A Complicated Kindness Read Online Free PDF

could listen to American stations while we helped my mom take care of the babies.
    We had a lot of fun in the crying room. We could see the back of my dad’s head, on the men’s side, falling over and snapping back repeatedly while he tried to pay attention to the rebukes of Uncle Hands.
    It was usually my job to watch out for mothers with screaming infants standing up in their pews because that meant they were headed our way and the radio had to be shut off so my mom wouldn’t get busted and disciplined by her brother’s notoriously harsh and badly dressed regime. This was the perilous line my father toed and still does, I guess. Torn—at least he was—between the woman he loves and the faith that keeps his motor running. Although with my mom gone, there’s not much of a conflict any more. I’d call the aura at our house a perversely peaceful one of hushed resignation. A few weeks ago my uncle came over to borrow my dad’s socket set and when he asked my dad how he was my dad said oh, unexceptional. Living quietly with my disappointments. And how are you?
    I never know if he’s joking when he says things like that or not. He always signs off his Christmas cards to people with: In Sin and Error, Pining…Raymond.

 
    four
    R ay has exceptionally large glasses, like an underwater mask, as if he never knows when he’ll have to do some welding or shield himself from a solar eclipse. When he blinks at me I’m reminded of the distant city lights, or of the Man from Atlantis or of somebody who has just emerged from a dark underground cell after thirty years of isolation. His glasses are square with thick grey frames and he takes them off frequently to breathe on them. Hah. Hah. Two short punchy breaths, one for each lens. Then he wipes them off with a handkerchief and holds them up to the light, squinting, to see if they’re clean. He still uses handkerchiefs. He buys them in packages of three at a store called Schlitzking Clothing. When I empty his pockets to do the laundry I’m always afraid I’ll find one.
    Doing the laundry can be a really interesting and intriguing process. Emptying people’s pockets, noticing odours and stains and items, folding the clothes afterwards, opening drawers, putting everything away. If I were asked by the FBI to infiltrate the Kremlin I’d definitely get a job there doing the laundry. It’s where the drama starts. What a gold mine. Anyway. Last night when I got home my dad was sitting in his yellow lawn chair by the front door staring off at the number twelve highway. His eyes shone through his glasses like green LifeSavers. They looked like something you’d want to dive for at the bottom of a swimming pool. Sometimes they’re so pretty they’re spooky and I have to ask him to shut them. You’re still up, I said. He said we need to talk about Nomi and where Nomi’s going. I stared at the highway too. I asked him do you mean me and he looked at me, puzzled. I reached out and patted his head slowly. It was a weird thing to do. He lifted his hand and put it on mine and we held our two hands there together on the side of his head, near his ear, as though we were attempting to prevent blood loss while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Then after a while I said Nomi’s going in the house and he didn’t let go of my hand right away. Like we were in a crappy play and he’d missed his cue.
     
    Ray once built something. It was a garbage hutch, he told me. A few weeks after Trudie left he’d gone into the garage and started working on it. It took him a few days of straight building to get it finished. I was spending all of my free time listening to one song (Zeppelin’s “All My Love”—Trudie had liked it too) over and over in the living room and Ray was in the garage hammering and sawing away on his hutch.
    We were little islands of grief. My grandma told me that after my grandpa died she had been very calm. Very, very calm. She bathed, she cleaned the house, she cooked,