TEAM FORTRESS 2 IS A GAME BY VALVE


Eating out was quite an event for the Mortons. Mom complained at least once a month that they would be lucky if they could pay the bills in time. All unforeseen expenses were greeted with fear and many bothersome and pathetic adjustments: if Alex got his glasses broken, everyone would have to snatch from their schoolmates' lunch; if the fridge stopped working, no one would get presents for their birthday; if someone got the idea of getting sick that winter, they would have to share the same school books. Mom's salary was usually just enough to feed the nine mouths—nothing more. The bucks Ollie earned mowing the neighbors' yard and running errands was something Mom didn't know about, Ollie would take it to his grave and threatened his brothers in case they thought of snitching, because that money was supposed to fund cool clothes and dates with pretty girls. Apparently Dad didn't have a life insurance, since no one, not even himself, could even grasp the possibility that he could die one day, all of a sudden—but he did, and this was the time to regret it.

But it seemed this time everything was different. Mom woke them up that day and instructed them to put on their Sunday clothes and wash themselves.

"Mr. Hall is so happy with my work that he has promoted me. Now I instruct the new girls and earn almost double!" She told them.

Jeremy didn't know at that moment that the double salary implied double hours. When she told them that, he was just excited to be like the other families for once, and being served a nice, elaborated dish in a cool place where they called them 'sir' and 'madame'. He hoped some of the boys and girls from school, those who said they lived like rats, saw them. He would munch a chicken leg in their stupid face.

They left the home like mother duck and her ducklings, quacking excitedly. Mom could barely control the boys but she was so happy she couldn't hide a smile. It seemed she also had some mouths to shut, because she wore her prettiest dress, that one she kept at the bottom of the wardrobe because she never went to any important social event.

Their chatter and giggling filled the restaurant as soon as they came in. They joined three tables for them, next to the window, from which they could show off and make faces to the passerby.

"Careful what you order, okay? We don't swim in money, you know." Mom warned them.

"Can I pick the steak, Mom?" Paul asked.

"That's $3! There must be something else you like."

"But I want the steak, Moooom!"

"It's been so long since we last came here!" Ignoring Paul's tantrum, Joey was talking to his brothers.

"Yeah, the fries are so good!" Alex agreed.

"I've never been here." Jeremy said.

"Of course you didn't: we last came here with Dad, remember?"

"Yeah, Dad was still around." Their brothers nodded.

Of course. If that was there, it meant that he did not exist yet.

"Remember what he said about the waitresses' skirt? And how Mom elbowed him?" Wayne remembered aloud.

"He was right. Look at that!" Ollie smirked like a satyr, his eyes turning to the uniform the waitress passing by was wearing.

"I'm hearing you, boys!" Mom exclaimed.

"I guess that's why Dad loved coming here." Ollie said, this time lower, not taking his eyes off the waitress.

Jeremy didn't partake in the conversation. He wasn't there to hear what Dad used to say. He didn't know what he liked.

His father used to take the family to that restaurant, back when he worked, earned way more than Mom, enough for the whole family to afford eating out at least once a week. Perhaps he sat on the same chair Jeremy sat on. That thought distracted Jeremy from the environment he was in, the great flavors of the fried chicken he ordered, the conversations.

The only thing his father and him shared was that restaurant.

He was silent for the rest of the day. No one noticed: his brothers were too busy hitting each other and making a fuss to bother with the 'rugrat' and Mom had enough containing that troop to notice something was wrong with talkative, little Jeremy. When his siblings shouted, his voice was never heard.

The only moment he spoke to someone was on their way back home, when he grabbed Gerald aside.

"Gerry..." Jeremy started to say.

"How many times do I have to tell you that I don't want you to call me that, you little tadpole?" Gerald complained, and Jeremy didn't mind.

"Gerry, you got to meet Dad, right? What was he like?"

"I don't know, I was four when he died. I don't remember him that much. But I guess he was cool. I remember that he told us stories of the times he traveled to Atlanta and Chicago for work. He was a good fellow. That's what the others say." Gerald replied.

"It's just that I..." Jeremy started to say, but Gerald then gave Kevin a shout and slapped him in the back of the head for no apparent reason, and Jeremy was left hanging.

He couldn't say he wasn't used to that.

Gerald didn't have much to say, being so young when Dad died in that car crash back from work, but at least he had actually met him. Even though he had a few memories, many of them blurred by the passing of time, at least he remembered his smile, the stories he told him, his features.

Jeremy had none of that.

Mom used to say he was Dad's last gift to her. She hadn't gone much into detail yet because Jeremy was just six, but she had told him that Dad, before going to Heaven, planted his seed inside her tummy, and then he was born. She usually filled his face with kisses after telling him that, as if she didn't want him to feel guilty, like this was his responsibility somehow, or sad, for not getting to meet him. That was nice, because his brothers weren't that affectionate. John, Ollie and Wayne used to get him off his nerves telling him that he was a bastard, that his father was a French salesman who left him there like a punishment and left. They wanted to bother him with lies and they managed to make him cry very often when he was smaller. That always ended up with Mom giving them a good ass-whooping.

Sometimes Jeremy asked himself if they were right after all. He looked at Dad's portrait on Mom's night table, then at his reflection in the mirror. People said Dad's children looked like carbon copies of him. They never said that about him. He, the youngest, Dad's last gift, had a striking resemblance to his mother, and the little resting features, like that light brown hair, the eyes, couldn't be more far away from Dad's raven hair, brown eyes and square face.

That day, a day when he should have felt excited, he was reminded once again of that pain no one understood even though everyone claimed they did. A little, sore thorn in his childish heart.

Not even in the mirror did he meet his Dad.