Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

need to meet him. The fact that his name is Huck and he got a full hockey scholarship to the University of Minnesota is enough for me.”
    “What’s wrong with hockey?”
    “Nothing,” I said, “if you like blood sport. But I don’t think people should get full scholarships to state universities because they’re psychopaths.”
    “Well, forget Huck Dupont. He’s going to Dartmouth. You’re going to Brown. I doubt they even have a hockey team.”
    “Whether Brown has a hockey team or not is not the point. The point is I don’t want to spend a huge amount of your money doing something that has no value or meaning to me. In fact, I think it’s obscene to pay thousands of dollars for me to go to college when there are so many people living in poverty in the world.”
    “James, the fact that poverty exists is not a good reason for you not to go to college. And the existence of poverty does not prevent you from doing other foolish and extravagant things, like eating an eighteen-dollar bowl of pasta.”
    “This didn’t cost eighteen dollars,” I said.
    “It would if we were paying market rate.”
    “Well, if that’s foolish and extravagant, why isn’t going to college foolish and extravagant?”
    “Because college is an investment in your future. It doesn’t pass through your digestive system in twenty-four hours. But, James, you’re just being silly. You’re going to college. You’ll love college. You’re a very intelligent young man. I know high school has been a bit difficult and boring for you, but college is different. You’ll be challenged and stimulated, believe me.”
    “Why must everyone go to college?”
    “Not everyone goes to college,” my father said. “In fact, very few people go to college. It’s a privilege to spend four years in the pursuit of knowledge. I would think it would be just the thing for someone like you.”
    “I don’t see it that way. I think I can learn all I need and want to know by reading Shakespeare and Trollope.”
    “So what do you propose to do? Sit at home and read Trollope for four years?”
    “No,” I said. “I want to buy a house.”
    “A house? Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what houses cost?”
    “I don’t mean in New York City. I mean in Indiana. Or Kansas. Or South Dakota. Someplace like that.”
    “And where will you get this money to buy a house?”
    “If you gave me a third of the money you’re going to spend sending me to Brown I could easily make a substantial down payment on a very nice home.”
    “And what would you do in this very nice home in Kansas? Read Trollope?”
    “Yes,” I said, “among other things. I’d also want to work.”
    “At the local McDonald’s, I presume?”
    “Maybe. Why not?”
    “James, your mother and I did not raise you to work at McDonald’s in Kansas. We raised you to be an educated and accomplished person. If after four years in college you feel you would like to move to Kansas and work in a McDonald’s, that is your decision to make. This is one thing about which both your mother and I agree. So we will stop talking about this now, because you’re going to college, where you will flourish and be happy and read Shakespeare and Trollope.”
    I said nothing. We ate for a few moments in silence and then my father said, “So how is your mother? Is she okay?”
    “I think so,” I said. “She’s just upset. And sad.”
    “Well, the good thing about your mother is she won’t be sad for long.”
    I hate when my father makes remarks like this about my mother or when my mother makes them about my father. I think that when you divorce someone you forfeit your right to comment on her actions or character. “What are you doing this weekend?” I asked my father. “Are you going to be at the beach?”
    My parents had owned a house in East Hampton when they split up; my mother got the apartment in Manhattan and my father got the house at the beach. For the first few years Gillian and I had spent