Free Getting Away With Murder by Howard Engel

Phil, one of Abe Wise’s hoods. Then I had to laugh. How quickly we adapt to any situation.
    I drove through the double line of fast-food outlets and service stations to my parents’ town house off Ontario Street. It was the first house in the row and my father’s car was not parked in front. He must have been showing off his gin rummy prowess at the club. I could picture him, still smelling of talcum and a little pink from the sauna. I let myself in and found my mother watching television.
    “Manny? Is that you?” Her eyes must have been temporarily blinded from looking at the screen.
    “It’s only me,” I said, taking off my coat and hanging it over one of the dining-room chairs. “What’s up?” I asked.
    “Up? What should be up at this time of day? I’ve got potatoes to peel, that’s what’s up. It’s a woman’s lot, Benny. But first I’ll watch the end of this program. I hope you’re not thinking of staying to dinner. I only have two steaks, one for your father and one for me. You should let me know when you’re in need of a home-cooked meal.”
    “As a matter of fact, Ma, Anna is cooking for me tonight at the apartment.”
    “Anna. Good! A girl that young needs all the practice she can get.”
    “By the time she gets her second set of teeth, she’ll be able to boil an egg.”
    “She’s still living with her father. I hear he has a French cook. Tell me you never eat snails, Benny.”
    “Ma, it’s a big house and Anna has her own apartment in the back. And as for the snails, I’ve only seen the dining-room twice. Both times the table was covered with drawings from her father’s collection.”
    “Why don’t you make us both a cup of tea?” I did that and when I returned to the orange living-room, Ma’s program was over and the set turned off. I put the tray down on a coffee-table.
    “Be careful of my Chinese ginger pots, Benny. I love them better than my life.” Ma wasn’t exaggerating. Once, when Sam and I were still in pyjamas with feet in them, Grantham was hit by a small earthquake. Instead of carrying her two children out of the house, Ma took the ginger pots away from danger wrapped in a blanket. Sam says the blanket came from one of our cribs, but I think that that’s big-city cynicism showing.
    “Ma, I’ve been thinking that it’s been a long time since you and Pa have had a holiday. Why don’t the two of you take off?”
    “What have you been smoking, Benny? Just like that, we should go away! Why? Do you need the house? What are you thinking about?”
    “I just thought that you could use a change of scene, that’s all. Is it a crime to wish you out of this cold weather? It’s been a long winter and you didn’t get away at all.”
    “Except for the two weeks in Miami Beach.”
    “Yeah.”
    “And the week at Myrtle Beach.”
    “I forgot about Myrtle Beach. Okay, you don’t need a vacation. I was just thinking that Pa looked a little frail when I saw him last week.”
    “Frail? Manny frail? Why shouldn’t he be frail? He’s seventy years old, Benny. A lot of people his age have been dead for ten years.”
    “That’s why I suggested that you both get away. Treat yourselves to a second honeymoon.”
    “Are you coming up with the airline tickets?”
    “I wish I could afford to send you on a trip around the world: London, Paris, Rome!”
    “And as for a second honeymoon, the less you and Sam know about that part of our lives, the better I like it.”
    “Don’t you just want to get out of Grantham when the winter won’t stop? It’s supposed to be spring, but where are the buds on the trees? Where are the crocuses?”
    “How do you manage to boil a kettle and make cold tea, Benny?” I could see I wasn’t going to move my mother beyond the reach of Abe Wise’s influence. I could hope to do better when my father arrived. If he came down against the proposition, Ma would begin to see some virtue in it. I didn’t lose heart and I wasn’t surprised. I just had