Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

jaw and a little waxen nose spangled with freckles, she had the physique of a prairie dog: skinny in the shoulders, belled out at the waist, small pyramids for breasts. She wore a dress the color of an old pinecone. There was a kind of weak prettiness to her. She reminded Max of a sticky-skinned girl in his class named Laura who had a bloated peach for a head.
    Kelly had prevented his father from getting fired by negotiating additional unpaid days of absence for him. Rasheed hadcalled in sick thirteen times in the past six months, and the boss wanted to let him go, but Kelly organized a petition to save his place. They didn’t really know each other, and Kelly’s argument was more political than personal. It had to do with how the company ought to maintain a certain number of minority workers. Though Rasheed had never asked her for such backing, and probably wasn’t crazy about the premise by which she defended him, he was grateful to have kept his job. He’d missed so many days of work because he sometimes dropped into a crippling melancholy that he called the flu. These flus could keep him bedridden for a week at a time.
    When Kelly arrived, Rasheed presented her to Max in a sober, businesslike manner. Then they stood in the kitchen, staring at her, as if she had something grand to reveal, as if they’d been waiting years for Kelly to stroll into their gray-and-barley kitchen and give them the answer to a question they should have been pondering their whole lives. But they didn’t know the question yet, and she didn’t seem to know what to say exactly.
    Before it had been made evident that a woman was all that lacked in their lives, it never occurred to Max that his father thought about women at all. Rasheed didn’t show signs of desire, didn’t laugh at suggestive jokes on sitcoms, and behaved apologetically in the presence of women. He held doors for them and said sorry as they passed through, his hand on his heart, looking at the ground, expressing regret that his duty of holding the door imposed his body’s proximity on them. Up until now, women had been authority figures best kept at a deferential distance.
    Rasheed bragged about Max, telling Kelly what a nice boy he was, and how one time a custodian from his school, Irvin, wrote him a letter to note Max’s extraordinary consideration for other children (always letting them cut in front of him at the water fountain, and so on and so on). Max stammered that he didn’treally know what Irvin was talking about. Kelly asked about the nature of his relationship with Irvin.
    “The nature?” Max said.
    “Yeah, do you spend a lot of time together?”
    “With Irvin?” He looked to his father for guidance, but Rasheed gave a puzzled shrug. “Not really.”
    She looked concerned. “I mean, how does he have your address?”
    “There’s a school directory with everyone’s address and phone number.” He felt he’d missed something, made a mistake.
    Rasheed bragged about Kelly to Max now, with noticeable effort. He didn’t seem to know much about her. He stated facts Max could see for himself, like her pale blonde hair, her dress, and her smile. When Rasheed ran out of physical descriptions, he began listing the organizational skills he remembered her having at work and her cordiality with even the rudest of clients on the telephone. She did not appear flattered. Then he turned and asked his son, “Max, what questions do you have for Kelly?” Max came up with very simple ones on the spot: Do you love being a secretary? Do you have pets at home? What are your favorite foods? Colors? TV shows? He learned she did not love being a secretary; her ex-boyfriend whom she still lived with had a pit bull, but she was trying to figure out some way to afford moving out of that situation; she disliked the favorite food and color questions on the basis of it depending on her mood; she watched a lot of documentaries and news, not interested in fictitious stuff.
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