Every Last One Read Online Free PDF Page B

“What’s that supposed to be?” and Max would say, “It’s a microscopic organism found in the water on Mars. It glows in the dark.” The ones I secretly called the Polo Shirt boys would make a face. And the girls would go where the Polo Shirt boys went. And Alex became one of the Polo Shirt boys himself.
    “People at school don’t believe me and Max are twins,” Alex said one day.
    “Max and I,” I say, and then, “I was there, sweet pea. You absolutely are.”
    “Just fraternal,” he said, as though that wasn’t the same, perhaps not even closely related.
    I can see Max’s hair going back and forth, back and forth, like a wheat field in a windstorm; can very faintly hear some thumps. I don’t think Max plays the drums very well yet, but I’m not sure exactly how you recognize good drumming. If he continues, we will build him a soundproof room in the unfinished space above the garage and buy him a set of drums. For now, he takes his sticks and plays on the surface of his bed, the kitchen counter, the dashboard of the car. When he drums he seems happier, or at least less sad. The rest of the time he seems absent, as though he’s gone somewhere else and left his body behind. “Earth to Max,” Alex says sometimes to get his brother’s attention. At least they are beginning to reach puberty at the same time, caught in some odd middle ground of metamorphosis. Their legs have become long and muscled and suddenly covered with hair. The bones beneath the skin of their faces have come into sharper relief. Ruby says I should pay no attention to the porn on their computers. “It’s the tech version of Playboy under the bed,” she told me.
    “When my mother found Playboy under your uncle Richard’s bed, he was grounded for a week,” I said.
    “I dunno, does that make sense to you? Plus, are we suddenly going to decide that Nana was the perfect mother?” Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as being too honest with your children, or at least your daughter. My boys wouldn’t think to pass judgment on my upbringing unless I told them I’d been beaten in the basement. But Ruby has parsed my childhood stories and come up with a fairly accurate portrait of a mother who believedclothing and feeding were the same thing as loving. At least, unlike Glen’s father, my mother didn’t believe in corporal punishment.
    The plans for a terrace garden are on my lap. “Hyssop,” I write in the margin, then erase it. I put my head back and close my eyes. After a few minutes, I force myself to open them again. “Bee balm,” I write, and then say aloud, “Jesus God.” How can I make a garden for a woman who has told me she hates bees? When I asked my client how she felt about butterflies, she made a rocking motion with her hand. “I’m not a big bug person,” she said.
    Ruby left the house early this morning, said it was to work on the literary magazine. I think she wants to avoid being alone with me. In the middle of the night on Saturday, I awoke to a sound from downstairs and realized that it was the teakettle whistling. Ruby and Sarah were moving swiftly around the kitchen, taking milk from the refrigerator, reaching for the sugar. I stood in the doorway watching them before Ruby saw me and startled slightly. “Go back to bed,” she’d whispered to me.
    “Pearl,” wailed a voice from the den. “Pearl, I’m gonna puke.”
    “Oh, God,” Sarah said as I pushed past her.
    Rachel was lying on the couch, covered with a blanket. There were twigs and some leaves snarled in her long dark hair, and I pulled them off. “I hate myself,” she whispered, and then louder, “I hate myself.”
    “Shh,” I said. When Rachel opened her eyes and saw me standing over her, she wailed and rolled onto her side, hiding her face in the cushions. I could see a smear of dirt on her shoulder, and what looked like a bruise on her throat. It reminded me of a night in college when Alice had staggered in at dawn and fallen