A Bird's Eye Read Online Free PDF

my good friend Tobias Whitaker. Tobias’s family owns Whitaker’s Stationery, one of the biggest suppliers to businesses in the city. Toby, my sister. And our nephew Benjamin.”
    She looked pained as the man approached. “A great pleasure, Miss Kleeman,” he said, taking her hand.
    â€œWe’re absolutely starving,” said Hayim. “Have Bess get us some supper. We’ll just have a little drink in the meantime.”
    â€œOf course,” she said. I could see she did not want to walk in front of this man, but she lowered her head and passed by him, excessively conscious of her uneven gait. As she left the room, she heard the men laugh.
    My uncle didn’t have much choice but to offer me something to eat as well, which I would have accepted even if I’d been full, which I wasn’t. In the dining room, he described Mr. Whitaker’s lineage, how he was a third-­generation graduate of St. Michael’s College. Mr. Whitaker had recently returned from Europe. The Depression had shaken most of the Americans out of Paris, he said, and all anyone did was talk about the possibility of war. Hayim exclaimed about the Whitaker family home on Beverley Street. “A Victorian mansion, but completely modernized. You ought to see it, Hannah. This is a log cabin in comparison.”
    â€œBut this is very sweet,” Mr. Whitaker said. “And to tell you the truth, our neighbourhood isn’t what it once was. A nearby home has just been purchased and there is a rumour that it is going to be divided into apartments. I can’t think of anything more grotesque.”
    Hayim said, “Do you know how many pens we shipped last month? Eighteen thousand.”
    Aunt Hannah looked at me and said, “We have Benjamin’s father to thank for that.”
    Hayim didn’t look happy, but he said, “Yes, our brother. I am the first to admit Jacob’s genius. I wanted him to come in with me, but he refused. It was his loss, I’m afraid. But let’s not ruin the evening’s fun. What do you say, Hannah? We could push aside the furniture and you and Toby could dance. He knows all the latest dances. What is that new one, the Lambeth Walk?”
    â€œYou know that I don’t dance,” Hannah said.
    â€œBut it would be my pleasure,” Mr. Whitaker said, and smiled. My aunt looked at me as if to ask me not to desert her. But I knew that I would leave as soon as we got up from the table.

At this time I was beginning to consider my escape from the family home. I had, I think, about as much sympathy for both my mother and father as an adolescent boy could have. I knew even then that they had never fully embraced the New World, much as they had wanted to escape the Old. Nor had they found a new world in each other. But that did not much mitigate my burning desire to live just about anywhere else. But I had no savings, and while I considered asking my aunt, I had some of my father’s stubborn pride and didn’t want to succeed on my uncle’s money.
    In the meantime, I had to find other ways to escape. Slipping out of the house after dark, I had to squeeze out of my small window, grab onto the brick sill next to my own, place a foot at the top of the window just below, and then shimmy down the shaking rainspout. My hands slipped and I fell the last few feet.
    â€œHey,” Corinne said. She could get out of her house before I could and so was always waiting for me.
    â€œHey yourself,” I said back. It was hard to see much but her eyes. “What you want to do?”
    â€œI got a couple of hours before my daddy’s supposed to be home. He’s coming from the Rocky Mountains. We could go to the river, try to find change that fell out of people’s pockets doing the hootchy-kootchy.”
    â€œWe never found anything last time. I got a piece of Black Jack.” I unwrapped it, bit it in two, and gave her the other half.
    She