Tuesday is curry night; sauce, from a tin, sieved to remove the sultanas.
“You want chips?” asks Dad.
“Of course,” you reply. Stomach lining for later.
“That’s my boy.”
Dad dunks the potatoes into the pan, oil sizzling and hissing an inch beneath the rim. You flinch, every time.
“Don’t be a girl,” he says. “It’s just water in the spuds.”
*
You flash ID, thumb over the photo, and follow Ross across the crowded dancefloor to the room where darkness cloaks. Breathless grunting-cursing-moaning punctuates the bodies slapping, slippery as butter, and the relentless thumping bass. You feel the way: smooth face; chest slick with sweat; coarse hair below the navel; a button-up fly.
*
“You were late last night,” Dad says. “Where’d you go?”
“Just a club.”
“Isn’t Tuesday night for poofs? You weren’t with that Ross, were you?”
He turns his back to you, lowers the chip basket into the pan. A roar, like thunder. He lifts it out, stands an arm’s length away, contorts his body from the spitting, angry fat. But today is different: too much water, or too much starch, or too much heat. The oil rises, thick and frothy, gushing over the top, down the sides, and onto the naked flame.
The look on his face: you never forget it. You tell your mates. You tell your fuck buddies. You tell your husband before he is your husband and his Guardian-reading folks. You tell your therapist and then, later, your social worker. And, in twenty years’ time, you tell your son, who wriggles, giggles then leaps from your lap, pleading – please, please, pretty please – for silly old Grandad to make homemade chips for tea.
---
First published in Restore to Factory Settings: Bash Flash Fiction Volume 5, 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment