Dog Eat Dog Read Online Free

with food.
    “You coming home yet, or what?” Dad asked.
    “We got no room for him,” Terry answered.
    Ma sneaked up on her chair, slipped into it under my glare. “Of course we have room for him,” she said. “We will always have room for him.”
    “Ya,” I said. “Not that I’m coming back, but of course you have room for me. My room, remember?”
    Terry shook his head gleefully. He started talking, then put meat in his mouth, without slowing down. “Uh-uh. Dog lives in there now.”
    I stared at my mother some more. When she wouldn’t stop averting her eyes, I just spoke up. “I thought he wasn’t going to be here,” I said.
    “Why shouldn’t he be here?” Dad barked. “He lives here. Gettin’ awful snotty there, Mick, lately.” His voice trailed as he bore down on his food. “Goddamn Sullivan.”
    “Ya, Jesus, kid, don’t be such a piss now,” Terry said. Terry was having a fine time. “Dontcha even want to know his name?”
    “Ma?” I said, trying to address my original question.
    “Please, Mick,” she whispered, trying not to answer it.
    “Ma,” I said more forcefully.
    “Mick, I am his mother. Why can’t you understand that? I’m his mother just like I’m yours. You might see yourselves as being two very different creatures, but I cannot. I might just as well cleave myself in two, as pretend even for a minute that I have one of you and not the other. It may not make any sense at all to you, but I just haven’t got a better explanation than that.”
    She couldn’t have been more right, about me not being able to see it. And from the barely contained laugh rumbling in Terry’s throat, this was one of the few things we agreed on. But Ma did manage to shut me up with it.
    “And that is why you have to come home,” Dad said. “You’re killing your mother.” He refreshed his palate with a full beer.
    “What about Mickey?” Terry said to Dad. Then he tipped a glance to me. “His name’s Mickey. I named him for you, you ungrateful sonofabitch.”
    “Build a doghouse out back,” Dad said. “’Cause he can’t have run of the house.”
    Terry turned to me again. “That okay with you, bro? You won’t mind living in a doghouse? We can get you some curtains and a rug. ...”
    “No thanks, Ma,” I said. “I’m set now. Really I am.”
    She looked down now and played with her food. Her terrible sloppy overcooked food that she always made unless she burned it. I didn’t miss the food, but I could live with it, no problem. She was hurting, I could finally see, and I was surprised by that. Somewhere inside, I was pleased by that. As I looked at her, I understood I was hurting too, and I was most surprised by that. I would be back, I wanted to tell her, but not till Terry was out of the picture. I wasn’t here because of him, and I couldn’t accept that anymore.
    There was nothing really left to say. Ma brought me there for that one conversation, and we were no good at anything like natural give-and-take. Dad didn’t particularly care whether I was at his table or not, as long as I didn’t get between him and the refreshments. All that was left, creepily enough, was the Terry dance. He stared, he bit, he drank, he slobbered, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He smirked at me, he winked, he coughed little pieces of food so they landed on my plate. I looked back at him, not shying away like I used to. We set it all up right there across the table, without words. A bull and a bullfighter, or just a bull and another bull. We had a date. I was either coming over to the other side, or else. ...
    “Ma, supper was great,” Terry said as he got up. “We gotta go now.”
    “We?” she asked,
    He looked down at me. “Ya.”
    Ma looked to me, her face questioning.
    “Ya,” I said firmly.
    “We’re gonna take Mickey for a walk.”
    Ma looked both hopeful and afraid, even more confused about all this than I was. Dad just waved his fork at us. “You two don’t make no sense at