Hooked by Catherine Greenman Read Free Book Online Page A

for some reason Dad talked. “I wouldn’t say I miss anything about it. It’s more that I miss my youth, and the requisite recklessness. I’m in my late forties. I’m human. I feel old.”
    “You’re not old,” Will said.
    “I’m not young.” He let out a forced, theatrical sigh. “You know what’s funny? I miss being married. It’s funny how I associate smoking with marriage.”
    “You miss being married?” I asked.
    “Of course I do. Does that surprise you?”
    “Uh, yeah,” I answered in my best teenager voice. Mom once told me men were like dumb little pups, sitting in a window waiting for a home, any home.
    “Well, it shouldn’t.” He smiled. “Enough about me and my checkered past. Who wants dessert? I think Jim picked up a Fruits of the Farm pie.”
    Jim appeared silently in the kitchen doorway. I wondered what he’d heard.
    “Jim, were you able to get your hands on anything at Chelmsfords?” Dad asked conspiratorially.
    “I got lucky,” Jim answered.
    “Music to my ears,” Dad said, rubbing his hands together as Jim brought out the pie and set it in front of him. “Who wants a slice? Food. Pie. That’s my downfall now. Who?”

8.
    Mom stood by my door with a pair of jeans under her arm and her white sunglasses on top of her head. “What in God’s name are you doing?” she asked.
    “Crocheting,” I said, gathering the ball of purple yarn farther up my lap. “Vanessa taught me.”
    “God, you’re giving me chills,” she said. “You are single-handedly conjuring the horror of Evelyn Galehouse,” she murmured, meaning Dad’s mother, my grandmother. “The way her fingers twitched when she made those awful blankets! She would always
appear
to be so engrossed, but every time I looked, I caught her glaring at me, like the evil little witch she was. Anyway, how can you even look at heavy yarn like that in this heat?”
    “It’s August, Mom,” I said. “It’s hot outside. Deal with it.”
    “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, rolling the jeans into a little bun.
    “Nothing.” I gripped the loop I’d just done tightly with my finger. “Will’s moving his stuff up to Columbia today.”
    “Well, we knew the day would come,” she said matter-of-factly. “Honestly, Thee, do not get so wrapped up in this. You have the rest of your life to need a man to be happy.”
    “I’m not wrapped up.”
    “Good. Do you have anything for Josephine?” she said, referring to the tailor who worked at the dry cleaners downstairs.
    I shook my head. My phone buzzed and Mom jumped. She hated loud, sudden noises and looked at me like the phone ringing was somehow my fault.
    “G-Rock, money-love,” Will whispered as Mom waved and left. “Wanna come up here and check it out? Help me unpack all my bongs?”
    “Okay,” I said, squeezing the ball of yarn and smiling from ear to ear. I thought it would be weeks or months until an invitation came. “Do you need anything?”
    When I got out of the subway at 116th Street, there were plantains at the vegetable stand on the corner instead of bananas,and the plantains spoke to me. They said: We dare you to succeed in our strange new world. We dare you to try to hold on to him.
    The street outside the main building was a sea of cars with lampshades, stuffed animals and stereo speakers on their roofs. A girl ran by in a tennis skirt with a purple boa around her neck.
    “Mom, wait!” she shrieked. “I have the keys!”
    I walked through two stone pillars into a grand, imposing courtyard and had a flash that I was in some other part of the world—one of those piazzas in Florence, where I’d sucked face with some now-almost-faceless boy—and that I’d be leaving soon, getting on a plane or something. I went into the building, up the stairs and around a corner with a bulletin board displaying ads for used couches and rides. There was a note card tacked to it: “To whoever made a grilled cheese in the lounge toaster 4/23 … clean it out,