Soon as he walks in the door, the t.v. seems too loud. His face gets this outside of a squished beer can look and he makes an effort to keep from saying anything to all the people, mostly kids he has to feed, watching the set with nodding head. It doesn’t take too long, however, before he can’t take much more and by the time he gets crosses the living room, he has decided to turn it down.

The kids say nothing, but those who don’t live there make faces. By the time he gets to the bathroom, the volume is not only up, but high enough to let him know, standing in front of the toilet, where he stands.

He sighs longer than it takes to zip his pants up, wash his hands, and go into the kitchen and begin preparing dinner. "Where’s Brittany?" he asks when he notices that the only one in the apartment living room that is part of his family is his oldest son and his wife, who has yet to greet him. No one answers.

He curses Brittany as he rolls up his sleeve and begins to wash his hands again. Not that it will matter. He pulls a pan from under a stack of breakfast and lunch dishes and scrapes off egg with a spoon before trying to wash it properly. So he can have more room in the kitchen, he decides to go ahead and wash the dishes. So they’ll have to wait even longer for dinner, but at least this complaint will give him a clean kitchen. He son, annoyed at the noise constantly running faucet, turns up the set another notch.

His wife enters the kitchen. "Thanks for making dinner, hon’," she says. "I was going to, but I guess I got busy today." He doesn’t ask "With what?" but turns to her. She is puckering and he kisses her perfunctorily. She feigns help by stirring the ground beef he is browning while he chops onions for the tacos. Then she pulls his wallet from his back pocket. His entire body stiffens, particularly below his waist. It is as if he is warding off another prison rape.

"I need to go to Wal-Mart after dinner and get a few things," she informs him.

He looks intently at the onions and asks her what they need. "We just went grocery shopping yesterday and spent more than enough for four people. We out of something already?"

"Yes and no. You forgot dishwashing soap and some other stuff."

He takes three steps, the knife still in hand, and pulls down the two boxes of dishwashing soap from the cabinet. One is nearly full and the other is not opened. It was purchased the day before despite his insistence that they had plenty to last the month.

She looks at him crossly. "Don’t be a smart ass. You know I meant laundry detergent." He doesn’t bother looking to see how much they have of that. Then she softens, or tries to. "Besides, Brittany is having her boyfriend over tomorrow for dinner and I wanted to get something to make the table look nice. It's so drab around here."

He wants to argue. He wants to say that his daughter is only seen "around here" about twice a week, and only then to break something or pitch a fit. That her boyfriend, if the others are any indication, is probably not going to appreciate the attractive place settings or napkin rings or curtains or who know what she ends up buying because he is likely to be loaded and his idea of a fancy dinner is one he doesn’t eat out of a box or cook right in the can. That he is likely to dump her as soon as she starts her little whine over him going out and not taking her with him, or she is likely to ditch him as soon as the moon throws good light on a guy who can chug his beer faster than the present boyfriend or kick the boyfriend’s ass. He wants to propose that since he doesn’t have the money to pay the phone bill that the non-working people ran up, he isn’t sure that he should go through that much trouble to make the apartment less drab.

But what he does is sigh an "okay" and watch her stuff his wallet in the front pocket of her sweatpants.

After cleaning the knife and the cutting board off so he can chop tomatoes, he adds the seasonings to the meat. After the tomatoes and lettuce are chopped and in the proper bowls, he hears his son’s friend exclaim, "That smells good, dude." The cook looks up, but the comment is directed at his son, not him.

"Just tacos, man," the boy-man says.

"Wanna stay for dinner?" his wife asks. She has just come from the shower and has blow dried her hair.

"Sure," the young boy says. He seems to be answering the woman’s breasts. "If there’s enough."

The man’s son holds up an empty bag of chips. "I ain’t hungry dude." Then, as if to accentuate the disgust he feels for having had to wait until the normal hour for dining, he turns up the television.

The man looks across the bar and notices that a young girl on the screen is selling jeans or something. She dances and mouths the words to a song he knows is a remake, but he can’t remember the original artist. But he does remember a line from a poem he read in college: "I’ve heard the mermaids singing each to each./I do not think that they will sing to me."

