Running with Scissors Read Online Free PDF Page A

Natalie is there a lot. I live there. Plus, we have a dog and a cat. And of course Mom and Dad. There’s always someone over at Sixty-seven.”
    “What’s Sixty-seven?”
    “Sixty-seven Perry Street. That’s where we live. You should come by sometime with your parents. You’d have a lot of fun there.”
    I had to admit, the idea of seeing a real doctor’s house was nothing less than thrilling. I imagined walls hung with exotic and expensive tapestries, polished marble floors, columns that stretched for hundreds of feet. I saw water fountains out front with hedges trimmed into the shapes of zoo animals.
    “Hey, do you want a Coke?” Hope asked.
    “Okay.”
    Hope got her pocketbook from under her desk. She pulled out her wallet and handed me a five-dollar bill. “I’ll buy them if you run downstairs and down the street to O’Brian’s drug-store to get them. You can even get yourself a candy bar.”
    When I returned, Hope was sitting behind her desk, typing on a page she’d inserted into her black manual typewriter. “We’ve got to stay on top of these insurance forms,” she said, “if we ever want to get paid. It’s a lot of work running a doctor’s office.”
    I felt guilty that I’d taken so much of her time, that I had been keeping her from doing her job. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bother you so much, asking you all these questions.” I set the paper bag with the Cokes on her desk and handed her the change.
    “Don’t be crazy,” she said. “You’re not a bother. Jeepers, I’d much rather talk to you than fill out those dumb insurance forms.” Then she pulled the paper from the carriage and set it on her desk. She reached into the bag for one of the Cokes and popped the top. “I can always do that stuff later.”
    The phone rang and Hope answered, using a voice so smooth and professional, you’d think she was wearing a white nurse’s cap. “Dr. Finch’s office,” she said. She listened for a moment. “I’m sorry, the doctor is in with a patient right now. Shall I have him return your call?” She winked at me.
    As we sat on the sofa drinking the Cokes, Hope asked me about my own family. “What’s it like living at your house?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I like to hang out in my room and do stuff there.”
    “I like your ring,” she said, pointing to my pinkie.
    “Thanks. It’s from Mexico. It’s real silver.”
    “It’s very nice.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I have one almost just like that.”
    “You do?”
    “Mmm hmm,” she said. Then she showed me the ring on her left hand. “See?”
    It was almost exactly like mine, except not very shiny. “You want me to polish it for you?”
    “You could do that?”
    “Sure.”
    She slid the ring off her finger and handed it to me. “Here you go then. You can bring it to me next time your parents come to see Dad.”
    I had only meant that I could polish it with my shirt. “You mean you want me to take it and polish it?”
    “Well, sure.”
    “Okay.” I slipped the ring into my front pocket.
    Hope smiled at me. “I can’t wait for it to be as new and shiny looking as yours.”
     
    As time went on, my parents’ relationship became worse, not better. My father grew more hostile and remote, taking a particular liking to metallic objects with serrated edges. And my mother began to go crazy.
    Not crazy in a let’s paint the kitchen bright red! sort of way. But crazy in a gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax.
    Gone, too, were the once-a-week therapy sessions. My mother began seeing Dr. Finch nearly every day.
    My parents’ divorce was explosive. But as with all things that explode, a clean, flattened area was created. I could see the horizon now. The fights between my parents would be over because they weren’t speaking; the tension in the house would be eased because there