Houses

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April 2009

Houses

By Mhari Mackenna

"You're in trouble now," Emory says, more cheerfully than he feels. He has a dark-green monopoly; Annika, with her weakness for bright reds and oranges, tends to stick to the low end of the board. He lets her put up his houses, lining them in a neat row along the color strip. She likes that part.

            Her father is in the bedroom, alone, with the shade pulled down. Whatever the doctor has him on, it isn't taking; the seizures are coming every few days, leaving him exhausted and nauseous and apologetic, and Emory hates it.   Not the seizures themselves, though they're bad enough, or the lull afterwards while he cleans up vomit and worse – "Honey, would I be here if I had a problem with your bodily fluids?" he said once, and got a laugh. It's the apologies he can't stand, the look of acute shame on Alex's face for what isn't even his doing.

            And he hates not being here when it happens, leaving the work and the look for eight-year-old Annika to deal with. Even if he moved in, as he's been asked to, he couldn't be there all the time. Couldn't make it go away. Couldn't shield them from everything.

            Annika rolls double sixes. Skips her pewter shoe straight over his rows of houses, on to safety. He catches her eye, and smiles for her. "Lucky you."

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