When She Was Bad

CHAPTER FIVE
1

Al Corder changed into khaki slacks and a soft old blue-and-brown-checked flannel shirt, worn tails-out to cover his paunch, then he transferred the contents of his pockets-wallet, coins, fifty bucks in a $-shaped money-clip, a hospital pager, and a Swiss Army knife-from the suit pants to either the khakis or the top of the bureau. As he tossed the suit into the dry-cleaning pile in the closet, Cheryl emerged from the bathroom in her slip and began rummaging through her bureau.

“You done in the bathroom?” he asked her, patting her plump rear as he brushed past her.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

But he quickly doubled back, stooped in a Groucho Marx crouch, to ogle the white breasts dangling fatly beneath the thin fabric of her slip as she bent over to search the bottom drawer of her bureau. “Why, I haven’t seen a pair of melons like that since they closed the farmers’ market.” He waggled his eyebrows and tapped the ash from an imaginary cigar.

“Steady there,” said Cheryl, but she allowed her husband a quick fondle before changing into a dark blue skirt and a white cotton blouse with a moderate neckline-over the last year or so, she’d caught Lyssy staring at her chest with more than passing interest. She crossed the hall and rapped at Alison’s door. “You almost ready, honey?”

Alison opened the door wearing below-the-navel jeans and a skintight sleeveless top that barely reached the bottom of her rib cage. “Oh, Allie, you’re not wearing that, are you?”

The girl looked down at herself. “Well, yeah, Mom-I appear to be,” she observed drily.

“At least put on a sweater.”

“I’m not cold.”

“It’s not your temperature I’m worried about,” her mother retorted.

While mother and daughter fought their age-old battle, father ran an electric razor over his five-o’clock shadow, then splashed on some Old Spice aftershave, which he preferred to the designer brands his wife and daughter continued to give him every Father’s Day. Cheryl and Alison were still arguing in the hallway when he left the bedroom. “Holy cow, is that what you’re wearing?” he asked Alison guilelessly.

“I’m not a baby anymore!” she shouted. “Why don’t the two of you just grow up!”