"Onions"

[This is a story I wrote up a while back; a couple years ago, as a matter of fact.  I think I'd been reading too much Hemingway at the time.]

Tommy sat silently at the kitchen table and watched his father chop onions by the sink.  The smell hurt his nose but it meant they were having meat for dinner.  He eyed the white paper parcel atop the stove.

“What are we having, Dad?”

“Dinner, boy.”

“What kind of meat?”

“Liver.”

“Is it beef or chicken?”  Tommy scrunched up his face as though the latter were poison.  He hated chicken liver.

“Beef, boy.”

Tommy sighed, relieved.  Liver and onions and boiled potatoes.  The potatoes were already boiling in the big pot.  It gurgled as it boiled and occasionally hissed when it spat water over the sides onto the burner.

“Do you want any help, Dad?”

The big grizzled man smiled warmly at his son.  He was a good boy.  Considerate in an often thoughtless world.

“Yeah, boy.  You could start frying the liver for me if you want.  Remember how?”

Tommy nodded eagerly.  He’d watched his old man do it a hundred times.  He hopped off the chair and grabbed the wooden footstool from the corner and placed it in front of the counter.  He pulled a big black skillet from off its hood over said counter and moved both skillet and stool to the stove.

“Could you reach me the oil, Dad?”

Without moving so much as a step he pulled down a bottle of canola from the shelf above the stove.  As Tommy took it from his father he couldn’t help but wonder at his huge gnarled hands.  They were red and hairy and some of the knuckles were swollen and discolored.

“You remember how much to use?”

“Yeah, Dad.  And the burner on high?”

“Nope.  High is too much.  Set it on medium high.”

Tommy turned on the burner closest him and poured a generous amount of oil into the skillet.  The potato pot let loose another loud hiss.  Tommy took the white paper package in his hands and tore open the folds, careful not to drop the two livers inside.  They were soft and rubbery and reddish brown, not mustard grey like the chicken type.  The oil snapped and popped quietly as Tommy laid each piece in the pan.

“Don’t forget the spatula, boy.”

“Oh!  Yessir,” and Tommy hopped off his stool and ran to the drawer full of kitchen implements and knives.  He looked but there was no sign of the spatula.

“I can’t find it, Dad.”

“Try the other drawer over here.”

“The junk drawer?”

He gave an assenting grunt and Tommy darted to the other end of the kitchen.  The liver was snapping and crackling louder now.

“Hurry, before it burns up.”  There was no sense of urgency in his voice, only instructive calm.

“Found it!” Tommy cried excitedly.  He bounded back onto the stool and gingerly began scraping up the liver.  They had turned grayish brown on the one side so he flipped them over.  A splash of grease spat with a snap onto his hand.  Tommy’s hands were still much smaller and whiter and softer than his father’s.

“Ow!”  Tommy recoiled briefly.  He rubbed at his wounded hand.

“You okay?”

“Yessir.  It was only a little drop.”

“You did good, boy.  Now step aside and I can drop in these onions.  Should be up in a couple minutes, if you want to go upstairs and wash up.”

“Okay, Dad.”

His old man cupped the onion in his hands and brought them over to the stove while Tommy put the stool back in its corner and walked slowly upstairs.  He didn’t like to wash up and he wished he could have cooked the onions himself, or at least have finished the liver.  He rubbed the red mark on the knuckle of his right hand.  It hurt like a bitch.

“It hurts like a bitch,” Tommy said to himself in the mirror.  He mouthed the word a few times.  Bitch.  It was a fascinating word and it seemed to snap off his tongue.  “Sonofabitch,” he said, imitating Father.  By the time he came down again his father was just setting down the plates on their plain wooden table.

“Jesus, boy, didja take a shower up there, too?”  Father and son grinned at each other and sat down to eat.  They didn’t have to say grace anymore.  Tommy preferred being able to just sit down and eat.  He wolfed down his potatoes and liver as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“Slow down, goddammit!  You’ll choke,” his father said between mouthfuls.  But his potatoes were soft and peppery and the liver hot and filling.  In a matter of minutes they were gone and Tommy slid out of his seat to put the plate in the sink.  His father snapped his fingers at him authoritatively as he tried to swallow what was in his mouth.

“Hold on, boy!  What about those onions?  Finish them up first.”

Tommy’s face dropped.  “Do I have to?”

“I’m afraid so.”

He sat back down and surveyed his plate sullenly.  There was a baker’s dozen big sautéed onion pieces scattered about.  Tommy forked one and begrudgingly put it into his mouth.  He bit into it and it was sweet and crunchy and white like a maggot.  Tommy hated maggots.  Once he’d seen a dead dog at the side of the street and he threw a rock at it.  It was already mostly flattened down the middle but the rock hit its shoulder and it broke open and maggots came out.  White writhing maggots, squirming in the meaty brackish red insides of a dead dog.  Tommy threw up after he saw it and ever since, onions reminded him of maggots.

“When is Mom coming back?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t think she ever is, boy.”

“Oh.”

They ate in silence.  Tommy his maggots, Father his ashes.