The slow drip of the kitchen faucet created the perfect metronome accompaniment to Georgie's smacking lips as he chewed with his mouth open. Kelly would have flipped on the TV to mask the noise if she had been more alert, but she was still nursing her first cup of coffee. It usually took three cups and a single slice of toast, laden generously with grape jelly, before she felt human. This morning felt more like an eight-cup morning.
Morris let go of a phlegm-loosening cough from behind his morning paper then turned pages. The crinkle of the paper sounded like a herd of geese migrating across the kitchen. Kelly was having second thoughts about a workday at the factory considering the effect minor noises about her own house were having on her heightened senses.
The racket at the factory will drive me to drink. Just the thought of alcohol turned her stomach, and she made a dash for the bathroom down the hall.
Surprisingly, the purging process acted as a revitalizer. Combined with the cooling effect of a wet cloth and a Listerine rinse, work didn't sound so impossible now-at least not for the same reasons.
She wandered back into the kitchen and resumed her place at the table. Her son Georgie feigned concern, asking if she was all right even though he didn't pause from crunching the sugar-coated cereal dowsed in milk long enough to hear her response. Morris pretended not to have heard. It was just like him. He didn't hear her ask for the car yesterday either or for him to mow the lawn the day before.
Georgie picked up his bowl and tipped it to his lips, slurping down the last of the milk before slapping the bowl onto the table. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and reached for the backpack lying next to his chair.
"I'm going to Kevin's after school. I'll be gone 'til Sunday." The eighteen-year-old Georgie was already out the back door before the words were out of his mouth.
"Do you need money?" Kelly asked as an afterthought long after he had disappeared.
Morris grunted, "He's gone."
Kelly was mildly surprised he noticed.
The hall clock proclaimed the time with eight strikes of the bell. The clock itself was no bigger than a pie pan but it struck the hour and the half-hour with all the fuss of the antique grandfather clock she had always wanted. Morris had often promised her one, but the purchase had been put off until money wasn't so tight. It seemed like that day would never come. Last year, she had even been forced to take a job at the sewing factory to help make ends meet.
