Another Broken Wizard Read Online Free PDF Page A

and started as her attention wandered. I guess my attention wandered too, sitting so close to the mad antics of the muted TV, and so far from her. But the conversation eventually found its holiday rails—the many faux pas of older relatives, the food, the good and bad gifts.
    “… But at least the squash and cheese potatoes came out okay. I just can’t believe it’s been three years since grandpa died,” she said.
“I know—unbelievable,” I said, then realized I’d never met her grandfather. Serena and I hadn’t yet been together a whole year.
“Unbelievable, huh?”
“Sorry babe. I mean, you know.”
“Man-robot speaks.”
“At least he’s polite.”
She giggled and I laughed, glad for an awkward moment of connection in the phone call.
“I miss you,” she said.
    “I miss you too. I’d invite you up to stay at Dad’s apartment, but the hospital is probably where I’m going to be for most of next week. Maybe after that, when things get more settled, I’ll get us a hotel room for a weekend. I have a car. I could show you where I grew up.”
    “That sounds like fun. I’m actually a little scared of it, after the stories you’ve told me.”
    “Don’t worry. The dangerous part is easy to avoid,” I said.
    Just a week before, Serena and I got into our first real fight. She was mad I’d be away so long for Dad’s surgery. And I was mad I couldn’t avoid the situation, and that she wasn’t more sympathetic. But we’d talked through it, and things were putatively okay. Serena had a way of saying that everything was okay. She helped me tell myself, almost thirty with a career if not a job, that I was doing okay. Still, it took longer than I’d like to say good-bye.
    Then it was quiet. Not wind-through-the-trees quiet, but near-the-highway quiet. The occasional truck tore by, just down the hill from the apartment. A six pack of Sam Adams from when I’d visited in the summer was still tucked into the bottom compartment of the refrigerator door. I cracked one open and tried to imagine Mom’s empty hours in the apartment, between the end of the workday and sleep. She had wanted her solitude without a false face on it. And here it was.
    I stayed up late drinking and letting the TV tell me all about money I had and the money I didn’t have, the man I was and the man I wasn’t. It took a while. Mom and I crossed paths as she woke for the next day.
     
    6.
    Friday, December 26
     
     
    In the afternoon, Mom and I waded into the holiday shopping crowds at Shoppers World and The Natick Collection . There really wasn’t much else we could think to do in Framingham, and I had to return some shirts. The stores were jammed with dazed shoppers exchanging yesterday’s gifts to harried retail clerks. It was a headache. I called Joe from outside Filene’s Basement.
“What’s up, brotha?” he answered, sounding ready to roll.
“I don’t know. What’s on tap?”
“Thinking of hitting some of the bars—and there might be a party later.”
    It sounded good. With three days until Dad’s surgery, there was air I still wanted to breathe. Back at her apartment, I said good-bye to Mom and hit the road.
    Riding the bumper of the car in front of me on Route 9, I could hardly breathe from the frustration. An eagle held a tractor trailer in its beak on the sign for a trucking company. It read “Eagle is better than par!” The sign frustrated me. So did the other signs: Dent N’ Scratch, Monarch Spring and Wireforms, Home Depot, Lighting Showcase, Bed Bath and Beyond—men like me had moved the earth for these things. We had given our lives, forty hours at a time, for these things. And now, how could we say anything except that we were satisfied with the result?
    Crossing into Worcester, I started to breathe more easily. At the Lucky Dog Music Hall, Joe was drinking by the door, in a black rayon shirt illustrated with a dragon fighting a tiger. He was talking with the owner, Erik. They liked Joe at the Lucky Dog,