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Frank was dead.
Frank was dead, and the whole family was out to celebrate.
What did you expect? Fiona had flown up; not for any funeral but to just check. Make sure the old coot was really dead, and not faking like the 20 times he literally did just that. To get out of debt, avoid jilted lovers, even one time so he didn’t have to pick up Lip from school.
What a piece of work.
Well, piece of shit. Both.
Not like he had room to talk, but still.
Mickey watched the family around the restaurant table, taking them all in. Fiona was there, skin all tan and face relaxed in a way he’d never seen. And Mickey had seen Fiona high, seen her stoned and drunk and fucked out and he’d never seen her happy like this.
On her right was Lip, holding Freddie on one knee and offering the kid a french fry. The kid, meanwhile, was double fisting two spit-on napkins, wavin’ em’ in the air like he was begging for help. Maybe he was.
‘Get me outta here, I don’t wanna be part of this family!’
Mickey snickered to himself, earning a quick side-glance from his husband. Just a check-in, a query. Mickey shrugged, bumping shoulders with Ian and summoning up a smile before he filled his mouth with a huge bite of pastrami on rye.
They’d come to this deli after having seen Frank’s ashes get dumped in a potter’s field. No sentimentality here. Not these Gallaghers. Even Frannie was stone-faced, holding Debbie’s hand and swinging the skirt she’d been cajoled and eventually forcibly shoved into.
On Lip’s other side was Tami, holding a hand protectively over her non-existent new bump. It was too fuckin’ early to be holdin’ shit, but ‘s not like Mickey was gonna say so. Tami and he’d spent far too many Gallagher rows sitting on the sidelines and eating popcorn, often literally, for him to cast aspersions on the woman if she wanted to bask in this pregnancy a little more. Had to be better than knocked up during covid, at least.
It went Tami and then Ian, wearing a tee shirt Mickey knew was had a small hole on one side, in the seam, where Mickey’d grabbed at it too tightly when they were fuckin’. He snuck a russian-dressing scented hand around Ian, insinuating his finger into the hole, rubbing at Ian’s skin.
Shivering, Ian looked at him again, questions now broad on his face.
Mickey gave another shrug, this time of pretended indifference. “Just sayin’ hi.”
Ian’s face softened, forehead unwrinkling and mouth going wide with a smile. “Hi.”
Mickey turned back to his sandwich. No need to get sentimental in public.
On Mickey’s right was Carl, sitting ramrod straight and nursing a beer. He’d only been picking at his pasta salad. For all that Carl was a shallow pond, there was clearly a big-ass boulder in the middle of it right now.
Next to Carl was Liam, and beside him, Frannie, delightedly drawing in crayon in the new coloring book Fiona had brought her. Not Pony Friends or Fairy Bullshit , either. This was some car-chase, bank-robbing bad guy stuff. Little Red, Mickey mused, so much like Mandy had been at her age. Tough, and cute. Yeah, he could say it now. His little sister had been a cute kid. Fucked up, sure. They all were.
He missed her. This family reunion shit made him wonder about the Milkokids. Where they all were. How they were.
No way they’d be down for this kinda shit. Naw, Colin would show up carrying weight, Iggy would try and lift some, Joey would be stoned, Tony would disappear into the kitchen to get high, and Mandy? Mandy would be laughing her ass off at Mickey, trying to herd his useless siblings into a whole-ass family moment.
Debbie sat beside Fiona, all enmity dissolved, for the moment. It probably helped that Fiona had shown up with substantial gifts for all of them, including an Apple Watch for her only sister. Debbie made sure to hold her menu up extra high for the waitress, showing off. She’d already raised her water glass twice for refills.
Mickey just shook his head, taking another massive bite.
A quiet seemed to seep over the table as a whole; the only noises were the sound of chewing and clinking plates and glasses. Around them, other patrons laughed and talked, it even sounded like a couple was arguing around the corner.
Liam was the first to speak. He’d been quiet all day, and not just his usual watch and learn kind of quiet. This was a quiet born of the loss they’d all felt, perhaps him more than his siblings.
