Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane Read Free Book Online

breadcrumbs in another. As she made her way upstairs to her bedroom, he tried to find the rhythm that she seemed to have when she made their dinner. He oiled the baking sheet, as he’d often seen her do, lined up the breaded chicken drums. He could hear the kids assembling outside. He washed his hands, and as he listened to the soft tick-tick-ticking of the gas stove heating up, he stood at the back door and glimpsed Larry McBreen’s red-and-blue striped jacket as he stomped along the cut-through behind the Gleesons’ house. The Maldonados would be out.Kate’s sisters. The Dills. The Frankel twins, who went to public school. Everyone.
    When he found that ship, he’d go up and show her that he had it, that he’d not lost track of it. She’d been so excited to give it to him. Together they’d read the certificate that had come with it, and she said she’d bring him to the library to find a book on Sir Francis Drake, or about woodworking, or about shipbuilding, or all three. That night, when he went to the fridge to get out the carton of milk, she’d pulled him toward her like she used to when he was five or six, and whispered that it had cost six hundred dollars, plus another seventy-five for shipping. Then she made her eyes big, as if she let the information slip out by accident and had not, in fact, been dying to tell him, and by that he knew he should never tell his father. She’d seen it in a catalog one of her patients had left behind at the hospital and decided Peter had to have it. When she’d pictured having a son, she’d always pictured him playing with things like that ship. It was made in London, she continued, her eyes full of delighted mischief as if he knew what that meant. She’d lived in England for nearly two years, a long time ago. They had the loveliest things there, she told him. What had gotten into her head about New York? She couldn’t remember. A job? Some notion that it would be better than England? She’d told him all of it before. It was her favorite subject when she was in a talkative mood. He got a restless feeling when she spoke of those years. It was a tragedy, clearly, from her view, that she’d left one life and ended up in another. A path had diverged in a wood and she chose the one she’d regret forever. And yet there Peter was, very glad to have been born, listening to her, thinking she looked prettier than the other mothers when she dressed up a little and washed her hair. Anyway, she said, smiling faintly. She was so happy he liked the ship because that said something about him, it really did. It said something about his taste and his intelligence. And then, when she went to work on Monday morning—the only morning she had to leave before his bus—he’d brought it outside to show Kate and he hadn’t seen it since.
    The thing was, the ship was fun to look at, but after a few days of looking, there was not much more to do with it. It floated, just as she promised it would, but when they sent it sailing down Kate’s driveway with the rushing meltwater, it had gotten a pair of scratches that ran parallel to the hull. He’d pulled off his mittens and rubbed at the scratches with his thumb, but there they were, glaringly obvious in the polished mirror finish of the wood. Kate wanted to send it downstream again, this time with an old Barbie on board, but he was afraid it would get more scratches. So he’d put it somewhere safe. But where?
    The quiet of the house when she kept to her room was not the peaceful silence of a library, or anywhere near as tranquil. It was, Peter imagined, more like the held-breath interlude between when a button gets pushed and the bomb either detonates or is defused. He could feel his own heartbeat at those times. He could track his blood as it looped through his veins.
    His father seemed to go on with life as if his mother were merely at work, or at the store. He didn’t seem to notice when she began to skip meals, when her teeth became dull