A Lost King: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

in the sink.”
    â€œShe needs a little time for herself, too.”
    â€œDo you think so?”
    â€œI really do.”
    â€œThen you do the dishes,” he said. “And be quick about it.”
    â€œIt’s not fair.”
    â€œIt’s fair to your sister. She needs time for herself. And it’s fair to me. I want the dishes done.”
    â€œMaybe you should do them, Pa. That sounds fair to everybody.”
    â€œMaybe it is. But I’m stronger and smarter than you are. Now I’ll give you fifteen minutes. And let that be a lesson to you.”
    â€œIt’s not fair at all!”
    â€œWhat the hell are they teaching you in that school? Are you in the fairy-tale class or what? Don’t expect things to be fair. Get rid of that idea. It’s another one of those bubbles. Don’t be blowing them around here!”
    It was so hard for Nina in the house that in the end she turned against both of us. She had to cook and clean and wash. She was only nineteen and like any girl she had other things on her mind. The truth is, she had the insurance man on her mind.
    I have to admit she was a poor housekeeper. My father would come home from the steel mill and sit in the kitchen to smoke his pipe and drink glass after glass of his homemade red wine. At once Nina started sweeping the floor to impress him. She raised a cloud of dust.
    â€œStop, stop,” he said. “I just had eight hours of this on the job. Don’t you know enough to open a window or sprinkle the floor before you sweep? And why don’t you cover the food? And what were you doing all day that you waited till now to sweep? I know, I know: you were waiting to sweep!”
    Nina sewed up our clothes in such a way that the stitching looked worse than the hole. It seemed there were mice in our socks after she finished with them. She mixed things together in the Easy washing machine. All the colors shifted around. One day she forgot to take the pipe tobacco out of my father’s dungarees before dropping them into that plunging machine.
    â€œYou forgot the pipe,” he said.
    Another time she was washing his favorite white broadcloth shirt. She washed it tenderly by hand and then rinsed it. Carefully she folded the buttons inside before sending it through the wringer. She hung it on the line in the back yard. She failed to put the clothespins in tight enough. A wind came up and blew that shirt down the hill where it got caught high in a sycamore tree. That evening I called my father outside to show it to him. I was excited. He stood and watched it flapping down there like a broken white bird. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
    Something was wrong at every meal. Nina took no interest in cooking. Once for supper she served round steak and beans and potatoes and cabbage. Next two nights we had tomato soup. One day she was making a lamb stew and it burned at the bottom of the pot. She skimmed off the best of it and put it in another pot. She forgot it and half an hour later it burned again. She changed it to another pot. The stew left for supper had this dead black look and taste.
    â€œWhat the hell’s going on?” said my father. “Is this what’s left of a pound and a half of spring lamb? It’s like magic. Black magic, too, from the way it looks. And it wasn’t enough for you to ruin the lamb. I see you put in carrots and green peppers and potatoes. Why did you stop there? Why didn’t you put in the salad and bread and coffee? It would’ve been a complete triumph in one pot!”
    Nina was ready to cry.
    â€œBut I ate a big dish of that stew,” I said.
    â€œIs that so?” he said, wheeling on me.
    â€œI was hungry when I came from school. I ate my share of it. I’ll just have some salad for supper.”
    â€œDid you like the stew?”
    â€œIt was all right, Pa.”
    â€œYou can have this, too,” he said. “You can have my share. And I’ll sit here