In the Middle of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

father had been waiting for the phone to ring all those nights, had been keeping some kind of rendezvous. He remembered a poem he had read in school during studies about World War I:
    I have a rendezvous with death
    At some disputed barricade
 …
    Was that the kind of rendezvous his father would keep someday, some night?
    Stop dramatizing, he told himself.
    He slipped out of bed and stood uncertainly in the dark, the linoleum cold under his bare feet. He made his way to the door, feeling his way in the dark, and passed noiselessly through the hallway toward a dim light in the living room.
    His father was sitting in his easy chair, not reading, not watching television, just sitting there. Looking at nothing. The expression on his face puzzled Denny. He tried to finda word to describe it. Sad? More than that. Sad and lonesome. Yes, but something else. His eyes lost in thought or memory. Forlorn—that was it, a word that emerged from somewhere, maybe from a book he’d read. Sitting there, forlorn, in the middle of the night. But he and his father and mother were living in a kind of middle of the night even when the sun was shining.
    He knew that even if he tried, he could not count how many nights his father had sat up like this, waiting for the call, then answering the telephone. Anger flared within him. His father should retaliate. Hurl the telephone against the wall. Shout at whoever was at the other end of the line. Do
something.
Instead, his father only waited. Meek and mild.
    Denny stood there for a while, then finally made his way back to his bedroom, through the long shadows, wondering what his father thought about, sitting up like that, in the middle of the night.

 
    W hat are you writing about now?
    That’s Lulu, coming out of nowhere.
    I hesitate, cover the page with my hand but know that I can never lie to her.
    Aren’t you going to tell me?
    The Globe
, I say.
What happened there.
    Oh.
    Sorry
, I say. My poor Lulu.
    She goes away, leaving scorn behind her like dark weather in the room.
    I still dream after all this time of the way she stared at me out of the wreckage, did not really stare because her eyes could not see. Those blank eyes, frozen in her face, and the smear of blood across her cheek.
    The rest of her was buried in the wreckage; only the rim of white lace at her throat was visible. Debris covered her body and I felt like I was screaming but couldn’t be sure because everything was still, a huge silence surrounding me while I looked down at her in horror.
    Then an explosion of sound, screams and cries and someone yelling in my ear, hands pulling and tugging at me, pulling me away. I began to sneeze, once, twice, three times, horrible, dust rising from the rubble, dust clouds blocking out light. My stupid sneezing and my nose running.
    My sister
, I cried.
She’s trapped in there.
    A voice at my ear:
Come on, boy, come on.
    My sister. She might be dead.
    I know, I know, but come on, the rest of the balcony could fall. Come on.
    Outside, clear sky, faces, sirens screaming, slashes of red fire trucks, white ambulances, everyone running and stumbling, harsh colors bright, hurting my eyes, and I closed them and someone picked me up and rocked me and I smelled smoke and sweat and heard voices:
    His sister’s dead.
    I know.
    No pulse, nothing.
    Moaning, I opened my eyes, saw other eyes staring down at me, filled with pity. But I didn’t want their pity, I wanted my sister back. I didn’t want my sister to be dead. Even though I knew it was too late, even for prayers.

    The weeping and the moaning, and what Aunt Mary called the “keening” from the Denehans upstairs, filled the house as if even the walls and ceilings were mourning the dead. Three of the Denehans gone—Eileen and Billy and Kevin—and Mickey in the hospital with a broken pelvis, contusions and abrasions.
    Even with her own dead, Mrs. Denehan came down, lines fierce in her face, like gashes, bloodless and deep.
    Aunt Mary and Mrs.