Free Eat Cake: A Novel by Jeanne Ray Page B

the steel sticking through my father’s flesh looked like it hurt—a lot. The doctor who examined him at the hospital where Sam used to work said it was one of the worst collections of breaks he’d seen in years. I still found myself wincing as I dabbed the antibiotic ointment on the pin sites three times a day. “Sam picked him up at the hospital, remember?”
    “Which leads me to my next point: The amount of time Sam spends with your father is a little worrisome.”
    “Worrisome?” I said. “Just be grateful. Sam is the one cutting his meat, getting him dressed.” I looked at my mother meaningfully. “
Other
things.”
    “He’s sainted, I’ll give you that. But doesn’t it seem like Sam is, well, changing?”
    I picked up two white socks and balled them together. “Sam is Sam,” I said, not entirely unaware of what she was talking about.
    She took the socks out of my hands. “These don’t match.” She unrolled the bundle and threw them back in the pile. “You don’t pay attention, Ruth. You’ve always lived in your head. It’s time to come down to the real world. Sam has been a hardworking man his whole life. Now all of a sudden he’s lying on the couch eating cheese puffsand watching basketball? I think that’s a pretty significant change. He should be out there looking for a job or at the very least polishing up his résumé.” She turned the pile of laundry over a couple of times as if she were looking for evidence to support her case. “Look at this. There’s not a single dress shirt in here.”
    “Listen, Sam has been working nonstop for as long as I’ve known him. He hardly ever gets to go sailing or even read a novel. I can hardly remember him ever taking a nap. So why not let him relax for a little while?”
    “You’re starting to sound like your father. Your father is a virus, you know that, don’t you? Everything that’s bad about him spreads.”
    I looked at my watch. “Your program is on,” I said. It was like throwing a pork chop for a dog. That was all it took. My mother dropped her line of reasoning and went scurrying down the hall toward Oprah.
    I could see my mother’s point, but I thought it was more important to stick up for my husband than it was to agree with her. Sure, Sam wasn’t himself, but were any of us? What about my mother, who had suddenly gone from being awkward and indecisive to being someone who was extremely certain of what she wanted? Or Camille, whose enormous personality was no match for my father’s? I hadn’t seen her lose her temper once since my father’s arrival and not, I suspected, because she was any happier. I thought back to my stress-reduction class. The instructor said that one of the most challenging things that could happen to a family was to gain or lose a member. “Think of a mobile,” he told us. “You take a piece off, you put a piece on, none of the other pieces are in balance anymore.” So Sam wasn’t in balance. Wasn’t that normal?
    Of course, abnormality is easier to take in normal times, which these weren’t. Sam was also out of a job. I couldn’t help but think that something had happened to him on that drive to Des Moines. He had left the house feeling frantic and resolved to find work and had come home completely at peace with his unemployment. I wanted him to have some peace. I also wanted him to get a job, but I figured there would be plenty of time to discuss that in the future.
    But now that my father lived with us, there was very little danger of having to wait around for things to be discussed.
    “I’ve been trying my best to talk Sam into going to medical school,” my father began at dinner that night. I was sitting next to my father, spearing chunks of paprika chicken and mushrooms onto his fork.
    “Not medical school again,” Camille said, pushing her plate away. She was wearing a tiny tie-dyed T-shirt with dizzying spirals of fuchsia and aquamarine. Every time I saw it I thought
peace
.
    “Eat your