Where the dead lay

SIX

Vicky Schlegel put a plate of egg whites and whole grain toast down on the kitchen table and turned back to a pan sizzling on the stove behind her. The Smiley Morning Show played on the countertop radio. Outside, the dogs, smelling the food, were stirring in their run.

“Hold on, I’ve got your bacon about ready, hon.” She drew on her cigarette and appraised her youngest boy Kenny’s shirtless back as he salted his eggs. He was getting big from all the lifting, just like his brothers. He was already bigger than his father, Terry, but not bigger than Terry had been at that age. They’d met when he was a few years older, but she’d seen pictures.

“You know I can’t eat that fatty shit, Ma.”

“I know, I know. It’s turkey bacon,” Vicky said, shoveling the strips out of the pan with a spatula and moving away from the stove.

“Awesome.”

“You asked me once, that’s all it takes, dear,” she said and put the strips on his plate. He looked up and she saw the bruise purpling on his cheek.

“Kenny-bear, what happened to your face?”

“Training, Ma,” he shrugged. “It’s nothing. Gimme some character, right?”

She smiled, and then her eye fell on the nasty black tattoo on the left side of Kenny’s chest. “RTD,” in Gothic lettering. It was some rapper’s slogan-“Ready To Die.” The thought of it made her shudder. All three of her boys wore ink. It was the style now. Damn disgrace, she thought. “Spray paint on a Rembrandt,” was what she said when Kenny had come home with the lettering on his seventeenth birthday last year.

“You think I could get some OJ, Mrs. Schlegel?” the little blonde asked. Vicky turned toward the girl-Karen, was it? — and picked up her cigarettes. Three handsome boys like hers, all with the ladies’ man gene courtesy of their father, and it was a constant stream of chippies in the house for Vicky to deal with. She should’ve held the line when Charlie, her oldest, started asking if it’d “be cool if his girlfriend crashed on Friday nights.” She should’ve told him it certainly was not cool. And she would’ve if she had foreseen that the Fridays would turn into weekend-long “hangs.” By the time her middle boy, Dean, started dating, they had “guests” on weeknights, too. Then, when Kenny made it to high school three years ago, it became a regular flow of horny little things parading through the house. She couldn’t keep the names straight and didn’t even try anymore.

At one point a few years back Vicky had gone to her husband to put an end to it. “What should they do, go fuck in a car like the tar babies?” Terry had said. “Besides, you’re the one who says you’re too young to be a grandma.”

“C’mon, Terry,” she pleaded.

“Rubbers and a room, it’s the least we can do for ’em. Boys’ll be boys,” he said, and laughed. She had a suspicion he liked having the string of ripe little bouncies around. Now it seemed the house was perpetually running out of toilet paper and frozen pizzas, and the little wenches would’ve drummed her out of shampoo and makeup altogether if she didn’t put her foot down on that.

Now Vicky turned to the latest skank du jour at her kitchen table and gave her standard reply: “Oh, honey, listen, I’ll serve my boys till I die, but not their little twists. It’s just a rule I have. So get it yourself.” Vicky jutted her thumb toward the refrigerator and lit her cigarette. A short snort of laughter was the only evidence that Kenny had heard it.

The blonde’s nose wrinkled in hurt. “Jeez. Kenny, can we just do the picture now?”

“In a minute,” he said, taking a bite of his food. Then he piled the egg whites and turkey bacon on the whole grain toast.

The girl made a huffing noise and crossed her arms. Mrs. Schlegel just leaned against the counter and drank her coffee.

“All right,” Kenny said, folding the toast into a sandwich, “Let’s go, ya little hoodrat.”

He got up and led her out of the kitchen. “C’mon, Kenny-bear,” she said and snapped the waistband of his boxer shorts as they went.

“Get off,” he said, swatting at her, causing her to giggle.

Vicky Schlegel reached for the coffeepot and seethed.