Page 13 of Family Affair

Going in for the kill, Cade vaulted over the desk scattering the paint tubes. The Madonnas tumbled to the floor.

And then the door opened, and their father stood there framed by the bright lights of the hallway.

The brothers froze in whatever position they happened to be at the moment, looking around wildly but in vain for an escape route.

“What’s going on here?” Rick’s voice carried just a hint of a slur, telling Frank that his father was shitfaced, which made him especially volatile.

Cade hunched his shoulders and assumed a docile expression. “Nothing, Father. We were just leaving. Good night.”

He tried to get past him and out of the door, but Rick wouldn’t have it.

“You aren’t going anywhere before you explain what you are doing in my study,” he glanced at the clock, “in the middle of the night.”

Cade clammed up.

“Frank? Speak up, son.”

“Playing,” he mumbled knowing that silence would only earn him a blow on the head. “Just fooling around.”

Rick gave them a long searching look and harrumphed before turning to leave. “I catch you like this one more time, you’ll get your asses whipped. Pick up the mess and get the hell out of here.”

And he would have let them go, lenient as he sometimes was for the boys’ roughhousing, if not for the nasal, hysterical voice of Juicy Abe who squeezed into the study from behind Rick.

“Oh, my good Lord Jesus! Oh, the stupid, ignorant boys! What have you done? My paintings!”

Rick halted.

Abe dropped to his knees to pick up the fallen reproductions, fingering each one, ascertaining that the wooden frames under the canvas remained whole.

“Okay, okay, they’re safe. Christ on the cross, I nearly had a heart attack.”

Straining and groaning, he was in the process of picking his bulk off the floor when his gaze fell on the easel. His face completely drained of color, making if not a heart attack then a stroke imminent.

“Uhhrrhhh…” His fat lips worked, his triple chin undulated, but no coherent words came out.

“What?” Rick’s sharp voice crackled in the stunned silence. At the same time, his arm shot out to grab Frank’s throat and pin him to the wall. Cade jumped back and out of reach.

Abe drew a deep breath and sang, “Someone painted over my Madonna and now it is ruined oh what should I do and where will I find the money to pay for the damages and I will be forever discredited and the client will have me cremated alive…”

“Hush, Abe.” Ward Williamson walked in and laid a consoling, gentle hand on Abe’s shoulder.

Frank didn’t get to see what else Ward did to cut off Abe’s wails.

“You little shit,” Rick shook him like a rag doll. “Do you know what you ruined? A custom fucking order! The five identical Grieving Madonnas. You destroyed one of them. What do you have to say?” He slammed Frank against the wall.

Scared, remorseful, and completely incapacitated, Frank suddenly felt hot from anger.

“Abe can’t paint worth the shit.” He wasn’t in a position to criticize, but he squeezed the words past his constricted larynx anyway. “He can’t make them identical.”

“That’s not true! What do you know, gnat?” Abe denied with vehemence laced with a great deal of uncertainty. Frank knew then that he hit a sore spot, and that the smelly bastard had taken on a job he wasn’t qualified to do.

This knowledge gained him nothing.

Rick threw him across the room like a dog who peed on the carpet. He landed in a heap, face down and nose pressed to the palette that had fallen on the floor from Cade’s jumping hurdles over the desk.

He stayed in this uncomfortable position, afraid to move, eyes shut, inhaling the familiar, comforting smell of paint and praying to his Virgin Mary for a miracle that would take him away from this room. Any time now.

His father and Abe conversed in hushed tones, their manner urgent, their foul language brain-numbing even to someone as potty-mouthed as Frank.