All the Way Read Online Free PDF Page A

“r” in them.’
    May, June, July, August. July and August both have thirty-one days. Knuckles together, here is the church, index fingers pointed, here is the steeple, fingers splayed, open the doors and out come the people.
    Papa, can you do this?
    Hands clapped together, middle finger against middle finger, they are turning around the axis of a single weird finger.
    â€˜I’m driving, my little chickadee.’
    The after-hours pharmacy is near the marina. You have to ring and be let in. There’s a sign in the window that says: HAVE YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE TAKEN HERE.
    â€˜This is more your business than mine,’ he says to the pharmacy woman with a wink.
    â€˜What do you need, Mademoiselle?’
    The word tampon comes into her mind but she knows that’s not it. Tampons are for her mother and for Georges’ girlfriend. The word she’s looking for is an ordinary word, like pumpkin, with another word that’s more complicated, more academic, or gymnastic.
    There’s a poster with an anatomical model drinking a syrup for constipation. A green arrow goes straight down through his guts, without passing through the loops of the intestines.
    â€˜A packet of Modess,’ her father ends up saying.
    â€˜We don’t stock Modess. Stayfree?’
    â€˜Stayfree’s fine. Now she’ll stay free when she plays kiss chasey, ha, ha?’
    He gives her a nudge.
    She has already lived through this scene . It’s because of the shame, but also because of the nudge, and the pharmacy woman, and the Stayfree and the staying free in kiss chasey: she’s already seen this pharmacy woman, and now she’ll remember this moment here between her father and the pharmacy woman for the rest of her life, she’ll remember it, this moment that has come round again. Time has a hole in it. The past and the future have been connected like the mouth and the anus of the anatomical model—a hideous graft that short-circuits the twists and turns of the present.
    And her father thinks he has to joke around with the woman for ages. It’s just the way he gets on with people. It’s his way of being polite. She’d like to pluck up the courage to ask if she can go to the toilet, to fix her underpants, and put in the sanitary napkin . She rocks from one foot to the other but the face washer stays stuck on one side. When she sits down in the car, a rush of warm liquid soaks her underpants.
    They still have to go and buy flowers. Her father makes big gestures and speaks loudly and the florist piles everything left in her shop into the boot of the car: red and yellow roses, arum lilies, all sorts of coloured stuff, even gladioli.
    â€˜Don’t make that face, you look like your mother. You’ve only got one life, my little chickadee.’
    Does Lulu get this as well? She vaguely remembers something about underpants for a dog. For a female dog.
    It’s raining. The ground is steaming and opens up beneath the raindrops. Each drop releases the smell of the grass, the smell of the bitumen. If she got caught in a shower of rain on the way to school, how would she be able to run, with this package stuck between her legs? The world unfolds in shapes, noises and colours, but she’s in a glass box, separated from it all.
    â€˜Hey, come and keep me warm!’ Monsieur Bihotz calls out.
    In bed with Monsieur Bihotz, the feeling of being inside glass continues. Those good strong smells, the big body of Monsieur Bihotz—the contrast is chilling. She pulls away from him. He grabs her by the foot, like a bear catching salmon. She pulls away again.
    Those tadpole things inside men’s dicks climb all over the sheets just like they swim around in the swimming-pool water, and they get inside girls. They swim up through the blood and make babies. Monsieur Bihotz doesn’t seem to know about it, so it’s up to her to be careful. Although there are also those strange times when