Independence Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.
    “Anything else going on?”
    “Mom and Charley had a big fight last night.”
    “Sorry to hear that. About what?”
    “Stuff, I guess. I don’t know.” I hear the weatherman on Good Morning America giving us the good news for the weekend. Paul has activated his TV now and doesn’t want to talk more about his mother’s marital dustup; he simply wants to announce it so he can refer to it usefully on our trip. For a while I’ve sensed (with an acuity unique to ex-husbands) that something wasn’t right with Ann. Early menopause, early nostalgia all her own, late-breaking regret. All are possible. Or maybe Charley has a honey, some little busty button-nosed waitress from the boatyard diner in Old Saybrook. Their union, though, has lasted four years, which seems long enough under the circumstances—since its chief frailty is that Charley’s nobody anyone in her right mind should ever marry in the first place.
    “So look. Your ole Dad’s got to go sell a house this morning. Slam home my pitch. Reel in the big fish.”
    “D. O. Volente,” Paul says.
    “You got it. The Volente family from Upper High Point, North Carolina.” He has decided, from his one year of Latin, that D. O. Volente is the patron saint of realtors and must be courted like a good Samaritan—shown every house, given the best deals, accorded every courtesy, made to pay no vigorish—or bad things will happen. Since the rubber incident our life has largely been conducted as a reticule of jokes, quips, double entendres, horse laughs, whose excuse for being, of course, is love. “Be a pal to your mother today, okay, pal?” I say.
    “I’m her pal. She’s just a bitch.”
    “No she’s not. Her life’s harder than yours, believe it or not. She has to deal with you. How’s your sister?”
    “Great.” His sister Clary is twelve and as sage as Paul is callow.
    “Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow, okay?”
    The volume suddenly zooms up on the TV, another man’s voice blabbing at a high-decibel level about Mike Tyson making 22 mil for beating Michael Spinks in ninety-one seconds. “I’d let him sock me in the kisser for half that much,” the man says. “Did you hear that?” Paul says. “He’d let him ‘sock him in the kisser.’” He loves this kind of tricky punning talk, thinks it’s hilarious.
    “Yeah. But you be ready to go when I get there tomorrow, okay? We have to hit the ground running if we expect to get to Beaton, Texas.”
    “He was Beaton to the punch, then socked in the kisser. Are you gonna get married again?” He says this shyly. Why, I don’t know.
    “No, never. I love you, okay? Did you look at the Declaration of Independence and those brochures? I expect you to have your ducks in a row.”
    “No,” he says. “But I’ve got one, okay?” This refers to a real joke.
    “Tell me. I’ll use it on my clients.”
    “A horse comes into a bar and orders a beer,” Paul says, deadpan. “What does the bartender say?”
    “I give up.”
    “‘Gee, why the long face?’”
    Silence on his end of the line, a silence that says we each know what the other is thinking and are splitting our sides in silent laughter—the best, giddiest laughter of all. My right eyelid gives a predictable flicker. Now would be a perfect moment—with silent laughter as sad counterpoint—to think a melancholy thought, ponder a lost something or other, conduct a quick review of life’s misread menu of what’s important and what’s not. But what I feel instead is acceptance hedging on satisfaction and a faint promise for the day just beginning. There is no such thing as a false sense of well-being.
    “Great,” I say. “That’s great. But what’s a horse doing in a bar?”
    “I don’t know,” Paul says. “Maybe dancing.”
    “Having a drink,” I say. “Somebody led him to it.”
    Outside, on the warming lawns of Cleveland Street, Skip McPherson shouts, “He shoots, he scooooores!” Restrained laughter floats up, a beer can