Free Call Me Tuesday by Leigh Byrne

string of pearls. Daddy, almost a foot taller, stood behind her with his hands wrapped around her tiny waist he loved so much. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit and an I-just-won-the-big-prize grin on his face. He had the same dazed look he always had whenever he was around her, like he was anesthetized by her potent pheromones, causing everything around him to be fuzzy, unclear.
    I could tell by the things I had heard Mama say to Daddy when they argued that she thought he was just this side of ugly. Like any young girl, I thought my daddy was the handsomest man in the world. He was well-groomed and dressed neatly, and he wore his dark-blonde hair in a clean flattop. He was a big man, tall and broad, and square-framed, and as is the case with many men of significant size, his features were large, almost giant-like. His face was also badly scarred with deep pockmarks from the severe acne he had in his youth. Sometimes when she was mad, Mama called him pit face, and I felt sorry for him.
    Once I heard her tell him had she not been a divorcee with a crippled daughter, she would have landed a better man, one who could have provided her with all that she desired, and deserved. Instead she had to “settle,” as she put it, for Daddy, a high school teacher with a meager income. If you looked close at Daddy’s favorite picture of the two of them, you could see her smile was plastic, like the smile on a doll’s face, and she had a mad-at-the-world look deep in her eyes. She was mad because she ended up with the goofy giant instead of the wealthy prince.
    Daddy made it back from the liquor store in record time. Mama took her Southern Comfort into the bedroom, and he joined her, shutting the door behind them.
    More times than not, when they went into their room to “play cards,” Mama got drunk on her alcohol and became angry about something that went on in the bedroom, and came bolting out. When this happened, they typically argued all night long, ruining any chance for Daddy to get lucky. Other nights the door would remain shut and the “card game” would go on as planned. It was the slim possibility and titillating uncertainty that kept him falling for the same routine, time after time.
    On this night I heard them arguing for a while before Mama came out, stomping down the hallway, Daddy right behind her. I watched from my bed as she went into the bathroom and dug through the dirty laundry basket until she found one of his shirts he’d worn to work.
    While he was at the liquor store, I’d seen her put some of her lipstick on the same shirt, and had wondered why she was doing it.
    “This time I have proof you’re screwing around,” she said, holding the tainted shirt in front of his face.
    Since her accident she had convinced herself Daddy was having an affair, and interrogated him about it practically every day. Her paranoia had progressed to the point where she had him strip off all his clothes as soon as he walked in the door from work. Then she spent hours in the bathroom, sniffing every inch of them—even the crotches of his underwear—for traces of perfume, and inspecting them, thread by thread, for makeup. She failed to find anything incriminating on his clothing, and this became a great source of frustration for her, because she was sure he was sleeping with someone.
    “What the hell are you talking about, Rose?” Daddy asked, genuinely bewildered.
    “Take a look for yourself, you bastard, and you tell me .” She pushed the shirt with the “evidence” on it closer to his eyes. “There’s lipstick all over your collar. Don’t you think I know lipstick when I see it?”
    Daddy took the shirt from her, and examined it closely. He was becoming more and more confused by the minute; you could see it in his face. “I don’t know how this—whatever it is—got on my shirt, but I am not having an affair.”
    “Who is she, Nick?”
    “There is no one!” Daddy shouted, as he walked away.
    Mama followed