Father of the Rain Read Online Free PDF Page A

which is below the stairs in the living room. She speaks so low we can’t hear much, but I can see her straight stiff back and the way she holds the receiver several inches from her ear. When she calls me in and passes the heavy black receiver to me, my father asks me to come home.
    “That’s what I want. I want you and your mother to come home.” His voice is high, like he’s making fun of something, but he isn’t. He’s almost crying. I smell him, smell the steak and the A-1 sauce and the little onions in his drink.
    I’m not sure what to say. After a long silence, he tells me he’s named the puppy Scratch, that he’s a good boy, and that Mallory and Patrick came over to the pool to swim yesterday. His voice becomes regular and he says he took Scratch to the vet that afternoon. He got four shots and he was so brave.
    “He’s right here,” he says, “right next to me, and he says hello to you and wants you to come home soon, little elf.”
    “I’ll try, Dad.”
    After I hang up I can see his hands and the sweat on his nose, and I miss him so much it feels like my skin is coming off.
    In the dining room, my mother is complaining about him and the martinis and how he obviously talked to a lawyer who advised him to act like he wanted her back. “You watch,” my mother says, “he’ll write a letter. He’ll put it in writing.”
    My grandmother sees me listening and asks if anyone wants more chicken.
    I write to Mallory, Patrick, and Neal Caffrey. Mallory writes back first. She typed her letter in the shape of a giraffe.

     
    Patrick writes next, on a turquoise card with his name embossed at the top.
Dear Daley,
I got this stationery for Christmas and this is the first time I’ve used it. It’s kind of dumb. We’ve been using your pool a lot. Hope you don’t mind. It’s hot here. Mr. Amory and me went to the supply place for more chlorine and a new DPD kit. We also went to Payson’s for an extension cord and thumbtacks. When are you coming back? The carnival is over. Elyse threw up on the Scrambler. It was gross. We capsized three times yesterday.
Love,
Patrick
    I was the one who used to go with my father on all his weekend errands. The last time we were at Payson’s, he bought me a round key chain, one of the big silver ones like the kind the janitors at our school have that clip on a belt and have a little hard button in the middle you push to reel the keys back in. I forgot to bring it with me, and after I read Patrick’s letter I cry hard for that stupid key chain.
    Then my father writes, like my mother said he would, a joint letter to both of us, asking us to come back. He used the white stationery from the desk in the living room that has our name and address on it in red letters. He wrote in blue ballpoint, pressing down hard against the blotter beneath so it feels like Braille on the other side. He says he misses us and loves us and wants us to come home and live with him. My mother lets me keep the letter in the pocket of my suitcase. She doesn’t write back. I do, but I don’t want to sound like I’m having a good time and I don’t want him to worry that I’m unhappy, so it’s a bad, boring letter. He never writes again.
    After my father’s letter, Nora begins to send me cards with flowers or bluebirds on them and little poems on the inside. One says,
Before this little bird flies away
He wants to wish you a happy day
.
     
    She signs them
Love Always, Nora
.
    I wait for a letter from Neal. I go with my grandfather nearly every morning to the Chigham General Store, where he buys a
Boston Globe
and a pack of Hot Tamales for me. Then we cross the street to the little post office. A woman named Mavis sits behind the counter. She blushes no matter what my grandfather says to her. I stand in a different spot in the small room each time, thinking if I can just stand in the right place a letter from Neal will be in my grandfather’s box. It can be as long as five or ten minutes that my