“That thing work?” Sam nodded at the old flintlock hanging behind his father on the living room wall. They were sitting, bathed in the light of his dad’s old laptop, bent over bowls of carbonara Sam had made as soon as he’d got home. He’d used bacon bits and Pam for the sauce. Guanciale was too expensive.
“What thing?” His father, Brian, asked, chewing slowly, eyes still on the TV. They were watching a game show. Something about convincing people you were rich in order to win a cash prize.
“The gun.”
Brian turned and looked at the weapon mounted over his head.
“Oh,” he said thoughtfully. “No clue.”
Sam nodded, slurping bucatini.
“Should sell it.”
Brian shook his head, chewing.
“Heirloom.” He swallowed. “That was your mom’s.”
Silence.
They ate, watching the made-up men and women on the screen posture and prune. Some buff twenty-something who was vaguely European, was being interviewed against a neon orange backdrop.
“Fake eet till ew make eet, bay-bee!” He stuck his tongue out, and the shot transitioned to a group of girls frolicking in a swimming pool.
“Yeah. Your mom’s.” Brian grimaced and set his bowl down on the coffee table, only half finished. “How was your first day?”
Sam snorted. His trial shift as “lead generator” for Driveway Optimization Inc. had been shadowed by Brady, a loud, muscled kid, with razor-burn on his neck, who’d spouted truisms like ‘This job’s about convincing people there’s a problem and you’re the solution.’
“I got the job.”
His father sighed in relief. Then, “You don’t sound thrilled.”
Sam shrugged, chewing. “No, it’s good. It’ll be good.”
“Better than Marzocco’s?”
“Anything’s better than Marzocco’s”
Brian smiled. “Okay, so? Sell me something.”
“Nah,” Sam said.
“What? I’m too broke?”
His dad’s joke hung in the air, festering like mold-smell. Sam laughed, humourlessly. Brian was still watching the show.
“I just don’t love the whole convince-people-to-buy-stuff thing?” Sam said after a beat. He slurped up his last noodle and put the empty bowl down. “You have any luck today?”
Brian kept his eyes glued at the screen. Slowly, he shook his head.
Sam could feel his father’s shame, his tension, him folding inwards.
He cleared his throat, changing the subject. “This one place was a dump.” Sam eyed his dad, looking for a smile. “And the client was super weird.”
Sam chewed his lip, recollecting the details of the day.
The house had been like a set from a horror movie: dead lawn, leafless ivy burrowing tendrils into patches of crumbling brickwork, a random chain around a dead tree. Each window had a thick film of grime, and the driveway was littered with potholes. When they rang the doorbell, a murder of crows had actually erupted from the house’s roof, screaming skywards.
The woman who answered the door fit the house perfectly. Wild grey hair, thin lips ringed with wrinkles, and she moved like she’d just rolled out of a crypt.
“She was wearing this ratty pink bathrobe, and these fuzzy bunny slippers, and her eyes were two different colours,” Sam told Brian. “It was past 3 p.m. and she’d just woken up, but she let us inside anyway.”
Inside, every surface had been covered in clothes, and dishes, and so much dust. A piece of birthday cake sat on a china plate in the window sill. The icing was intact, vibrant green and fuchsia. The rest bloomed with blue mold, peppered with mouse droppings.
Brian wasn’t biting, but Sam continued, desperately. “Brady was like–” he adopted Brady’s affected baritone “‘Ma’am, your driveway looks like shit.’”
His father stayed quiet.
“Well, he didn’t say ‘shit,’” Sam corrected. “He was like ‘your driveway looks terrible,’ and she got this look like when soldiers in movies realize they’ve been shot? And slumped down on her couch, and her robe fell wide open.”
Brian raised an eyebrow. “Did she notice?”
Sam smiled, shaking his head. This was the sort of embarrassing detail he knew his father would be fascinated by. This had been a close call. Brian could wallow silently for days.
“Brady tried to keep going with the sale,” he continued. “And I couldn’t stop laughing, and she was just like–” He screwed his face into a confused scowl. “‘Is something funny?’”
Brian laughed “Is something funny?” He repeated.
The episode they’d been watching ended, but before the next one could play, a message flashed across the screen’.
Oops! Looks like your subscription’s payment method was declined. Would you like to register a new one?
Brian slumped. “Shit.”
“We can use my card,” Sam offered.
His father shook his head and yawned. “Forget it.” He rolled over in the recliner. “Night.”
Sam sighed. He stood, collecting the dirty dishes and the untouched ones he’d left Brian at breakfast.
“Night, Dad.” He turned off the TV and went to the kitchen.
As Sam scraped his father’s scraps into a Tupperware and scrubbed the dishes with diluted soap, he thought of the details he hadn’t told Brian. He thought of the blanket-covered recliner in the woman’s living room, how that pile of blankets had wriggled and shifted, revealing an ancient woman, her pink scalp totally visible through the cobweb of hair haloing her head. He and Brady were startled and horrified when she opened her toothless mouth and screamed.
“My mother,” the woman in the open robe had explained, lifting a bowl of still steaming oatmeal from where it balanced on a side table, spooning the old woman a bite.
The mother shrieked, sticking out her tongue and blowing chunks of hot porridge all over the blankets.
The robed woman sighed, grabbing a tea towel, and dabbing the old woman’s quivering lips. She stroked her mother’s hair and took up the spoon again.
Sam wiped down the counter. As he passed the living room on his way to bed, he looked up at his mother’s musket, heavy, dark, wood, and realized he’d never sell it.
He blew the gun a kiss.
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