Father of the Rain by Lily King

in our booth, the three of us on a Sunday night.
    Patrick and I order spareribs. We slather on the sweet-and-sour sauce and compete to see who can gnaw down to a clear bone quicker.
    “You two are revolting,” Frank says.
    My father looks at me hard. “You ever see your mother eat a piece of chicken?”
    “No,” I lie.
    He breaks into a fake smile and chuckles. I can tell there is nothing funny about how my mother eats chicken. “She’d eat everything—tendons, cartilage, the works. Then she’d crack open the bone and suck it dry. I’m not kidding.” He shakes his head. “She was a beauty.”
    “Now you’re the chicken bone,” Mrs. Tabor says, pleased with her analogy.
    My father isn’t pleased. He mutters something I can’t hear and tries to gesture to Roy, who turns and goes into the kitchen without acknowledging him.
    Elyse, reaching for a different crayon, knocks her water straight into my father’s lap.
    He leaps up and screams “Goddammit!” as loud as he’s able, as if he’s forgotten we’re in a restaurant. “Goddammit! Goddammit!” His yellow eyes in his purple face flash from Elyse to Mrs. Tabor. The restaurant is silent. Roy stands stunned by the fish tank.
    Mrs. Tabor starts laughing.
    “Fuck you, you little bitch. Fuck you!” He picks up a chair like he’s going to throw it at her, but it just shakes in his hands untilRoy’s father comes and puts it back down and wipes up the spill. Mrs. Tabor never quite wipes the smirk off her face.
    My father sometimes irritated my mother by complaining too much about Hugh Stewart, his boss at the brokerage firm. She’d tell him to hush and sometimes he might say
Hush yourself
, but that’s about as heated as they ever got in front of me. He yelled, but it was never at her; it was always about someone else. And when she was mad at him, she squeezed her lips together and looked away. I wonder what Roy and his father think has happened to my father, who used to chat easily with them up at the counter while he was paying the bill.
    Elyse continues to color in her place mat and Frank looks blankly at the wall ahead of him, but Patrick is crying. I take slow breaths and count backward from a thousand in my head. Roy slips a blue parasol beside my spoon. It has a thin band of paper around it, keeping it shut.
    On the way home, Elyse asks my father to sing her favorite song. He seems to know what she means because he starts singing: “Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your ears are mighty ...” He pauses and she fills in—
blue
—and he continues: “Yes, my Lord, I’ve been pooping in my shoe.” Elyse tries to join in but she’s laughing too hard, so my father sings the chorus alone:
“Every little creature’s gotta shine shine shine.
Every little creature’s gotta shine.”
     
    It’s hard to leave the next afternoon. I want to go, but it feels awful, like I’m leaving my father all over again. I keep putting it off, letting Elyse talk me into a game of Candyland, making water balloons with Patrick.
    They’re in the sunroom when I go to say goodbye.
    “I’m going to hit the road now.”
    “All right,” my father says, looking at Mrs. Tabor. “See ya.”
    I go over and kiss him on the cheek. He keeps his eyes fixed on Mrs. Tabor and does not kiss back. “I’ll be back Friday.”
    “When school starts, come with Patrick in the car pool. I think it’s Mrs. Utley on Fridays,” Mrs. Tabor says.
    I don’t know if I should kiss her. “Okay. Thanks for everything.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    As soon as I cross the threshold, my father begins his hoarse whisper and Mrs. Tabor shushes him and then begins whispering, too.
    At the end of the driveway I almost turn my bike around. I picture going back in the sunroom, asking if I can stay just one more night. But once I’m out on the main road, my legs start pumping the pedals hard and I don’t even look at the front of the house as I whiz past.
    I feel light and free as my bike drops down the long