Dollar Runaways

Chapter 1: Flight

THE NEXT MORNING Mom woke me, "Tony, honey, it's time to wake up."

I rolled over and looked at her. My eyes filled with tears as I saw her left eye was blackened. "Mom!" I said and jumped up to hug her.

"Shhh baby, it's okay."

"No, it's not!" I told her.

"Yes, it is, but I need you to be brave right now. Your daddy wants to have breakfast with you before he leaves on his trip."

I glared at her for multiple reasons, but knew I couldn't do anything for the moment. I got up instead and followed her out of the room and downstairs to the dining room table. Mom had woken up early apparently and made pancakes, eggs, sausage, and the works. Of course, I was pretty sure it wasn't entirely her idea. Dad probably made her do it since in his mind that was her job. I watched her bring the coffee pot over to refill his coffee before she began putting food on my plate.

"Thank you, Mom," I told her when she put it in front of me.

"You're welcome Tiger," she said to me with a smile that looked a little off due to the swelling. "Would you like some orange juice?"

"Please," I told her.

I could feel my dad glaring at the two of us and looked up at him. His entire side of the family was second generation Italian-American. Raimondo Giuseppe Franchino was his full name, though my mom had called him Ray for years. My dad looked like a skinny, young Danny DeVito, completely down to his short height of an inch above five feet. My dad's dark hair was something he took pride in keeping neat, along with a thin mustache, that all led to him being fairly handsome. I supposed that was why mom married him straight out of college.

I think he liked Mom because she was shorter than he was by three inches. Her blonde hair was a striking contrast to his black hair and Mediterranean features. While he looked his age of nearly forty, my mom didn't look a day over twenty-five, even in the slovenly clothes she wore these days. She could have been a typical California girl the way she looked, but she'd mostly grown up in a small mountain town in Colorado. With her puffy cheek, and the bruise over her eye, now I feared she looked more like the poster child for abused wives.

I had just finished eating as much as I felt like of the gigantic breakfast when Dad spoke up, "Tony, I'm going to be gone until next Thursday. I'm going to be cleaning up a mess at one of our stores in Vermont, so make sure you behave for your mother." He told me.

I swallowed and wondered when I ever misbehaved for her before answering, "Yes Father."

After a while I cleaned up my plate and took it to the sink as he was coming back with a suitcase, "Tony that's your mother's job to do the dishes, leave it there for her." He practically growled as he said it. He looked at my mother who was following down the stairs behind him, "Megan don't let him be some sissy here, my son is going to be a Franchino man, and we don't do women's work."

"Of course, I won't Ray," mom said with her eyes lowered.

"And make damn sure he gets that haircut this week. I'm tired of seeing him with all that damn hair!"

"Okay," she said.

He gave me a hug that felt cold and then gave my mother the same. "See you next Thursday Tiger!" he said and then walked to the garage. I could hear the garage door open and my mother anxiously watch him drive down the street.

I came up behind her and hugged her. "Oh Tony..." Mom said as she cried and I knew I was doing the same. We both silently held each other for a while before she squeezed me a little harder and wiped her face. She wiped mine then too, and said, "Tony, go get two suitcases out of the closet. Take one and pack as many of your clothes as you can in it. Leave the other one at the foot of the stairs."