"Could you please turn that down, Jacob?" he asks, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. He does not succeed.

"You ain’t listening to anything in there. Can’t hear with all that chopping and the dishwasher running."

"Had you run it like you are supposed to, it would have been done by now."

"Why do I have to do that crap? It’s probably Brittany’s turn anyway."

"Just turn it down some, please," the man asks firmly.

Jacob looks at his friend, who only now has diverted his attention to the argument. Then he looks at his father and says, "Make me."

His mother grabs the remote and turns the television down. "Now will you both shut the hell up. Miss half the program listening to you two fight."

A few minutes later, the man realizes his hands are shaking as he drains the meat. After getting a block of cheese out of the refrigerator, he sees his daughter coming through the living room. He wants to ask her where she’s been or why she hasn’t been home until now, but she cuts him off. "Hope you left something for me."

"It isn’t even finished yet. Besides, it seems only your brother has started without you."

"How come it’s so late," the girl says through a pout.

The man wants to scream through his fists, but he takes a deep breath and replies, "Because I couldn’t start dinner from the car while I was in traffic."

"You are so dorky, Dad," the girl says beginning to turn.

"Could you set the table, please?" the man asks. "And set a place for –"

"Not my job this week. Jacob’s." she says. From the other room, the boy raises his finger in answer. The man’s wife chuckles and the man pulls out the plates from the cabinet.

He notices that the cheese grater isn’t clean. It seems to have dried parts of something not cheese in the inside. So the man runs hot water in the sink and begins rinse the grater. A moment later, just as the man shuts off the faucet and shakes the damp out of black metal, he sees his son throw him an unkind look while pressing the button on the set to increase the volume.

The man pretends nothing has changed. He retrieves a bowl from the now stopped dishwasher, dries it with a paper towel and begins to grate the cheese quickly. Get this meal over with, he thinks. Maybe they will go away.

The cheese is soft, soft like a hand, as he runs the block along the outside of the grater. He watches the slender slivers come out of the middle as he listens to another commercial take a song from his youth and sell cars or shoes or life insurance with it. Thin yellow worms fall into the bowl like snow and the his children – he barely remembers calling them little angels -- are sitting smug a few feet away, basking in the glow of the television, cursing him for not feeding them sooner.

He notices the cheese is now flecked with white and red spots began to appear just as he feels the burn of missing flesh. He thrusts his hand under the faucet, squelching the expletives that shout within his brain. His whole face widens silently as he first sees his blood going down the disposal, but as the flow slows, he closes his eyes and tries to let the cold take him down the sink.

Meanwhile, Jacob begins to get up and ask just how much water the old man needed to cook tacos, but he sees the bowl besides his father looking like a strange goulash he remembered always detesting.

"I ain’t eating that shit," the boy declares.

"What is it?" his wife asks, half sitting.

"Dad!" Brittany says. The word is syllables long and has the quality of a siren.

The man wants to shake his finger at them and say, "Do you see this? Do you see that I’m bleeding here and that I didn’t ruin your dinner? Do you have to have cheese on your tacos for Pete’s sake? Do you mind that I’m in some pain here?"

But what he says is, "I’m sorry."

They don’t hear him. Mom offers to buy pizza or drop them off at the mall and pick them up on the way back from Wal-Mart. He hears the door close just as he is wrapping a paper towel around his finger.

After applying some antibacterial cream, he notices that the television is still on and that it seems much louder with the absence of its viewers, as if trying to lure them all back. The man hits the off button with a savage kick and suddenly the only sounds in the room are the drip drip of the kitchen faucet and the man’s panting.

He wants to sit in the floor of the silent living room and cry until the drip and the sound of his breathing become like the walls. His chest aches as if he’s been running all day, and he wants to cry and hope the tears will stanch the flow of distress. But that’s a cliché for the movie of the week.

He inspects his middle finger. The bleeding has stopped, but the digit is tender. He wraps gauze around the wound and clumsily secures it with first aid tape. After finding some George Winston for the stereo, he goes to the pantry and pulls out a box of crunchy taco shells and puts them on the table with the other elements of dinner. The piano sounds like a weary smile. Though he is not very hungry, habit is strong, and with his one good hand, he manages to fill a shell and eat.