Before My Life Began Read Online Free PDF Page A

the fire escape as being made up of millions of tiny white grains, like sand, and I felt sad that Abe was coming home now instead of in the spring or the summer. If he came home in the spring or summer, I knew, he would take me to a Dodger game at Ebbets Field. I thought of me and Tony and Marvin and the other guys sneaking into the bleachers and of how proud Abe would be of me for the way we did it. My mother was gone. My father was searching around on top of the table as if he’d lost something—he was too proud ever to ask me to help him look for anything—and what I saw inside my head was the lush green of the grass of Ebbets Field before a game began. I saw the men walking around the base paths, dragging the enormous pieces of weighted-down cloth they used to smooth the dirt paths. I saw Abe laughing his beautiful big smile and waving to people he knew in the stands and I saw how happy I was to be next to him. Now that he was back, though, I wondered if I could still stay friends with Tony. Tony’s father worked for Mr. Fasalino the way my father worked for Abe, and Mr. Fasalino and Abe controlled different territories. According to my father, Mr. Fasalino’s organization had been scared to go too far while the war was on and we were fighting against Italy, but now that the Italians weren’t our enemies anymore he figured Mr. Fasalino would try to move into our territory as soon as Abe got back.
    My mother set my father’s satchel down on the chair next to me, took out his set of clean underwear, laid the tops and bottoms on the kitchen counter, and folded them down with her hands.
    â€œFor me this once, all right? Just meet us at Lillian’s tonight. Is that asking too much of a man I’ve been married to for fourteen years?”
    My father cocked his head to the side, and from where I was sitting below him the white of his blind eye was soft and milky. When the two of them got angry, my mother’s cheeks would fill with color and my father’s would go pale and gray. It was as if their fighting made him older and her younger. My mother’s hand was on the back of my neck, but I wasn’t sure she knew she had it there. I tried not to hear the words they said to one another—I hated it when he acted like a beggar—and I thought instead of the questions I could ask Abe, the ones I’d been saving up about what the war had been like, and who were the bravest soldiers, and whether the Australian Commandos were really the best of all, even better than our Rangers, and if he’d ever been scared he would die and what he’d imagined during a moment like that.
    â€œIf I hurt your feelings,” my mother said, “then I apologize right here with the boy as witness, okay?” She stroked my neck slowly and I didn’t move. “Look—I know you mean well, Sol, but what would be so terrible if we had a little extra money? I think it would be a terrific job, being a comparison shopper. Anybody meets me in the store, they would think I’m a regular shopper, like I’m supposed to look like. I’d get to move around a lot, from store to store. I could save us some money too. I—”
    â€œNo wife of Sol Voloshin is gonna work so long as he’s alive. Do you hear me?”
    â€œI hear you. But I’ll say it again, that I’m sorry and that at a time like this what I think is bygones should be bygones and we should be like a family. Like a family , Sol, all right? Do you hear me? Did I ever want more than we should be a real family together, the three of us, with no secrets? Only when we fight I get scared that it’s gonna be like Momma and Poppa all over again and you can’t ever understand that, how all I want is for us to love one another.”
    â€œSure. I’ll love you and you’ll love Abe and Abe will take care of the whole world. Tell me another one.”
    My father touched his underpants, on the