B000FCJYE6 EBOK by Marya Hornbacher Read Free Book Online Page B

and wrapped it around her waist.
    He put his face against her belly.
    Her arms hung down at her sides. Slowly, she lifted one hand and laid it on his head. They stayed like that for a long time.
    I watched them. Froze them that way in my head. Stay there, I almost said aloud. Like that.
    But they broke apart. They always did.
     
     
     
    I think these things are true. I think it happened like this.
    I don’t know what day it was. I know the snow had fallen, had been falling heavily for days, blanketing the fields overnight, softening and silencing the world. I know winter had come.
    At breakfast, my father and I were eating eggs when Esau walked out of his room naked as a jaybird and sat down in the wrong chair. My mother came out of the kitchen in her robe (she called it a dressing gown) with the bamboos and hummingbirds on it, holding her cup of coffee, her hair all a mess, her face sunken in the cheeks but puffed up under the eyes.
    She stopped when she saw Esau, sitting with his back to her, his bare behind on the chair. She opened her mouth. She shut it again. My father popped his egg yolks and sopped his toast in them, folded the toast in half with one hand, and bit in. Esau was pale, and the circles under his eyes were crayon purple. I looked at him and scraped the jam off my toast with my teeth. Esau smiled at me, and I was so startled I choked on the jam, then looked over at my father to see if he was going to tell me to eat my toast like a normal person. My father picked up the Motley-Staples Gazette again, and kept reading the obituaries. My mother turned around, went into the kitchen, came back out, and looked at Esau as if she wasn’t sure she’d seen him in the first place.
    “Would you like some coffee?” she asked Esau.
    Then I understood that everyone had gone crazy but me.
    “Oh, for Chrissakes, Claire,” my father said, slapping the paper down on the table, which had little squiggly things that looked like threads under the clear surface. “Of course he doesn’t want any coffee.”
    “Well, I don’t know,” my mother said, looking from my father to the back of Esau’s head. “I thought he might like some coffee.”
    “What the hell are you talking about, he’d like some coffee?” my father bellowed, patting his toast in the yolks without looking at them. “He’s twelve years old, for God’s sake.”
    “Well, what am I supposed to ask him?” she said. I looked up at her. She was supposed to be in charge. Besides, Esau looked perfectly fine, except that he was in the wrong chair. I scowled at him, cranky that they were making such a fuss. He smiled at me again and I stuck out my tongue.
    My mother stood there, her robe knotted tightly at her waist, holding her coffee cup close to her chest, fingers flickering, her dark-red hair spilling over her shoulders, lit up by the light that hung over the dining-room table. Esau scratched his head and wrinkled his nose and fiddled with the fringe on his place mat.
    “Ask him if he’s hungry, dammit!” my father shouted.
    “Are you hungry, honey?”
    “Yes,” Esau said, his voice creaking.
    “You see?” said my father, slapping the table with his hand. “He’s hungry.” He picked up his paper and said to it, “Make the kid some breakfast, Claire.”
    “Of course he’s hungry,” she said on her way to the kitchen. “Poor thing hasn’t eaten in two days.”
    Three days, I thought. He’s been in his room for three days.
    “Poor thing my ass,” my father muttered. “Sitting there in the damn dark.”
    Esau squinted up at the light fixture, a wagon wheel laid flat, the spokes holding fake candles with bulbs in the shape of flames. It looked sort of like a birthday cake. I drank my juice, watching Esau over the rim of my glass. My father turned a page. My mother came back with eggs and toast and bacon.
    “The bacon’s cold, honey,” she said to Esau as she set the plate down in front of him. “I’ll make some new if you want. I