moments I’d ever shared with the man, some of the only ones that weren’t poisoned by tension and suspicion and anger. I never cared a whit for football or any other sport, yet sitting there led me to some vague, queasily nostalgic feeling.
    “Who’s playing?” I asked.
    “Kickoff in a couple of minutes.”
    “Oh. That’s great.” I sat staring at the silent screen for a minute, until a commercial featuring bikini-clad girls tossing cans of beer to eager young guys in swimsuits came on. “Hey Dad, how are you doing these days? How are you feeling?”
    “Me?”
    “Yeah. How are you doing?”
    “I’m doin’ fine,” he said, his tone defensive. His voice was unusually high and wheezy, as if he were whispering; yet he was speaking at a normal volume. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”
    “Well, I’m just interested, that’s all, Dad.”
    “Interested. Shit.” His eyes remained riveted to the screen as the babes and the young dudes all partied together on the beach and the logo of the company was superimposed over them. Ah yes, I thought, the great things that can happen in your life thanks to alcohol.
    “Well, I’m glad you feel fine, anyway. How’s Alice treating you?”
    “Alice?”
    “Alice. How’s she treating you here?”
    “What’re you talkin’ about?”
    I looked at him. The bright sunlight in the room created shadows around the crevices in his skin. His fingers and hands looked somehow undernourished, more like fragile sticks with some kind of parchment stretched over them.
    “Alice?” I tried again. “Do you remember Alice?”
    “Shit.”
    “Your daughter.”
    “Yeah, Alice, yeah. Makes me take that goddamn medicine.”
    “Well, it’s good for you, Dad.”
    “Tastes like shit.”
    “Do you remember who she is? Alice? The things we all used to do together?”
    “There’s a good-lookin’ one around here,” he said. “Pretty. I told her.”
    “Oh, yeah? Who’s that?”
    “Young one. Bet she’s got a tight one.”
    “Well…maybe it’s not a good idea to tell her she’s pretty, Dad.”
    “What the fuck do you know about it?” The words were familiar but the tone was flat, affectless. “Any normal man wants to screw a good-lookin’ female.”
    “I’m just saying.”
    “None a’ your fuckin’ business, far as I can see. Don’t know why you’re even talkin’ to me. You don’t know anything. Never did. Stupid shithead.”
    So he was still in there somewhere, my father. Buried under layers of age and confusion and incipient dementia, he was in there. And he remembered his nickname for me, uttered thousands of times in my youth. Shithead.
    “Dad, I just…”
    “I know more than you think I do,” he said, his eyes never leaving the television. “I know more’n all of you.”
    “I’m sure you do.”
    “I know about that guy, too. Don’t think I don’t.”
    “Guy?”
    “The guy they got spyin’ on me. Follows me. I see him. Son of a bitch. Old guy.”
    “You think Alice hired someone to follow you, Dad?”
    “Don’t think. Know. See him in the corner of my eye.” He turned his head suddenly one way, then another. I noticed the overgrown white brows that grew every which way over his eyes, lending him, at least to me, the look of a geriatric Satan. “Nope. Ain’t here now.” He shook his head and his tongue ran over his lips, which were