Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts by Claire LaZebnik Read Free Book Online

the cheek. “Tell your dad I say hi.”
    * * *
    Once we’re inside his battered Honda Civic, Jacob tells me I can put on any radio station I like. Well, any AM/FM station—he doesn’t have satellite.
    I fiddle with the dial and settle on a Top 40 station.
    Jacob raises an eyebrow. “You like Lady Gaga?”
    “I do.” I want to sound defiant, but it comes out sounding defensive instead.
    He shakes his head in bemusement. “Sometimes I wonder where you came from, Keats.”
    “Most people in this country love Lady Gaga,” I say.
    “I know. I just don’t expect a Sedlak to.”
    I shrug: guess I’m still the little red-haired freak.
    Jacob’s an awful driver: too slow when he’s going straight, too abrupt when switching lanes. Other drivers honk at him throughout the twenty-minute trip, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
    He has his own parking space in the garage underneath my father’s building, which is just a block or so away from Memorial Drive. I’m impressed by the location: Dad’s not only in the heart of Harvard Square, he’s right on the Charles River. “How did he find this place?” I ask as we ride up to the fifth floor, the boxes stacked in a corner of the elevator.
    “He didn’t. Your mom did. She knew someone who knew someone who was selling and asked me to check it out.” The elevator doors open, and we start unloading the boxes into the small, well-lit hallway. “At first your father wasn’t exactly enthusiastic—”
    “Well, of course he wasn’t. He wanted to stay at home with her.”
    “On her advice, I didn’t tell him why we were coming here, just said that he had a meeting.” We finish moving boxes and let the elevator doors close behind us. “It was an ambush: I got him in the door, and then the real estate agent and I double-teamed him. Even so, I doubt he’d have gone for it if your mother hadn’t shown up and made it clear that his days in her house were numbered.” He takes a key out of his pocket.
    I watch him as he unlocks the door. “I think I’ve underestimated you, Jacob. I always thought Dad ran your life. Maybe it’s the other way around.”
    He looks over his shoulder at me. “You seriously think he runs my life?”
    “You’re at his beck and call, aren’t you?”
    “It’s not like that,” he says. “I’m not his errand boy or anything. I like the work I do with him and for him. I wouldn’t stick around if I didn’t.”
    I feel vaguely chastised and fall silent.
    He opens the door and calls out a hello.
    There’s an uncertain “uh…Jacob?” from down the hallway.
    We maneuver the boxes into the apartment, and I look around while Jacob closes the door behind us. There’s nothing particularly special about the space. We’re standing in a medium-sized living room that has a hallway leading off from one side and a small kitchen off to the other. But the windows on the far wall are large, and you can actually see some of the redbrick Harvard houses and a tiny slice of the river. “Wow,” I say, moving closer. “That view.”
    “I know,” says Jacob, joining me by the window. “Nice, isn’t it?”
    “Bet Dad doesn’t even notice.”
    “We set up an office for him in the second bedroom.” He leads me into the hallway. One door off of it is open and through it I can see a narrow bed, still unmade, the quilt slipping off. There’s something incredibly sad about how messy and small the room is, about how my father’s life has been reduced to an unkempt bed in a claustrophobic room.
    Jacob doesn’t seem to notice the pathos of it all—he’s already knocking on the other door and then opening it with a comfortable self-assurance I envy. “Larry?” he says. “Look who I brought with me.”
    My father is hunched over a computer at his desk. His neck and shoulders curve forward just like Milton’s. Dad’s heavier than Milton and his hair is mostly gray, but give Milton another fifty years and they’ll be identical. Dad’s wearing reading