Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom Read Free Book Online Page B

three directions. She’s wearing shoes with no socks, but it doesn’t look like summer; she’s wearing a boy’s jacket, her hands stuck in the pockets.
    “Where is that?” It’s obviously not America.
    “Prague. That’s in Czechoslovakia. They speak Czech. My mother speaks Czech.”
    “Do you?”
    “A little. Not really. She looks weird.”
    “Yeah.” I looked at the picture again. I knew what she was thinking as if I were standing there myself, my hands in her pockets, our fingers wedged together in the torn lining. She is trying not to cry. Everyone wants her to be happy now, and she’s trying.
    “It’s late, Benj. You’re supposed to be in bed.”
    “You’re invisible.”
    “I am not fucking invisible and it’s ten-thirty. Come on, put the picture back.”
    He jumped on the bed, bouncing like a trampoline expert, knees bent, arms parallel to the mat, thing flapping up and down in a blur.
    “Come and get me,
milacku.”
    “What’s that?” I began circling the bed. I wanted to grab him, but I didn’t want to smush my face against his thing or his butt.
    “Milacku
, sweetie pie.
Milacku
, sweetie pie.
Mam te rad
. I love you.
Mam te rad. Dobrounots
. Good night.
Dobrounots
. Good night, good doughnuts.”
    He kept singing the words and repeating them until the English and Czech ran together and I couldn’t understand anything. The bed was creaking loudly, rocking on the short wooden legs.
    “Benjie, get off the bed.”
    “Say the f-word again.”
    “Get off the bed. I’m sorry I used bad language.”
    He started screaming. “Say it. Say the f-word.”
    “Okay, stop it. Jesus. Get off the fucking bed. Okay? Getoff the fucking bed and give me the fucking picture. Your parents will never fucking hire me again if they come home at eleven and find you wandering around the fucking house butt-naked. Okay?”
    By the third “fucking” he stopped bouncing, and then he just sat on the end of the bed, waving the photo at me like a little grey flag. I took it out of his hand and put it back in the black leather wallet he’d found it in.
    “Where’d you get the wallet?”
    He shrugged.
    “Come
on
. You can’t go looking through people’s stuff and leave it all over the place.” Lessons in Rudimentary Snooping.
    “In the thing there.” He pointed to the nightstand.
    I wasn’t a genius, but at nine I knew the word for “nightstand.” Of course, because of my mother, I also knew “escritoire,” “armoire,” and more about Chippendale Chinese than most people.
    I slid the picture out, looking again at her face, skinny little scared face with a big fake smile. I put the wallet back in the drawer, laying a pencil stub across it to make it look normally messy.
    I was getting used to Benjie being naked. I didn’t even care when he left the bathroom door open while he brushed his teeth and peed.
    I pulled the covers over him.
    “Sit with me,” he said. “I’m scared of the dark.”
    “Come on,” I said. I wanted to watch TV.
    “I am. You have to sit with me. Max does when she’s not here.”
    “Usually it’s your father?” I liked the idea of Mr. Stone’s being a great father.
    “No. Her. Because she’s here. You know, she sleeps in here.” He pointed to the twin bed on the other side of the room.
    “Your mother sleeps in here?”
    “Yeah. Is that weird?”
    “No. Maybe she sleeps in here because you’re scared of the dark. To keep you company.”
    “Maybe,” he said, and he yawned.
    “You can fall asleep now, you’re all right. Good night, Benjie.”
    “Dobrounots, milacku.”
    “Dobrounots
, you doughnut.”

Scandalize My Name
    “L et’s have a look-see at that right hand,” Mrs. Hill said, eyes on the ceiling.
    “Vivian said absolutely no more pork rinds.”
    I was fifteen, and in our two years we had one ambulance ride, two angina attacks, and more than a few sponge baths between us. After
Pride and Prejudice
, we alternated between the tabloids and the poetry of