Lima Beans

Jack was in his bedroom with the door closed. It was Thursday night.

Again.

He heard his mother calling him down to dinner. Not just him, all of them.

Jack had five sisters; all older, all wiser than he; all different from him in ways too numerous and mysterious to either count or describe.

He wished very much for a dog.

He lay on his bed with his head propped up on two pillows listening to his five older sisters marching downstairs to dinner and thought to himself: I need a goddamn dog...

“Jack!” he heard one of his sisters yell from the bottom of the stairs. “Mother requests the pleasure of your company!”

Linda. She was the youngest of his sisters and five years older than Jack.

Jack sat up in bed and put his feet on the floor. Five sisters and not one dog, he thought to himself.

Liver and Lima beans. Thursday. Liver and Lima beans.

He would try the napkin trick. Load the Lima beans in his napkin and hope to God that his sisters didn't rat him out.

Jack took a deep breath and stood to his feet. Not only did he not have a dog, but he had five older sisters that would squeal on him.

“Why?” Jack asked himself out loud in his room.

He walked to his bedroom door and reached for the knob and before his fingers actually made contact, he froze.

No... Seriously... Why?

Why did he have five older sisters and a mother who all loved liver and Lima beans and why did his father leave? Speaking of his father, was it perhaps because he too hated Lima beans?

“Jaaack!”

This time it was his mother calling from the foot of the stairs. It was a voice Jack recognized all too well.

Jack, for the first time in his life, realized he hated his father for leaving him here with no dog and six Lima-bean-loving females-- and then suddenly, out of nowhere, Jack knew what he had to do. The only thing he could do.

He pulled the door open and heard it slam back against his bedroom wall.

Down the stairs he walked. Into the kitchen he emerged.

All eyes around the table turned his way.

His plate was at his usual spot in the middle of the far side of the rectangle dinner/breakfast table between Karen and Sarah who looked up at their little brother with eyes that spoke of both boredom and amusement, and Jack smiled. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen and met every eye turned his way.

He smiled what he knew wasn't his usual smile.

His sister's faces reflected the most wonderful confusion.

“Sorry I'm late,” he heard himself saying. It was the perfect thing to say.

He sat down, put his napkin in his lap, ate the liver, all the Lima beans, excused himself, and went back to his bedroom. Years later Jack became an accountant who reportedly couldn't stand democrats. He was eventually found hanging inside a closet in a suite on the top floor of the Saint Francis Hotel. According to the police report he was naked but for a pair of Lima-bean green colored thong panties.

Each and every one of Jack's five sisters can vaguely remember owning a pair of Lima-bean green colored thong panties, but to their credit, not one sister has ever mentioned anything about it to this day.

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