Family and Other Accidents Read Online Free PDF Page B

heights, the balcony looks suspiciously like the one from
Rear Window
, and he can’t think of a reason he’d try to kill Mona. Still he jerks awake, heart knocking against his ribs. Her head is on his chest, arms draped across his stomach, throat seemingly unmarred.
    Sliding out from under her, he goes downstairs to the living room and flips through channels—sitcom holiday episodes on Nick at Nite, soft-core porn on Cinemax,
Jaws
, which he has seen half a dozen times because it’s always on TNT late-night—until he gets to paid programming. He’s watching a show about a sit-up machine shaped like a miniature fighter jet when Connor gets back from his high school girlfriend’s.
    â€œJenny says hi,” Connor says, black hair a mess, lipstick smudges on thin cheeks.
    Jack nods and gestures to the television, where an enormous man, round muscles ready to pop through oiled skin, presses the fighter jet against his midsection and does crunches. “Think that thing actually works?”
    â€œAren’t you going to work at some ungodly hour?” Connor tosses Jack the car keys. Still in his red ski jacket, he moves an overstuffed pillow and sits next to Jack on the couch. “Shouldn’t you go to bed?”
    â€œI was asleep, I had a nightmare.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    Mona’s confused eyes, his blue shirt cuffs on her neck. “I don’t remember.” Jack looks for a place to put his keys, but he’s in his underwear, no pockets anywhere.
    On TV there’s a series of impossible before-and-after photos and a phone number. Slouching into the couch, Connor puts his feet on the coffee table, folds hands across his abdomen, looks at Jack like he wants to say something, but doesn’t.
    A new program starts; Ron Popeil, in his butcher’s apron with the Ronco monogram across the front, shows a rapt audience the dehydrator.
    â€œThat’s what you and I are giving Mona’s parents for Christmas.” He points to the screen.
    Connor rolls his eyes, and guilt tickles Jack’s guts. He can’t remember a single conversation his brother had with Mona in the past year, both of them becoming awkward and quiet, almost sullen, when in the same room. Still, Mona’s parents had specifically invited Connor.
    â€œIf you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. If you’d rather go to Jenny’s mom’s or—”
    â€œI don’t have anything else to do.” Connor yawns. “Besides, I’ve always wondered what real people did for holidays. It’s like research for a soc class or something.”
    â€œAre you taking sociology?”
    â€œMy roommate is.”
    It occurs to Jack that he doesn’t even know this roommate’s name, what he looks like. Doesn’t know his brother’s major, doesn’t know who Connor fucks or watches Indians games with.
    On the TV, Ron gives the blond cohost a piece of turkey jerky, and she discusses its virtues without irony—it’s fresher and lower in fat than what you buy in stores. Having seen the program eight times, Jack knows Ron’s lines by heart.
    â€œSo you’re going to stay in Cleveland?” Connor asks.
    â€œWhere would I go?”
    â€œI just kind of thought once I left for school you might go to D.C. or something. You used to talk about stuff like that.”
    Jack does have vague memories of such talk, in the days before he took the associate position at the firm where his father had been managing partner, but now that seems part of another life, the one from the time before he ordered new living room furniture to replace the beige stuff his mother bought in the early eighties.
    â€œYou’re going to stay with Jones Day?” Connor is asking.
    â€œYeah, I should make partner in a few years.”
    â€œThat’s cool.” Connor nods, even though Jack knows he probably thinks that it is the absolute antithesis of cool.