Man With a Squirrel Read Online Free PDF

her reference desk. “Why don’t we do lunch?” Fred asked. When Molly welcomed the idea, he suggested she hop on the subway and come into town, but she wanted to meet in Harvard Square.
    â€œI won’t eat,” she said. “But I’ll ingest tea and watch you.”
    Fred was sitting in a booth, drinking thin yellow tea, when Molly came into the Japanese place they’d decided on. It was horribly cold for March, and Molly wore Sam’s red down jacket with the hood, which Fred watched her take off beside the door. Sam wouldn’t wear the jacket because it wasn’t the right style for this year. Under the jacket Molly had on her black wool cardigan and a violet silk blouse that made her green eyes show across the room. Her dark brown corduroy pants matched her hair.
    â€œYou found me,” Fred said, as she came to his table.
    â€œYou stand out. Not making comparisons, but I recall the cinder-block restrooms for tourists at Versailles,” Molly said. “They are easy to see, and people who are looking for something of the kind are grateful for rude comfort.” Fred poured tea into a cup for her. Fred had already ordered sushi, and when it came he offered Molly some, which she refused, although she was normally a dedicated carnivore.
    â€œKids coming in from the high school next door,” Molly said, “from a teacher who wants them to research their family trees. They ask me for help, and for most of them there’s not much to say. They’re trying to find their roots; meanwhile, a few blocks away, Cover-Hoover’s encouraging her patients to sever theirs. Most of us can’t find them beyond a couple generations. Suppose I wanted to press the search for my own disreputable roots, which are as Black Irish as Madonna’s—or is she Italian?” Molly fumbled in the large bag she carried and found a set of Xeroxed pages. “Look what I pulled out this morning. It’s an advertisement, from the Boston Statesman of September 13, 1714…”
    Either could get the other started, in research matters.
    â€œâ€˜To be disposed of,’” she read, “‘by Mr. Samuel Sewall, Merchant, at his warehouse near the Swing Bridge in Merchant’s Row’—that’s down near Faneuil Hall—‘several Irish Maid Servants, time most of them for Five years; one Irish Man Servant, a good Barber and Wiggmaker, also Four or Five likely Negro Boys…’”
    â€œVery multicultural slavery,” Fred observed.
    â€œMy ancestors could be in any Irish job lot—not one Irish person ever gets a name. Why can’t I have the Wiggmaker?” Molly said. “Not that the indentured servant and the slave were equally deprived of human rights, but I do note a lack of interest in reporting names where both are concerned. The bonded illiterate and the captive owned no identities worthy of record. The likely Negro boys would be as easy to identify as the so-called Irish Maid Servants, for any of their descendants.”
    â€œLet me tell you about a picture I bought,” Fred said. “At least part of it.”
    â€œYou’re changing the subject,” Molly said.
    â€œI am, but not exactly, in that I am searching for an identity to apply to a pair of eighteenth-century feet,” Fred said.
    He described the fragment he had purchased, and Molly spoke at length about the difficulty of establishing the family lines of any but the most fortunate among the citizens of Boston, or anywhere else. After he’d eaten, Fred was eager to look at Copleys. But the urgency of the March wind suggested a joint amble along the river before they returned to their respective labors.
    They walked upriver, stood in the raw wind, and sniffed at the water. Cars rushed along the parkways on either side of the slow gray water. The cherry trees were far from starting to fill their buds. They came to a place where the dirt of the bank