“I wanna do a thing, and you can’t make fun of me.” He pointed an accusing finger around the table, encompassing the whole group. “Something for Frank.”
Debbie’s big mouth opened wide, poised to let her inner bitch loose (the leash on that thing was never very secure on the best days, Mickey reckoned) but Liam cut her off.
“It doesn’t have to be a nice thing about Frank. It can be the worst thing he ever did to you, if you want.”
Debbie’s mouth snapped shut and her eyes went vague, clearly a very specific memory was speaking to her.
No one spoke up. The air was pregnant with bullshit, and everyone was wondering who was gonna break the ice?
“I went back to jail instead of killin’ him,” Mickey let the words slip out, let them roll into the middle of the crowded table and settle there.
“Kinda wish you had,” Ian murmured, catching Mickey’s hand in his.
Fiona arched a brow and Lip leaned back in his chair, blowing smoke away from Freddie’s direction. Tobacco was a real bitch to quit, even for a kid. Kids. Whatever.
Mickey shook his head. “Nah, I was done cookin’ yet. Wasn’t ready to be who you needed.”
Ian squeezed his hand tighter, then pulled Mickey in close, disregarding the awkwardness of plates and falling silverware between them. His voice was low, only for Mickey.
“You were always ready.”
Mickey let himself be held a moment longer, then pulled away, sniffing heavily to cover up whatever the hell that had been.
Ian also coughed to clear his throat. “Frank wasn’t my father, so this feels a little weird for me, to be honest. But I’ll say this, Frank showed me everything not to do. How to be a total scumbag and drive literally everyone away from him. From Frank, I learned how not to be a piece of shit, so…” He raised his can of cola. “Thanks, I guess?”
At his words about Frank, various Gallagher eyes had slid to Liam, to see how this version of memorial was going over. But Liam sat there with that little crooked smile on his face, perfectly content, even though the table came more than halfway up his chest.
Fiona was next, starting by reaching over to pat Liam’s hand. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t make up for abandoning him in Chicago when she left, but the gesture was kindly met. An unspoken apology, perhaps.
“You’ve all heard my horror stories,” she joked. “But this one, maybe not?” The rise in her voice, the questioning lilt, made them all lean forward a little, set down the ice-filled cups and rest the silverware beside their plates.
“I hadta be three, maybe four. You weren’t born yet,” she told Lip matter of factly. “And I don’t remember Monica being knocked up yet, either. You know, the way she always made a huge fuckin’ deal about it.”
The adults Gallaghers at the table gave a collective sigh, all knowing well how Monica’s bipolar responded when she went off her meds. Which, naturally, she did every time she got pregnant, worried about the effects on the baby. But somehow not at all worried about the effects of the copious illicit substances she ingested in between. At first, her mood would rise like a hot air balloon: she’d be ecstatic and bubbly, organizing and nesting even in her first trimester.
Then, the inevitable crash.
Frannie dropped her fork on the plate in front of her, still laden with half a grilled cheese and few chicken fingers, making a loud clatter that woke her aunt.
Fiona shook herself and continued. “I guess they were still pretending to be semi functional, ‘cause they took me to see the mall Santa. Dressed me up in this frilly red dress. I was so fuckin’ excited, they kept tellin’ me how I was gonna meet the real Santa.” She exhaled quickly, hands fisted on the table.
“But the line was really long, like holy-shit-out-the-door long. And I guess they didn’t do the greatest job toilet training me, or maybe they just didn’t hear me askin’ to go.”
Her face fell, the hang-dog look that had so often precipitated tears, gazing back through the intervening decades.
“So I pissed in that pretty red dress, right there in the middle of the mall. Whole puddle, down into my boots. All I remember is Frank, lookin’ down at me, disgusted. He didn’t even hafta say anything, I jst knew.”
“Jesus, Fi,” Lip blew another plume of smoke away from the table. “Dark much?”
She laughed, even though tears stood brightly in her eyes. “Yeah, sorry. Lip, you go next.”
“You really wanna hear my final thoughts on dear old Frank?”
The question was ostensibly posed to the table, but really it was directed at Liam, who looked at his oldest brother and gave a firm nod.
