Family and Other Accidents by Shari Goldhagen

them, Jack and his friends played lots of pool, and he’s still pretty good, even stoned. By the time Connor was old enough to play, though, the table was a storage area for boxes of unused things. He’s decent with straight shots, but every time he tries to angle a ball off the rim, Jack is reminded of the C his brother got in high school geometry. For reasons Mona explains with only a smile, she’s the best of them all, taking trick shots with the cue behind her back. And Frankie is awful, or maybe she pretends to be awful so Connor can guide her hands on the wood pole, position her slim hips against the table’s varnished curves. They play three games, Jack and Mona winning all of them easily.
    â€œYou hungry, Conn?” Frankie asks, running her pale hands up and down her cue so gratuitously it’s laughable. “Jack and Mo can play a winner’s tournament, and you and I can check out the leftover cookie situation.”
    Connor nods, follows Frankie upstairs. Watching them leave, Jack sits on the end of the pool table and realizes he isn’t mad at his brother anymore—not for drinking too much, or getting high, or screwing around with the total sexual predator, not for almost starting a fight or for being disappointed in Jack for becoming their father. But Jack
does
feel as though he might cry, which is strange because he can’t remember the last time he cried—when his mother died? the end of
Hoosiers
? He tosses his cue from hand to hand, stares at the cheap carpeting.
    â€œJack?” Mona’s voice is like cotton gauze. Sitting next to him, she runs fingertips through his dark hair. “What’s wrong?”
    Shaking his head, he touches his lips to her cheek, whispers, “I like your family.”
    â€œBut?”
    â€œNo, there’s no ‘but,’ I really like them.” It’s true. There’s something charming about her mother’s horrible sweater and the fact that her father is the fun kind of alcoholic. Even the ghosts of Mona Past and Mona Future are amusing—Melanie because she has given up trying and Frankie because she tries so fucking hard.
    â€œDoes my family make you miss your parents?” she asks.
    â€œMaybe.” But he doesn’t think that’s it; there is a “but,” but he’s not sure what it is.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she says. He turns his face to hers, and she kisses his forehead, both eyebrows. He closes his eyes, and she kisses the lids. “I wish I could have met them.”
    When Jack thinks about his parents, he thinks about how he wanted his father there when he got his bar results or how he would have liked his mother to yell at the doctors when he was hospitalized with bronchitis last year. Never once in the thirteen months he has been with Mona has Jack ever lamented her not knowing them. That is as close to the “but” as he can get, but he doesn’t say anything because a launch sequence has been initiated. He’s kissing her harder as she fiddles with his belt; then he’s got her on her back on the green felt table. Pulling off her gray pants, he licks her ankle, her calf, her knee, her thigh. He slides down her panties and licks the folds of skin—the only part of her body that’s ever warm. She chews her lower lip, and a bead of blood swells at the spot where he bit her in the kitchen. As she comes, her arms fly up, knocking around all the stripes Connor and Frankie couldn’t sink.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    When they finish and Jack goes upstairs to Frankie’s room, Connor is already sprawled across the bed, long legs and arms everywhere, Frankie nowhere in sight. In the dark, Jack puts on the cotton pajamas Mona gave him as part of his Christmas gift and moves his brother’s hot body to one side.
    â€œHey.” Connor smacks Jack’s hands. “Go sleep with your girlfriend. As sort of your Christmas present to