Rundown Read Online Free PDF Page A

an apron. He got a big pot of water simmering, put in a dash of olive oil, while he sipped a short scotch from a cut-glass tumbler Mom gave him for his birthday a couple of years before. He popped the stiff pasta into the water, the spaghetti he buys by the case from a friend with a struggling business in Emeryville.
    Several minutes passed without much discussion. I set out some forks and knives and fresh linen napkins. We shared strained small talk, how well the bread had turned out, and whether the heirloom Franciscan wear was still packed in newspaper in the cellar.
    Mom never does anything in the kitchen, although tonight she got the lamb out of the fridge and started to put it in the oven. She stopped when Dad made one of his wrinkle-nosed don’t do thats . She posed here and there in a dressing gown, century-old Japanese silk, stylized birds peering down over her shoulders.
    Dad cooked up some of his sauce, six sun-ripened tomatoes whipped to sauce in the blender. He shook the colander, draining the spaghetti, and then we ate.
    We only spoke about it later, after supper, our bodies tense with the subject, avoiding it.
    â€œTell me one thing, since we’re talking,” said Dad from far away. I was out of his sight, sitting in my favorite chair, a cushioned leather thing in the mostly vacant library. “Jennifer?”
    I called that I could barely hear him. Dinner was done, the dishes in the washer, and the lull was over.
    He found me. “Come out of here,” looking puffy eyed, his fancy clothes replaced by a starched shirt and wool slacks, like someone who intended to sit at a desk all night.
    I didn’t want this conversation.
    â€œI can’t talk to you in here,” he said.
    Dad had decided on an Asian motif for the living room and had just paid more for a rosewood side table than you’d spend on four years at Yale.
    A pile of three-ring notebooks crowded a side table, menus and colorful photographs of food, platters, chafing dishes, tablecloths, a world of bridal cuisine. Now that we had chosen a caterer, Dad kept changing his mind about the linen, the wine, insisting on a frosting expert from New Orleans, “the world’s best cake man.” Our lives had been an ordeal of more and more arcane decisions, none of the photographers visual enough, none of the florists horticultural enough.
    Cass had said if she had to look at another picture of a cake she’d kill herself.
    Even now Dad had a wine list in his hand, fake parchment and calligraphy. “Tell me what you were doing,” he said, “jogging at night in a deserted place.”
    â€œIt wasn’t night.”
    â€œI’m not angry,” he said, lifting one hand and letting it fall. When he starts to get mad he backs away from the feeling, like someone stuck with a strange piece of luggage, the kind you aren’t supposed to accept at airports. “But you were taking—”
    Emotion caught up with him, and he waited for it to pass. “You were taking such a risk.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said, but usually when you say the words some weight is lifted. Nothing lifted, nothing changed. I was afraid he was going to cry.
    â€œI can’t think about sauternes at a time like this,” he said, flipping the wine list to the carpet. “I’m getting a license for a handgun.”
    My father can’t change a tire. He cuts himself with a can opener. I knew he would shoot his knee off if he bought a gun.
    â€œThat would be crazy,” I said.
    He looked hurt.
    â€œWhat good would it do me if, if you were sitting at home with a rocket launcher?”
    â€œPlus,” he said, “I’m calling Barrow Security.”
    That had been another concern, who would handle parking and gate crashers at the wedding reception. Barrow was run by former Secret Service agents, I had discovered after a long phone call, and was out of even my dad’s