Lip cut his eyes briefly to Tami, then began. “You all remember Karen, right?”
“And Sheila!” Debbie piped excitedly, setting down her milkshake loudly on the table.
“And Sheila,” Lip agreed. “But she’s not part of this.” He gave a visible shudder that jostled Freddie, who let out the very first shades of a whimper, before Lip quickly handed him a biscuit to gum over.
“Karen was… that girl had some issues, but I loved her I think. Not like adult love, not like build a life together,” he quickly added, “but as much as I could. She mighta been my first love, actually.”
Ian considered a jibe about Lip’s first love being Lip, and then let it pass.
“But like I said. Karen had problems. And she fucked Frank. Not like fucked him over, or metaphorically. I mean she filmed them having sex and broadcast it to the world.”
He went silent, biting his lip and staring into space.
“And I hated her for it, for a long time. Hated her as much as I’d loved her. But it was so twisted, right? I couldn’t face hating her, especially when she got knocked up and I thought the kid was mine, so I turned it all to Frank. All that hate, which was really pain and anger and sadness, I put on him. We never talked about it, but somehow, once the kid came along-” he jiggled Freddie a little bouncing the toddler on his knee, “-I kinda forgave him.”
Tami smiled softly at Lip, but didn’t speak, only rubbed her non-existant bump again.
“Did you know he lived in a mansion for a while?” Liam’s question broke the moment.
“And he gave me a tattoo!” Frannie added proudly, oblivious to her mother’s bugged out eyes at the pronouncement.
“It was the piano.”
Everyone turned to look at Carl, a bit surprised. Carl had turned from a serial-killer in the making as a child to the innocuous police officer they’d all pretty much written off. No one had much expected him to add anything substantive to the conversation.
“The piano?” Ian prompted, a quizzical expression over his freckles.
“Yeah, don’t you remember?” Carl looked around the table, at the faces of each of his siblings. “You were all there. It was that time he stopped drinking, because someone promised him some cash? I dunno the deal, actually, just that he needed to keep busy. And we had that really old piano tucked under the stairs and he rolled it out and sat down and played it. Like, he really played it!”
“That doesn’t sound like Frank,” Mickey frowned.
“No, wait, I-” Debbie waved a hand, trying to roll her memories into the right spot. “I do remember! Oh god, he was so happy, too. One of the only times we ever really saw him happy.”
Lip only shrugged. Fiona sighed and shook her head.
All four Gallaghers turned to Ian as the deciding vote.
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “I was probably at work.”
Mickey snorted. “Yeah, work? Is that what we’re retroactively callin’ bangin’ your middle aged pedo boss?”
Ian kicked him. Hard. “Someone else go. Who’s left?”
“No, no, wait?” Lip said. “Carl, seriously? That’s your big Frank memory?”
“Not the time he convinced you ya had cancer?” Fiona asked.
Ian was next. “Or the time he stole your sperm? In fact, don’t you have kids out there somewhere.”
Carl shrugged nonchalantly. “They can find me if they wanna.”
Then Debbie added her oar. “What about the time he made you break his leg?”
Fiona and Lip instantly shot her a glance of perplexity. “He what??”
Carl grinned. “Yeah, that was pretty cool. He asked me to break his leg for workman’s comp. I did it good, too. Then he blew it all on the lambo and Asian hookers.”
That earned snorting laughs from the table, shaken heads.
Yeah, that was Frank alright.
---
And this is how it ended, with the unparsable, overlapping Gallagher chorus of voices and noises. The sounds of the kitchen. The sounds of living room dance parties and hallway shouts. Of family.
[awkward] “Uh…”
[uncertain] “Now what?”
Swiping their faces for stray crumbs.
[genuinely curious] “Who’s getting the check?”
[snarky] “Who’s got that reality show money?”
[shot back] “Well, who’s got that weed delivery money?”
Palming their necks.
[plaintive] “We gonna see you again this decade?”
[sincere] “When are we coming to visit you ?”
Shrugging on coats and giving tentatively offered hugs that turn into long holding-on and inhaling and not ready to go.
Family. At least for a moment.
Family.