My American Unhappiness Read Online Free PDF Page B

sixtythree. My mother, it seems, will never have time that is truly her own, though I've never heard her complain about it.
    April and May help me with the dishes that evening, and then they go upstairs to bathe and brush their teeth and dress in their pajamas while I mop up the vast puddles they have created on the kitchen floor. April and May are remarkably self-sufficient, as orphans almost always are. By the time I come upstairs, they are under the covers of the double bed they share, each of them reading a library book, their Ikea bedside lamps—a present from me, as I was always a before-bed reader—lighting their faces in a soft yellow glow. April is looking at a book called
Amazing Aquatic Creatures
and May is looking at one about a young boy and a terrible, horrible, no-good day.
    "You guys want a story tonight?" I ask, and, neither of them looking up from their books, they mumble, "No, thanks." I go back downstairs to finish cleaning the kitchen, and when I return, no more than ten minutes later, they are asleep. I take their books and stack them on the desk in the corner of the room. I kiss both of them on the forehead, smelling the toothpaste on their breaths, then I turn off the bedside lamps, and, as is my habit of late, I stand there in the dark and listen to their breathing. Only when I am sure, completely sure, that their breaths are steady and normal and without distress do I leave the room and shut the door.
    My mother is still asleep in the living room. The girls have worn her out. On Wednesdays and weekends, when she works her longs shifts (five to five) at the Old Country Buffet on the east side of town (she does this mainly for the health insurance), she seems less tired than she does after an afternoon with the energetic twins. I go out to the porch to sit and enjoy the breeze of the evening. My mother comes out onto the porch fifteen minutes or so later, wrapped in her robe, holding two mugs of tea. She sits next to me on the porch swing, and we sway there, me staring out ahead at nothing, she huddled over her steaming tea for warmth.
    "You should have woken me up," she says.
    "You need to rest," I say. "That's a long day of work."
    "Say, can I bring the girls to your office tomorrow afternoon?" my mother asks. "After school? I have a doctor's appointment at four."
    "Everything okay?"
    "Yeah, yeah. Just need an asthma checkup. My doctor had one open appointment all month. Can you believe it? This was it."
    "No sweat. Bring them by anytime."
    "I know you must be busy at work," she says.
    "Not that busy actually," I say.
    We sit in the dark a while longer. My mother lights a cigarette, her only vice, the worst one an asthmatic can have. I've often tried to turn her on to the joys of alcohol, its uncomplicated sorrow and numbing joy, but she prefers to smoke. She will drink with me on occasion, but frankly, I doubt she likes the strange numbness drinking provides. She is a woman who is often at the helm—of family, of a problem, of a shortage of roast beef in the Sunday afternoon buffet—and I suppose it feels unnatural to her to deaden any impulse or instinct.
    Across the street, in the Mendelsohns' big stone house, I can see the Mendelsohns gathered around the television, watching something that is apparently hilarious, as all four teenagers, as well as the parents, have silly smiles on their faces.
    "They seem like a happy family," my mother says. "Don't they?"
    "Everybody seems happy through a window. Do you think it's weird that we're sitting here watching them?"
    "No," she says. "I think it's weird they don't pull the drapes."
    "Good point."
    "Zeke, I'm sorry I dropped that quiz on you at dinner," she says. "I just thought it would be amusing. I think it ruffled your feathers a bit."
    "I know. I'm sorry if I overreacted," I say. "I just was uncomfortable discussing such things in front of the girls."
    "I suppose," she says.
    We swing in the breeze a bit more, the chains squeaking with marginal