There were only two things louder in our house than my father’s laugh. One was the slam of the bedroom door whenever Mom barricaded herself inside and the other was the sound of our rusting station wagon backfiring as it pulled out of the drive. Dad laughed hardest when a story surprised him, and when he let loose, his laugh could rattle your bones.

Mom was always on the hunt for ways to make Dad laugh, so whenever she hurried us to dinner, it was clear she had a story lined up. She took her time laying out the details, like a zookeeper thrusting her hand into the lion’s cage, waving small pieces of meat, and waiting for her morsels to be devoured. And when Mom told us about the new deli man, she was at the peak of her comedic delivery.

“You won’t believe it,” she’d crooned, between sips of her Manhattan. “I almost fell into my cart when I saw it.”

“Go on,” Dad encouraged, a smile already creeping across his broad face.

“Hannaford’s has hired a one-armed meat man. I didn’t quite notice until I’d already put in my order for ham. But soon enough, I spotted it. There he was, that poor man, grasping for the hock with his good hand, and using his other little nub to hold things steady.”

“How big was the nub?” Dad asked, eyebrows bouncing.

“Oh, it was elbow length,” Mom replied, a little soprano sing-song in her voice.

“And did he wear a glove on the nub? A covering of some sort?” Dad was spluttering and snorting by that point.

“Oh no. He was fully unsheathed.”

Dad unleashed a torrent of laughter that shook the table and set our drinks swaying as if we were ferrying through a swell.

“You have to wonder how he lost the arm in the first place,” Dad said, his veiny face flooded, his big, hairy hands pounding the table.

“Oh, I did. But I was too mesmerized as he braced the ham in his slicer and peeled off half a pound for my basket. I mean, I tried not to stare, but his little nub was like a magnet.”

They went on like that for the rest of dinner and I laughed along. I laughed because they were laughing, but even then, something strange swirled in my stomach. I kept thinking about how heavy a whole ham must be. My eyes bounced between my parents’ flushed faces, my presence an afterthought in the afterglow of Mom’s story.

Of course, every noise in our household eventually led to another. And the noise that echoed loudest from that evening wasn’t Dad’s laughter. It was the sound of Dad’s cursing that woke me around midnight. There was chaos in the kitchen. Dad had dropped a glass jug of milk and when I peeked out my door, I could see Mom, on her hands on knees, picking up the largest shards of glass and wiping up the spill while Dad leaned over her and continued to rummage in the fridge.

“Where’s that ham you said you bought? I want a sandwich.”

Mom replied in a sleepy voice. “What ham?”

“The one-armed ham,” he said, patting her head.

“Oh, I didn’t bring that home,” she said, standing up with a wad of wet paper towels.

“Why the hell not?”

“I left it on a shelf somewhere in the store.”

“You did what?”

“We weren’t going to eat that. Not after his nub had touched it.”

“Are you kidding?” Dad smashed the fridge door closed.

“You’re the one who called it crazy,” Mom said, meticulously sweeping up the rest of the broken glass.

“The only thing crazy is that you went to the store and we still don’t have ham.”

“Then go to the fucking store yourself,” Mom yelled, dropping the broom so that the handle clattered to the floor. I didn’t see what happened next, but both my parents started screaming. I heard a chair tip over and then Mom’s slippers running in my direction, so I closed my door just before my parents’ bedroom door slammed.

Then there was a quiet sobbing from across the hall, and a few minutes later, the sound of a shot. It was only Dad driving off, but it may as well have been a bullet, because that was the night the laughter died. After that, things in the house got louder and quieter all at the same time. There was more screaming. And more bitter silence. Mom had stopped feeding Dad jokes. He still laughed, but his laugh had morphed from a glorious thunder to a hollowed-out clanking—a performative sound effect without any heart.