Dear Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page A

beagle, I need a little time to myself,
you know?  I need a little Ronnie time.”  I have a feeling she’d be
slurring at this point if it weren’t for the caffeine in the coffee.
    “Fair
enough,” I say.  I’m not nearly as gone, and I hate knowing why.  For
Ronnie, drinking is a Saturday morning ritual.  For me?  
It’s a way of life.
    Noon
hits sooner than later, so I nominate myself coffee cup holder while Ronnie
tries to balance her way into the house on her ugly feet.
     Before
we leave, she shows off the new Beamer they bought, but she does it while
chewing on her thumbnail.  She's snockered, and at this point is prying
Trudy's hair from her scalp, believing she's gently running her fingers through
it.  Poor Trudy has tears in her eyes behind those god-awful coke bottle
glasses and every time I look at her, I can’t stop picturing a geriatric dog.
    "This
has been fun," Ronnie says as we stumble into a hug.  She kicks up
the blackened sole of her foot, and I breathe in our smell, a noxious
combination of Donna Karen and the bleach I used to scrub the bathroom grout
yesterday that’s stood the test of my morning shower.
    "It
always is."  Something grabs my hand, and I almost to swat it away,
but I see it's Wren shouldering close to me. 
She's mousy in a way that's cute now, but won't be when she's older, and I pray
she isn't cursed like Mitch's sister, Tammy, who looks like a stillborn
kitten.  That woman is hairless and loud-mouthed and one of sixty million
reasons I'm glad I got the hell out of Helena but sometimes when I look down at
the crown of Wren's head, it's like I never moved an inch.
    "Where we going?" Wren asks when
I loop around the Gibsons' circle drive in my GrandAm.  Ronnie pirouettes
a final goodbye and the sun strikes hard against Trudy's glistening bug eyes.
    "Mall,"
I say.  Mitch leaves cash wadded in the console of his truck, and
sometimes I sneak out there late at night to swipe a few bills.  The trees
aren't diving toward the ground and lightning isn't striking me dead, so it's
no big deal.  Seriously.
    "What
are we getting?" she asks.
    "Whatever we want."
    ~
    I
bought a TV.  I didn't mean to, but then Wren and I were standing in Radio
Shack at the White Smoke Mall and our faces were blown up around the
room.  She started jumping up and down, waving her hands.  Her face
was happy and for a second I forgot about her bed wetting, her school wetting,
the fact that she might one day end up like Mitch's used up sister, Tammy, so I
bought the damn TV.
    "Ooooh,
shit," I say as we drive around in circles for awhile.
    "What's
wrong, Mommy?" Wren asks.  I look up and see a small fraction of her
face in the rearview mirror.  She looks a little like me at this angle.
    "What's
not wrong, really.   Hungry?" I ask and rack
my brain for places I can stash the forty-inch, flat screened mammoth that's
lightly bobbing in the truck of the Pontiac.  The damn thing hardly fits
so I spent twenty minutes and half a nail bungee cording it shut.
    "Mmm,
Happy Meal," she says in that way that annoys me.  Just ask for the
damn thing, kid.  But I agree and smile because I read on the Internet how
you always have to smile around children.  They absorb sadness like
sponges.
    We
start-stop through the line and I order her a Happy Meal, me the chicken
nuggets and chow down like there's no tomorrow.  She doesn't ask, but I
know she wants to eat inside and play on the diseased infested jungle gym with
the other children.  But it's too loud in there, too bright.  I feel like
I'm up on stage in that place, and I'm liable to trip
and spill our food for an audience of fat gutted looky-loos.
    "What
did you and Trudy play?"
    "House.   She made
me be the Dad."
    "Her home, her rules."
    "Yeah,
but she always makes me be the Dad."
    "Well
then do her the favor.  Might be the only time in her life she knows what
it's like to have a husband. "  I shouldn't
talk this way about her friends.  I really