Breakfast with Neruda by Laura Moe Read Free Book Online

through the line with Shelly’s fake ID. We are a few paces out the door when I hear a man and a boy behind me, laughing. I glance back and notice a boy of about six standing inside a grocery cart, the man pushing it. They roar past us. The dad growls like a motor, and the kid screeches in laughter all the way to their minivan. I feel something inside me rip open as I set the groceries in the backseat. I stand up and watch them.
    “What’s the matter?” Shelly asks.
    I shake my head and get in the car.
    She sets her bag on the floor and snaps her seatbelt. “Why were you staring at them?” she asks. “Do you know them?”
    “No.”
    “Then what is it?” she asks.
    I stare out the windshield and watch the van drive out of the parking lot. “I just wonder what it’s like to have a dad.”
    Shelly places a hand on my arm. “You don’t have a dad?”
    “Not my own.” I click my seatbelt. “Jeff’s dad sometimes played with all of us when we were young. A couple of my mom’s boyfriends did too. But none of them was my father.”
    Shelly asks, “So what happened to him?”
    “I don’t know. My mom says he moved away before I was born.”
    “So he doesn’t even know about you?”
    “No, I guess not,” I say. I start the car and back out of the space.
    “Parents lie, you know,” she says.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Your dad may be living right here in Rooster, walking around, and you don’t even know it.” Shelly reaches for her cigarette case, remembers it’s empty, and stuffs it back in her bag. She chews on a piece of cinnamon gum. “Have you tried looking for him?” she asks.
    I look for him every day
, I think,
every time I see a tall, dark-haired guy.
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
    “You have his last name, don’t you?”
    “No. Flynn is my mom’s maiden name.”
    “So how come she didn’t give Jeff and Annie her name?”
    “They know who their dads are. My mom won’t tell me his name.” What I don’t want to say is she may not know his name. When I was small I used to ask at least once a year, and every time I got a different story. Sometimes I was a king’s son who had been left on her doorstep, or she bought me at a flea market. My favorite tale was that I had been born a baby dragon, but somehow morphed into a boy. Eventually, I stopped asking. Any number of men in Rooster or Columbus could be my dad. I look for guys I resemble since I don’t look much like my mother. She has blond hair and brown eyes, like Jeff, and my hair is dark, almost black, and my eyes are green. Jeff looks like her, and Annie resembles her father. Me? I’m a broken pencil in a box of felt-tip markers.
    I don’t tell Shelly any of this, though. I divert the attention back to her. “So in what ways have your parents lied to you?” I ask.
    She holds out empty fingers and pretends to puff on a cigarette. “That’s another long conversation for another day.” She takes an imaginary puff. “Just drive.”
    We head south of town on a two-lane highway, one of those unevenly paved country roads common in this part of Ohio, roads that seem to lead to nowhere, where you can drive for hours and not see a soul, and suddenly you come to an intersection and there’s a four-lane highway zipping with traffic. We come to a fork, where we can choose east or south.
    “Which way?” I ask.
    “South.”
    “Aren’t you afraid we’ll run into a meth lab?”
    She shrugs. “We’ll take our chances.”
    I shake my head. “You know, we have all day. Don’t you want to share some of that long conversation with me?”
    She bites her nail and ignores my question. She reaches into her purse for a stick of gum. “I’ve gone from being a chain smoker to a chain chewer,” she says.
    At one intersection we spot a farmers' market stand. We stop and buy a bag of fresh peaches and a sack of tomatoes. As we drive, she reaches for a tomato and bites into it like she’s eating an apple.
    “I’ve never seen