Rachel Gibson - It Must Be Love

The last "something" his mother had "picked up" for him had been a matching pair of aluminum peacocks that were supposed to hang on the wall. At the moment they were beneath his bed next to a huge macrame owl. "Ah, geez," he groaned and tossed the unlit cigarette on the lamptable. "I wish she wouldn't do that. I hate that garage sale shit."

"Don't fight it, son, it's a sickness," his father said and returned his attention to the television. "It's a disease like alcoholism. She's powerless over her addiction."

When Joyce Shanahan returned, she carried a saddle cut in half, lengthwise. "I got this for five dollars," she bragged and set it on the floor next to Joe's foot. "They wanted ten, but I dickered them down."

" I hate that garage sale shit ," Sam mimicked, then added a shrill " Braa - ck " for good measure.

Joyce's gaze moved from her son to the bird on the back of her couch. "He'd better not make a mess on my davenport."

Joe couldn't promise a thing. He pointed to the saddle. "What am I supposed to do with it? Find half a horse?"

"You hang it on the wall." The telephone rang, and she added over her shoulder as she headed toward the kitchen, "It's got some little loops on the one side."

"Better nail it to the wall studs, son," his father advised. "Or that thing's liable to pull down your drywall."

Joe stared at the saddle with its one stirrup. The space beneath his bed was about to get real crowded. His mother's laughter erupted from the other room, startling Sam. He flapped his wings, showing the red feathers beneath his tail, then he flew to the television and perched on top of a wooden birdhouse with a fake nest and plastic eggs glued at the bottom. He tilted his gray head to one side, raised his beak, and did a carbon imitation of the ringing telephone.

"Sam, don't do it," Joe warned a fraction of a second before the bird mimicked Joyce's laugh so perfectly that it was downright spooky.

"That bird of yours is going to end up in a bag of Shake 'n Bake," his father predicted.

"Don't I know it." He just hoped Sam wouldn't take it into his head to tear apart that little wooden house with his beak.

The front door opened with a loud bang, and Joe's seven-year-old nephew Todd ran into the house, followed by thirteen-year-old Christy and ten-year-old Sara, Joe's nieces.

"Hi, Uncle Joe," his nieces chimed at the same time.

"Hey, girls."

"Did you bring Sam?" Christy wanted to know.

Joe nodded to the television. "He's getting a little nervous. Don't yell around him and make sudden moves. And don't teach him any more bad words."

"We won't, Uncle Joe" Sara promised, her eyes a little too wide, a little too innocent.

"What's that?" Todd asked, pointing to the saddle.

"It's half a saddle."

"Why?"

Exactly. "Do you want it?"

"Cool!"

Joe's sister Tanya entered the house next and shut the door behind her. "Hi, Daddy," she said, then turned her attention to her brother. "Hi Joey. I see Mom gave you the saddle. Can you believe she got it for five bucks?"

Obviously Tanya had been infected with the garage sale sickness too.

"Who farted? Braa-ck."

"Hey you guys," Joe admonished the two girls, who were falling on the floor in a fit of laughter.

"What's so funny?" his mother asked as she walked into the room, but before anyone could answer, the telephone rang again. "For pity's sake." She shook her head and moved to the kitchen once more, only to return a few short moments later still shaking her head. "They hung up before I could answer."

Joe slanted a skeptical gaze at his bird, and his suspicions were confirmed when Sam cocked his head to one side and the telephone just happened to ring again.

"Pity's sake." His mother spun toward the kitchen.

"My dad ate a bug," Todd told Joe, drawing his attention to him. "We roasted hot dogs and he ate a bug."

"Yeah, Ben took him camping because he thinks the girls and I are turning him into a sissy," Joe's sister elaborated as she sat on the sofa next to him. "He said he needed to get Todd away and do man stuff."

Joe understood perfectly. He'd been raised with four older sisters, who'd dressed him up in their clothes and made him wear lipstick. At the age of eight, they'd convinced him he'd been born a hermaphrodite named Josephine. He hadn't even known what a hermaphrodite was until he'd turned twelve and could look it up in the dictionary. After that, for several weeks, he'd lived in fear of growing big breasts like his oldest sister, Penny. Luckily, his father had caught him checking out his body for weird changes, and he'd assured Joe that he wasn't a hermaphrodite. Then he'd taken him camping and fishing and hadn't made him bathe for a week.

His sisters stuck together like Bondini and never forgot a damn thing. Growing up, they'd loved to harass him, and they'd been just plain hell on his psyche. But if he ever suspected that for one second the men in his sisters' lives weren't treating them right, he'd gladly beat the shit out of them.

"And I guess a bug landed on Todd's hot dog so he cried and wouldn't eat it," Tanya continued. "Which is completely understandable, and I don't blame him one bit, but Ben grabbed the bug and ate it, trying to be macho. He said, "If I can eat the damn bug, you can eat the damn hot dog."

Sounded reasonable. "Did you eat the hot dog?" Joe asked his nephew.

Todd nodded, and his smile showed his missing front teeth. "Then I ate a bug too. A black one."

Joe looked into his nephew's freckled face, and they shared a conspiratorial smile. The "I can pee standing up" guy-club smile. A smile girls could never understand.

"They hung up again," Joyce announced to the room.

"You need to get Caller ID," Tanya advised. "We've got it, and I always check to see who's calling before I answer."

"I just might do that," his mother said as she lowered herself into an old tole-painted rocker, but just as her butt hit the seat, the ringing started again. "This is getting old," she sighed and rose. "Someone is playing on the phone."

"Use last call return. I'll show you." Tanya stood and followed her mother into the kitchen.

The girls dissolved into a new fit of laughter, and Todd covered his mouth with his hand.

"Yep," Dewey said without taking his eyes off the Duke, "that bird is flirting with disaster all right."

Joe wove his fingers behind his head, crossed his ankles, and relaxed for the first time since the theft of Mr. Hillard's Monet. The Shanahans were a large, rowdy bunch, and sitting on his mother's couch surrounded by the commotion felt like coming home. It also reminded him of his own empty house across town.

Up until about a year ago, he hadn't worried all that much about finding a wife and starting a family. He'd always thought he had time, but getting shot tended to put one's life in perspective. It reminded a man of what was really important in life. A family of his own.

True, he did have Sam, and living with Sam was like living with a naughty, but very entertaining, two-year-old. But he couldn't build campfires and roast weenies with Sam. He couldn't eat bugs. Most of the other cops his age had children, and as he'd lain around his house recuperating, with nothing but time on his hands, he'd begun to wonder what it would be like to sit on the sidelines at a Little League game and watch his kids run around the bases. Seeing his own children in his head was the easy part. Picturing a wife was a bit more difficult.

He didn't think he was too picky, but he knew what he wanted and what he didn't want. He didn't want a woman who freaked out about little things like monthly anniversaries and who didn't like Sam. He knew from experience that he didn't want a vegetarian who was overly concerned about fat grams and the size of her minuscule thighs.