Election by Tom Perrotta Read Free Book Online Page A

into a classroom and see the words “Why Not?” scrawled across an otherwise empty blackboard. You'd unscroll your fold-down map of the world and not be surprised to find a pink index card taped to the Horn of Africa, bearing the following statistic: “Two out of three coffee drinkers prefer Tammy to fresh-brewed.” If you saw a wad of paper on the floor, you'd bend down and uncrumple it, just in case.

PAUL WARREN
     
    THE BRUNCH WAS my father's idea. He'd been feeling isolated and thought it would be good for all of us to get together on neutral ground to celebrate Tammy's birthday.
    “We're still a family,” he reminded me. “Whatever happens, we can't let ourselves forget that.”
    He told me this in the bedroom living room of his small, mostly unfurnished apartment in Rock Hill Gardens, an ugly complex overlooking the Parkway. I'd stopped in on my way home from Lisa's, as I often did, to watch the ten o'clock news with him on the tiny portable TV Mom used to keep on the kitchen counter.
    We'd grown a lot closer since the separation. At home he'd been kind of distant, not really interested in talking about anything but sports. Here, though, maybeout of guilt or loneliness, he seemed to feel a powerful urge to explain himself, to make me understand the circumstances that had driven him out of our big, comfortable house into this garage-sized studio.
    This new phase of our relationship had begun the day I helped him move, against my will and at my mother's insistence. For two hours we lugged boxes and suitcases and household furnishings from the parking lot to the apartment, communicating in our everyday language of grunts and gestures, with a few words tossed in to avoid confusion. We were grappling with the dead weight of his new mattress when he looked at me, his face pink with effort, and said something totally unexpected.
    “No one knows what love is,” he told me. “If someone says they do, they're full of shit.”
    I didn't reply. We steered the mattress through the doorway, letting it fall with a muffled
whump
to the carpeted floor.
    “Some people think it's a plant you have to water,” he went on, checking to see if I was paying attention. “I believe your mother subscribes to this metaphor.” He hesitated. “You know what a metaphor is, right?”
    “Yeah,” I said, a little surprised to hear a word like that coming out of his mouth.
    “Most people use metaphors to talk about love and that's why they get it wrong. It's physical, Paul. It's afeeling you carry around in your body. I'd lost that with your mother.”
    I stared down at my sneakers, as though trying to see through them to the clenched toes inside. It didn't seem possible that he was telling me this, any more than it seemed possible that he had actually traded Mom for Mrs. Stiller. Mom was slender and quiet, a pretty, thoughtful woman with a soft laugh. And Mrs. Stiller…
    “She's fat.” I just blurted it out. My father's girlfriend was a loud fat woman who sold real estate.
    He nodded. “I thought I'd be disgusted by her body, but I wasn't.” His eyes grew slitlike as he gnawed on a thumbnail. “I was moved, Paul. By the sight of her.”
    I stood there, trying to breathe. My lungs didn't seem to be working right.
    “She's gross,” I said. “She's a fat fucking pig.”
    He took a step in my direction. I wanted to make him mad, but it wasn't working. This crooked little smile started to take shape on his face.
    “You know what? She doesn't eat any more than you or me. She's just heavy. There's nothing she can do about it.”
    He reported this to me as though it were some marvelous fact, something I'd want to share with my friends.
    “Heavy?” I said. “She's a fucking sumo wrestler.”
    I tried to say something else about what a tub offucking lard she was, but I was too busy choking back sobs. My father moved closer, laying one hand on top of my shoulder. He put his arm around me and pulled me against his chest. He smelled the