Behold the Dreamers Read Online Free PDF

it best to follow the advice her mother had given her years ago about abstaining from comparing her child to another woman’s child. “They only have this one child?” she asked instead.
    He shook his head. “Mighty told me he has a big brother. He lives uptown in another apartment they own and goes to Columbia University. The School of Law.”
    â€œYou’re going to be driving him around, too?”
    â€œMaybe, I don’t know. If I have to drive him, too, it’s no problem, but from the way Mighty was talking it looks like the brother doesn’t come to visit them often, and Mrs. Edwards is not happy about it. I didn’t ask him any more questions.”
    She filled up his half-empty glass of water and allowed him to eat in silence for a few minutes before resuming her questions. “And Mrs. Edwards,” she went on, “what does she look like?”
    â€œGood-looking,” he replied. “Just like a woman with a rich husband should look. Winston said she’s one of those food people.”
    â€œWhat food people?”
    â€œThe people who teach other people how to eat … so they can look one way or not look another way.” He picked up the can of Mountain Dew she’d set on the table, opened it, and took a long sip. “People in this country, always worrying about how to eat, they pay someone good money to tell them: Eat this, don’t eat that. If you don’t know how to eat, what else can you know how to do in this world?”
    â€œSo she must be slim and really good-looking.”
    He nodded distractedly, sweat pouring down his face from the extra pepper she’d tossed into the chicken and tomato sauce. Ignoring the sweat, he picked up a drumstick, ripped the meat off the bone with his front teeth, and sucked the juice inside the bone.
    â€œBut what exactly does she look like?” she pressed on. “Ah, bébé, details, please.”
    He sighed and said he couldn’t remember too much about what she looked like. The one thing he remembered, he said, was that when he first saw her, he thought she looked something like the wife in American Beauty —a movie they both loved and watched whenever they wanted to remind themselves that life in American suburbs could be very strange and maybe it was best to live in peaceful American cities, like New York City.
    â€œWhat’s the real name of that woman again?” he asked with a full mouth, tomato sauce dripping down his fingers. “You’re the one who knows these things.”
    â€œAnnette Bening?”
    â€œYes, yes. That’s who she looks like.”
    â€œWith the same eyes and everything? She must be beautiful, eh?”
    He said he could not remember if Cindy Edwards had Annette Bening’s eyes.
    â€œIt’s not like you can even know what her real eyes are like,” she said. “Some of them wear colored contacts; they can change their eyes whenever they feel like it. A woman like Mrs. Edwards, she was probably born into a rich family and started wearing colored contacts even as a child.”
    â€œI don’t know …”
    â€œRich father, rich mother, rich husband. I’m sure her whole life she’s never known what it’s like to worry about money.”
    Licking his lips, he picked up a piece of plantain from the plate, broke it with his fingers, dunked half of it into the tomato sauce bowl, and hurriedly pushed it into his mouth for processing.
    She watched him, amused at the speed with which he was devouring his food. “And then what happened after you dropped Mighty off at school?” she asked.
    He came back and picked up Mrs. Edwards, he said, took her to her office and then to an appointment in Battery Park City and to another appointment in Soho, before taking her home and picking up Mighty from school and driving him and his nanny to a building on the Upper West Side where he got his piano lessons.