Free Swallow the Ocean by Laura Flynn Page B

I was roused too, vigilant, careful, watchful. I straightened in my seat.
    My mother shot sharp questions at my father. “Who’s Hawkins? I’ve never heard you talk about him before.”
    “He’s just a guy, Sally. A guy in business,” my father said.
    “Well, he doesn’t sound like a very good guy.”
    “I don’t know if he is good or not, Sally. I’m just selling him some property.”
    “Well, I don’t think you should work with him,” she said, her voice rushed and rising to a pitched finality. “I don’t think you should work with him at all.”
    “Oh, for crying out loud, Sally,” my father exploded. “This is real estate. You don’t choose who you work with.” He stabbed his fork into his steak, ratcheting up the anger despite himself, then fell silent.
    He chewed hard as he ate, so that his sideburns jumped when his jaw clenched. My mother watched him. Her face was still, and she had stopped eating. I tried to catch Sara’s eyes across the table, but they flickered past mine and fixed instead on my father.
    “Well, I don’t want you to work with him,” my mother said, her head shaking slightly but rapidly back and forth. “There’s something wrong about him.”
    My father swallowed hard. “Sally, you don’t know him,” he said.
    “I don’t need to know him,” she said slowly. “I know.”
    I arranged my peas across my plate with my fork. The fork was heavy in my hand, weighty silver, but dull and tarnished. The peas were a vivid green against the white plate. They rolled and bounced as I moved them. The almost perfect spheres created patterns on the plate, choosing a twin, forming a triad, then shifting alignments again.
    My father sat back in his chair, his shoulders slumped down slightly. He spoke sharply, down into his food. “That’s great, Sal. That’s just great.” He looked straight up at her again. “I’m not going to drop a client every time you get a bad feeling or have a goddamn bad dream. Somebody’s got to earn some money around here.”
    I turned towards my mother. The table was silent, except for the sounds of my father eating. His fork clanked against his plate. My mother was perfectly still, her delicate features stiff, all her concentration fixed on my father.
    I pushed a few peas onto my knife, and glanced back up at my mother, trying to catch her eye. This was a cue for her, an old, familiar one. I wanted her to smile and recite for me, “I eat my peas with honey. I’ve done it all my life. It makes my peas taste funny, but it keeps them on my knife.” She didn’t move.
    “Sally, can’t we just finish eating our dinner?” my father said, still making a great show of eating his own steak.
    My mother didn’t move, didn’t speak. I watched her, but her eyes were glued on him. Because she was so thin, her cheekbones stood out. Her mouth was closed, but the outline of her teeth showed under her upper lip. There was a hardness on her face that I didn’t recognize. Her hands, in fists, rested on either side of her plate. She gripped her fork in her right hand.
    Sara, sitting next to my father, brought her food slowly to her mouth. Her straight black hair had fallen forward on both sides of her face, making a veil that hid her eyes from mine. She took very small bites, chewed them with care, then swallowed.
    My father broke first. Looking up again to face my mother’s cold stare, he quickly put both his hands against the edge of the curved table and pushed his chair back. “I’ve had enough,” he said.
    She rose with him, fast and sudden, leaning into the table as if to reach out and restrain him. In one deft movement, her body charged with energy, she raised her fist in the air and sent the heavy fork straight at my father.
    For just a split second, I met Sara’s eyes in horror as we both tracked the path of the fork. My father, thin and agile, shifted his weight back just in time, almost losing his balance, then catching himself on the arm of the