Brood by Chase Novak Read Free Book Online Page A

locked (night after night after night) and from which they had once been forced to escape. But no, they wanted their old rooms back, and that’s where they are sleeping right now.
    She places her water glass on the bedside table and picks up her journal and her old Montblanc ballpoint.
    Three times in her life, Cynthia has kept a journal. The first was when she was ten years old and her father disappeared, never to return. She wrote in her diary for a few weeks, but she was so consumed by the worry that either her mother or her sister would find it and read it that she wrote the entire thing in code, and the code itself was so complicated that even she couldn’t really understand what she had written.
    The second time she kept a journal was many years later when Gary Ziltron, her boyfriend at the time and her partner in Gilty Pleasures, also disappeared. But whereas her father disappeared like a lost sock, Gary’s leaving was explosive. He left a crazy, mean-spirited letter that undermined her sobriety, said rude things about her body, and all but announced he had never loved her. On top of all that, he took about three-quarters of their cash on hand. The post-Gary journal lasted for nearly two years, and she credited her eventual recovery from the pain and the shame of Gary’s leaving her to all that stream-of-consciousness writing.
    Now, in New York, she has purchased a beautiful notebook at nearby Dempsey and Carroll, the navy-blue cover fashioned from heavy linen paper, each page faintly watermarked with the company’s logo. Her life right now is strange and thrilling to her, and lacking people with whom to discuss it, she has quickly come to find solace and even a weird form of friendship in her journal. Maybe I always wanted to be a mother, she writes, and then stops, smiles, remembering that in the seven days she has been writing her thoughts into this notebook, she has already written that sentence seven times. I always felt sorry for the mothers I knew. Always so preoccupied, so drained. Kids are like vampires; they suck the blood out of you. Or so I thought. But now in the silence of this beautiful house, savoring the late hours when my thoughts are my own, I can hardly wait to hear their footsteps, their voices. Tonight’s dinner was not a total success, but still, it was something, a first step. I know I can do this. I know we can get this right. I can hardly wait for morning to come when I can meet them in the hallway as they pad down the steps from their bedrooms on the third floor. I can hardly wait to ask, Anybody hungry? Who wants breakfast? I love them. I love them so much. It’s like a fever that you pray will never break.
    She turns the page.
    It’s amazing how well they’ve adjusted. All those days and nights apart, living in foster homes. However it affected them, they have buried it—at least for now. Mainly, they are delighted to be with each other. Sometimes I feel almost jealous—no one in all my life has loved me the way those two love each other. Need to read up on twins!
    I know they are thin—frightfully thin. But that’s going to change. And they look sort of great, to be honest. Like little models.
    I also need to take it slow. They are not going to bond with me overnight—no matter how much I would like that to happen.
    The project of getting them out of the house is still on the old to-do list. They will sit on the porch and watch the passing parade of people—which never stops, by the way. New Yorkers walk everywhere, and they are out and about day and night. But in terms of exercise for the kids and real fresh air (if there is any to be had in this city!)—forget it. I have tried to tempt them, offering to take them shopping or out to eat (yeah, right), but so far all they want is to hang out with each other in the house. Arthur Glassman mentioned a couple of times that I might want to keep them out of Central Park, but so far,