The Queen of Everything by Deb Caletti Read Free Book Online Page B

work down there every day anyway. He said he
had a job to do, which wasn't scooting under cars and pumping gas anymore, but
making sure Marty Abare kept his word about not making his station into one of
those candy-ass places with a mini-mart. "You wanna buy deodorant and breakfast
rolls, you go to the grocery store," he always said. "You want gas, you go to
Eugene's."
    "Alliteration, well, la-dee-da. Too bad they
gotta stick a fancy name on everything. What about it, huh? We don't even have
bums anymore. Street people, they call 'em. Sounds cleaned up, right
there."
    "The word alliteration is hardly new,"
Grandma Margaret said. "It's probably been
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    around at least since the time of William
Shakespeare."
    "Pretty damn old, then, since you and he went
to high school together." Grandpa laughed. He thought he was pretty
funny.
    "Eugene," Grandma said. Dad smiled. He took
after his mother, but it was his father whom he seemed to enjoy more.
    "Let's eat," Grandpa said, and clapped his
hands together as if the idea had just come to him. He slid an oven mitt on each
hand and removed the hot pan of ribs from the oven. A towel hung out his back
pocket, taking the place of the grease rag that had been there for years. From
the smell of dinner and the smoke pouring from the oven, I imagined we could all
use a grease rag.
    "This is a real treat," my father said. He
opened the sliding-glass door and closed the screen to let in some air. "Someone
cooking for me in my own house. You didn't have to do this, Dad."
    "I don't have to do anything," Grandpa Eugene
said.
    "It gave him something to do. He's been
planning this all day," Grandma said.
    "Show you the poor man's red meat. We can't all
afford steak," Grandpa said.
    My father got that tight smile at the corners
of his mouth where you don't know if he's really
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    smiling or not. "Let me do that, Dad," my
father said as Grandpa sawed at the row of ribs. Big food like ribs always makes
me think of the Flintstones.
    "I can cut meat. You think I haven't cut meat
before?"
    "He's just trying to help, Eugene," Grandma
said. Dad raised his hands up in a What are you going to do? gesture
behind Grandpa's back and rolled his eyes.
    "I saw that," Grandpa said. "Here, baby." He
freed a clump of ribs and eased them onto my plate.
    "How much do you think I eat?" I
said.
    "Four million grams of fat never hurt anyone,"
my father said.
    "You're too skinny," Grandpa Eugene said.
"Anyway, saves you from asking for seconds. Now, this is a meal you'll be
telling your grandchildren about." He eased a smaller slab onto Grandma's plate.
"This could kill you, you old bird, so go slow."
    "If your cooking hasn't killed me yet, I
seriously doubt it will," she said.
    I spent most of dinner getting up and fetching
Grandpa more napkins, while Dad filled and refilled Grandma's water glass from
the pitcher on the table and nervously eyed the line of sweat bravely forming on
her forehead. Mostly we talked about how great Grandpa's cooking was, how he
ought to bottle his sauce same as
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    Paul Newman, how he adds just a touch of dry
mustard. It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj
Mahal.
    "What do you think of this new guy, Alonzo?" my
father asked Grandpa after dinner.
    "Overrated." They both studied the television,
the Mariners playing some preseason game. Grandpa picked a tooth with the edge
of his fingernail. "Look at him. Cocky bugger. Thinks his own shit doesn't
stink."
    "Eugene," Grandma said from the chair in which
she'd sunk. She'd untucked her blouse, letting it hang loose over her pants, no
doubt hiding the fact she'd undone the top button. Dinner had me feeling a
little queasy too.
    "Why is someone taking that guy's place?" I
pointed to the television, at the player trotting in from first base. "He get
hurt?" My theory was, sports would be okay to