Hugo & Rose by Bridget Foley Read Free Book Online

what’re you gonna do?”
    Rose did the sad calculus of the soccer mom.
    Adam’s first game was at eight thirty, but Isaac’s started at eight. Check-in was at seven thirty for all players. An hour’s drive with an extra fifteen minutes for buffer. And she had to make the snack. Load the kids in the car. Josh was working, so he couldn’t help.…
    Josh was always working.…
    Maybe the boys could sleep in their uniforms.
    Maybe she could shower before she went to bed.
    Maybe tomorrow wouldn’t be miserable.
    *   *   *
    The boys loved the idea of sleeping in their uniforms, though Rose had drawn the line at shin guards. Too sweaty.
    Isaac watched her face as she was tucking the covers in around his body.
    â€œMom, I want a bike for my birthday.”
    It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t really a demand either. It was a simple statement of fact, the kind made by children whose parents make sure Santa Claus brings them everything on their list. His tone was the tone of a boy who simply expected to say what he wanted … and get it.
    â€œI’ll talk to Dad about it,” Rose said, though she already knew the content of the conversation she would be having with Josh.
    There was no way Isaac was getting a bike.
    *   *   *
    Do kids even bicycle anymore ? thought Rose as she swept up for the night. The dishwasher hummed quietly, belching a chemic-lemon fragrance. I mean, aren’t they all stuck inside on the Internet? Playing video games so child molesters can’t snatch them from their backyards? Isn’t that why they keep saying every other kid has type two diabetes?
    No. Isaac couldn’t have a bike.
    He couldn’t have a bike because to Rose bicycles were so caught up in her mind with “near death” and “brain injury” that the idea of gifting her son one was akin to giving him a death trap.
    The bicycle her parents had given her was gone the day she had returned from the hospital. Rose’s parents, grateful that she had been returned to them, had gotten rid of it. A totem of their misfortune.
    So Rose had quietly passed out of childhood without ever learning how to ride one, a deficit that seemed to matter less and less the older she got.
    Isaac couldn’t have a bike because his mother didn’t know how to ride one. He couldn’t have a bike because she was convinced a bike would take him away from her, carrying his body away from consciousness.
    Rose knew this was irrational.
    Maybe a few more years.… He still seemed so small.
    She hated to disappoint him, but there was nothing for it. Isaac was going to have to want something else. They had time. His birthday wasn’t for weeks. This happened a lot: Isaac and Adam would decide that they needed something desperately, begging for it for days, until some new thing caught their attention and they began to insist they couldn’t live without that .
    Oh, God, Adam . She hadn’t even thought of him.
    If Isaac got a bike, Adam would want one. He would insist on one, and sibling parity was not something either of them let drop. If Adam got a lolly, Isaac squawked until he had one, too. It was just how they were.
    Rose supposed that was her fault. She had made them that way. When they were young they were so close together that it was just easier to bring two of everything; if one asked for juice, she’d fetch a second for the other. If one got a Tonka, she put a second in the other’s hand.
    For a moment, Rose fought with the image of both the boys’ bodies lying on the pavement, their heads sporting identical cracks, leaking identical trails of blood and brain.
    No. There was no way Isaac could have a bike.
    *   *   *
    Josh shouted when he came in, “Guys! I’m home!”
    Rose ran heel-toe to the foyer, arms waving. “Are you crazy!” she hissed.
    â€œBut, it’s nine