HOW TO EARN YOUR KEEP
Deahn Berrini
Le Lit, Toulouse Lautrec
How To Earn Your Keep is my new novel about a sister and a brother who mistake the finer material things for the material matters of heart and soul. A jealous polo player, a mother who dresses out of season, a bulldog personal injury lawyer, a bereft family, and a horse trainer round out the story, set in the north of Boston in the late 1990’s. Here’s Chapter One.
One
Kat Lavoie zipped herself into her long black work skirt like she was wrapping herself in a shroud. Twenty-one years old, she keenly felt her life had veered off-course. Instead of starting her senior year at Boston College, Kat worked as a secretary for an accident victims’ attorney who was perennially one severed limb away from early retirement.
With a sigh she sat down on her bed to put on a pair of heels. She could blame the angry ex-boyfriend with a penchant for throwing large objects through glass windows. She could blame her conveyer belt father who paid attention to what was in front of him but once life had carried him forward he didn’t bother looking back at the family he’d left behind. She could blame her mother for being born with a stage light so blinding she could never see anyone but herself. But, of course, her current situation was mostly her fault. The mistakes that had brought her to this morning lined up--bright red ignored warning flags clear to her only at a distance. What was less obvious was the path ahead.
She stood up and took a deep breath. Kat hated a crybaby. Don’t, don’t you do this, she admonished herself. If I’m defeated in my head, Kat reminded herself, I’m defeated for real.
With that small pep talk, she grabbed her work sweater and headed out.
Passing through the kitchen she was stopped by the sight of her brother wearing a dramatic Asian-themed dressing gown--bright yellow silk with an elaborate green dragon breathing great bursts of orange fire. The gown intimated exoticism, luxury, and danger as it slid over his naked white calves covered in wisps of red-blond hair. Larry Lavoie carried it off, too; the loose material didn't hang on him sadly, but shimmered in precise narrow waves as he moved.
Kat stopped and had to smile, "Chinatown.”
Larry turned to his sister, spatula held high, and approximated a curtsy.
"It must have cost a fortune. Did Linda get one as well?"
His nose wrinkled slightly. "Linda won't buy anything from a store where they don't speak English."
Their mother, Ruby, cooed from her seat at the table. "Isn’t it beautiful. I want one too."
Larry shrugged. "It's one of a kind."
"Feel the silk," said Kat to her mother. "It's gorgeous."
As Larry attended to his bubbling pancakes, he executed a quick half turn to regard the swirl of color. "It's almost enough to make you want to learn Chinese."
Kat put on her coat and picked up her bag from the counter.
“Oh,” said Ruby, “you’re not having breakfast?”
“Some of us have to work.” She tucked her fall Vogue into a side pocket. “You don’t have much time either,” she said to Larry.
“Shipments in late this morning,” he mumbled.
Kat turned to her brother sharply. In the utility drawer sat a letter from their father’s lawyer, addressed to their mother. Termination of child care payments, it read, as both children are over nineteen years of age and neither attends full-time an institution of higher learning or technical school. Kat had left school over two years ago; her brother’s birthday had been three days ago. She had calculated the numbers a thousand times; the three of them could probably squeak by, but the margin would be thin.
“Larry …”
“Oh, Kat. Take that look off your face. You’ll get wrinkles,” Ruby scolded.
Kat said nothing, even though her mother hadn’t held a job since the Reagan Administration.