If Jack's in Love Read Online Free Page B

do?” she asked.
    â€œWatch me like a hawk.”
    â€œCan we move out of this dump?” Stan said.
    Unlike me, my brother remembered a time when Mom and Pop lived in Lakeside with Mom’s parents. Those were idyllic days. Grandma used to sing “In the Pines” to put him to sleep. People didn’t look down on the Witchers there. We moved to this place about the time I was born. It was the only place I knew.
    Leaving the neighborhood became my brother’s theme that afternoon. “What’s the point of living here? Nothing but trouble comes our way. Hell, let’s just move. An apartment would be better than this joint.”
    â€œStop saying ‘hell,’” Mom said.
    Pop drove to the job he’d been fired from and picked up his last paycheck. When he came home he said, “Let’s go get a hamburger.”
    â€œOn what, your good looks?”
    â€œCome on, let’s go down the drain in style.”
    We hopped in the battered Ford station wagon, which Pop allegedly had deployed as a missile to take Rusty’s life.
    â€œLook at us,” Stan said, “unemployed and going out to eat.”
    We rattled past the neat houses with their tidy yards.
    â€œEveryone around here is related to someone that can destroy us,” he went on, thinking of Mr. Ball. (By now we had an inkling it was Pop’s thrashing of Kellner that had led to his sacking.) “I hate this dump. Stupid lawns, stupid crew cuts, fucking squares.”
    â€œI’m warning you,” Mom said.
    Pop turned onto Clark, a verdant lane that rolled bucolically towards the newly asphalted four-lane. This was before developers had robbed the neighborhood of its woods. Set deep in the trees was a spanking-new brick-and-wood two-story palace with a concrete drive, carport and swimming pool. It had been completed only the month before. We neighborhood kids had been riding our bikes over to stare at its opulence, wondering at the aristocrats who could afford such a place. It was the talk of the neighborhood, and every time we passed it Mom would say, “Golly, what a gorgeous house.”
    Now its owners were moving in.
    A moving van, yellow and monstrous, squatted under the foliage of Clark Lane.
    â€œLook!” Mom hollered.
    Pop slowed so we could see.
    In front of the house were a well-tanned gentleman in tennis shorts and a platinum-haired lady in a white summer dress, who appeared to be supervising workers staggering like Atlases beneath furniture.
    They might have been hosting a cocktail party. To me they seemed like high-society people, like Thurston Howell III and Lovey from Gilligan’s Island , only not as old. We slowly cruised past and Mom, unseen, lifted her hand to wave, but decided to brush her hair instead. The daughter, if that’s who she was, placidly wound her way through the brawny movers to join her parents: a hippie girl in a paisley minidress and orange fishnets. Her blond hair had so many twists and turns I was reminded of the off-ramps and overpasses on an interstate highway.
    Stan’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
    He swung his eyes to peer at the retreating tableau. “Who are those people?”
    â€œLooks like they’re our new neighbors,” Mom said.
    â€œAre they rich?”
    â€œMust be.”
    He grew quiet.
    We went down the highway to a beer joint decent enough to dine in as long as you got out of there before eight. Pop ordered a plate of corned beef and I watched him while he chewed. After a while he said, “Stan has a point. We could get an apartment right cheap. I hear they’re not so expensive at Colonial Courts.”
    â€œI’ve changed my mind,” Stan said. “Moving would be stupid. The only thing we’d accomplish is allowing them the satisfaction of thinking they drove us away.”
    We turned to stare at him.
    He was already lord of the manor, in his dreams.

3
    TROUBLE ARRIVED on the very