Sideways Read Online Free PDF Page B

family, crowding the pastel-colored walls.
    As my mother disappeared around the corner into the kitchen, Jack and I lingered over some of the family photos. Jack was particularly interested in a color-faded one of me, circa age twelve, posing in a blue and green Little League uniform and cradling a Louisville Slugger at an angle, buck teeth protruding forward in an unabashed wide-mouth smile.
    “Is that you, Homes?” He liked to call me
Homes
. I could never quite pinpoint its origin, since I was white as a Swede, but no doubt it had sprung up one night when we’d had a few too many.
    “Don’t laugh. I hit .450 that season and led the league with eleven home runs and made the All Stars.”
    “You were still a scrawny punk. Thank God your parents had the presence of mind to fix those pearlies. Jesus, man, you look like a walrus.”
    Eager for a drink, we caught up with my mother in the kitchen. She had rooted out three dusty Marie Antoinette glasses and said gaily, “Oh, let’s go out on the patio. It’s such a nice night.” The tone of her voice gave the impression that going out on the patio was an adventure for her.
    I found a mop bucket, filled it with ice and water, and brought it outside where Jack and my mother were already seated around a glass-topped table, talking animatedly. I eased into a plastic chair that was hard on my ass, and I took in the scenery. My mother’s backyard featured a small, kidney-shaped swimming pool that glowed turquoise and emitted a miasma of steam, hot water that never really required heating since nobody ever swam in the forlorn thing. Bougainvillea crawled riotously helter-skelter up a high fence, hermetically sealing my mother off from the outside world. Cloistered in this little garden paradise, without my father around, she was quietly going insane, and I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness every time I visited her.
    We let the champagne chill in the ice bath and made small talk. My mother wanted to know all about Jack’s upcoming wedding and he gave her an earful of maudlin rot.
    When the bottles were decently cold I pulled out the Byron and removed the wire capsule. “The secret to opening
Thfft
emitted, as the cork came free.
    “Oh, Miles,” my mother said. “Don’t be so crude.”
    “Yeah,” Jack chimed in, laughing.
    “Some French champagne expert once calculated the number of bubbles in a bottle and determined that the way most people open champagne they lose half of them in the uncorking alone.”
    “Pour us a glass, Dom Pérignon, before you lose the bubbles,” Jack said, picking up a glass and extending it.
    I filled the ghastly Marie Antoinette glasses right to the rim and we raised them in a toast, clinking them all around, wishing my mother more
Happy Birthday
s.
    “What’s for dinner, Phyllis?” Jack asked.
    “I’ve got a beeeuuutiful roast chicken,” my mother crooned, the champagne already starting to go to her head.
    “Fantastic,” Jack said. “Are you expecting other company?”
    “No,” my mother replied. “Just Snapper.”
    Snapper heard his name and barked acknowledgment. A short back-and-forth ensued between him and my mother until he finally sat on his haunches and quieted.
    “Well, I’m glad we could make it,” Jack said. “You shouldn’t be alone on your birthday.”
    “So, you’re really getting married?” she said to Jack, slurping her champagne none too daintily to ward off the emotion I could sense behind her eyes.
    “Yep,” Jack replied. He leaned toward me and hooked an arm around my neck to yank me nearer to him. “And your Miles is going to be my best man.”
    My mother raised her glass, losing about half her champagne in the process. Jack planted a wet kiss on my cheek. I recoiled and he released me. We sipped the Byron and refreshed our glasses as needed. Crickets chirred in the bougainvillea while shadows of palm fronds towering overhead swayed slowly across the brightly lighted pool. The sky had been