The
Chickasaw
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The
by Gawaine Caldwater Ross
Anthony Tomaselli sat down
heavily at the kitchen table and gulped a double shot of whiskey. Laura emerged
from the bedroom in her blue night gown, brown hair frazzled, eyes half-closed.
“Tony, it's
You promised you'd never come home so late again without calling first.
Where were you?”
He sat in dead silence with
his hands over his eyes. “ I got bad news, Laura. Real bad news. Sit down, why
don'tcha. You ain't gonna like this.”
“What is it? What?! You want
a divorce? You found some teenage slut to bang? What?”
“No, honey, it ain't that.
It's worse...It's, uh, uh, financial.”
“How much didja lose this
time?”
“This time I really fucked
up,” he mumbled, pouring and downing another double shot. “I've lost
everything, honey. I've even gone and lost you and the kids,” he sighed, tears
trickling into his mouth.
“Oh yeah? Spit it out! What'd
you go and do now? Huh? Whaddya mean you lost everything?”
“Three weeks ago I lost
$50,000 at poker. 'Course, I don't have 50k, so I borrowed it from loan sharks.
Then, I thought I could double my money at the track, so I bet it all and lost
that too. Now I owe 100k cash, plus interest. The loan sharks will be coming
over tomorrow to collect. If I don't have it, they’ll break my legs, and if I
still can't come up with it, they’ll kill me and the whole family. I know these
guys, they’d kill the Pope if he owed them $5.”
A vase full of flowers sailed
past his head and smashed against the hutch.
“YOU STUPID SLIMY ASSHOLE!” she shrieked. “WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? DON'T
YOU EVER THINK ABOUT THIS SHIT BEFORE YOU JUMP INTO IT? AND WHAT ABOUT YOUR
SAVINGS ACCOUNT? OR DIDJA SPEND THAT TOO? AND WHY THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN
HANGING OUT WITH GANGSTERS?”
“Mommy! Mommy! What's all the
screaming about?” ten year old Linda cried as she peered through the doorway.
“Get back to bed, honey. Your
father and I are having a fight. We need to do it alone. Go back to bed, and
keep Susie and Jason and Lizzie quiet too.”
There was a long silence as
Tony studiously cleaned his nails. “I have $2,000 in a safe deposit box at the
bank, you can have that. I know you have about $3,500 combined in your checking
and savings accounts; all together that's enough for you to take the kids and
flee to some small town somewhere, and enough to hold you over until you can
get a job. I've got about $200 on me, and I'll need that because I'm going to
hit the road and hitchhike somewhere out West – New Mexico, maybe Wyoming –
someplace where they don't have too many friends – and try to get myself a job as
a dishwasher or something.”
Laura wandered about the
kitchen looking paler by the second. “That's it? Poof? Thirteen years of
married life gone, just like that? You don't even bother to file for a divorce!
It's just 'Goodbye, see ya later, good luck.' What kind of shit is that? What
about alimony? You have kids to support you know!”
“Listen, this got way out of
control, and I know it's my fault. As for child support, I'm probably going to
be making $200 a week. You expect me to give you half that? What am I supposed
to live on?”
“That's your problem, goddamn
it! If you hadn't been so stupid you wouldn’t be in this mess! And besides –
you have RESPONSIBILITIES
you have to live up to!”
“Now you sound like my
fuckin' mother! I ain't seen you be so great about livin' up to
responsibilities, but you sure know how to make every one else responsible! The
kids need this! The kids need that! I need a new car! Yeah, and I got needs
too, and when was the last time you even pretended to enjoy sex, or cleaned the
house, or made dinner for me? I'm fed up, Laura, and I been fed up for years!
Maybe this is my way of bringing it all to a quick end. 'Sides, I ain't good
enough for you anyway. What you want is some slick Yuppie asshole with a
college education, not a dumb-ass worker like me. And if that's what you want,
you can have it, because I don't want you either. I'm walking out that door,
Laura, and I ain't looking back. If you was smart you'd leave town before
suppertime.”
She screamed into his face,
“I HAVE FAMILY HERE! I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE, AND NEITHER DO THE KIDS! And what
about my friends? You can't ruin five people's lives just because you're a
drunken prick!”
“Oh yes I can. Goodbye now.
I'm going to pack a few things and then leave, and don't try to stop me. You
and I are finished – cold, stone, dead finished – and we have been for a year
or two, only you didn’t know it.”
He went into their bedroom.
She followed him, weeping copiously and feeling as she'd been soundly thrashed.
“What am I supposed to do with all this shit? The furniture? Your tools? The
china and the kitchen shit?”
“Take what you want and leave
the rest. Hold a yard sale! I don't know. It's your problem now!”
Stunned, she watched him
quickly load one suitcase. He made sure that there was a full bottle of whiskey
in it before he snapped it shut. “Aren't you even going to say goodbye to the
kids?”
“No, that would be too
painful,” he muttered as all four of them walked into the bedroom.
“Say goodbye to your father,
children. He's leaving us for good.”
“Daddy! Daddy!” they wailed
as he waded through them to the front door. He opened it and strode down the
walkway, with three year old Lizzie trotting after him, tears streaming down
her face.
The
Chickasaw
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