The Art of Mending Read Online Free PDF Page B

to go somewhere to be alone and consider my oldness—two digits! I remember the algae swaying seductively in the greenish water, the quick thrill of a school of minnows swimming past, the grit of dirt against the exposed strip of skin at the top of my yellow pedal pushers. I remember the onion-scented smell of the long grass there, and the way it imprinted a pattern of itself against your skin after you lay in it.
    That same summer I buried Necco wafers in the dirt and then dug them up again and ate them, to show I was not afraid of germs. The sun had been setting gloriously when I popped the candy into my mouth; I remember the sky looked as though it were on fire. There’d been a ring of admiring neighborhood kids around me, including a six-year-old girl picking her nose rapturously with one hand and holding a Tiny Tears doll wrapped in a pink-checked blanket with the other. I wanted very much to hold that doll, but for obvious reasons I feared touching it. A twelve-year-old boy, the senior member of the impromptu gathering, had tossed a baseball from hand to hand, weighing insult versus compliment, I knew. In the end, he’d split the difference and had said, “Huh!” before he walked away.
    And this memory has persisted too: my mother holding a laundry basket against her hip that day she came into my room, telling me what she believed was necessary for living a happy life.

It is my grandfather, sitting in a nubby green oversized armchair in his living room. The flash of the camera is captured in his eyeglasses. He is wearing his gray cardigan sweater, a plaid shirt, and some loose-fitting pants. On one side of his lap, I sit holding a lollipop and leaning back against him, smiling. On the other side is Caroline. Though my grandfather has his arms securely around both of us, she is trying to pull his arm closer still. Her fingers appear to be digging into him. She looks tense and unhappy, trying so desperately to delay his letting go that she hastens it. I remember the exact moment after that photo was taken: a sudden gust of wind lifting maroon draperies printed with exotic lime-green fronds; the smell of frying chicken in the air; my grandfather standing up to go into the kitchen “to help Grandma make the gravy”; and me pinching Caroline because I knew it was she who made him leave. I cautioned her not to tell or I would pinch her again, harder.

4
    MY FATHER HAD SENT US AN ARTICLE FROM THE
PIONEER
Press
about some things that would be at the fair this year, and Anthony was slumped in the backseat of the car, reading aloud from it. We’d been driving for three hours, and an edgy monotony had set in.
    “There’ll be two hundred and fourteen port-a-johns,” Anthony read. “And they’ll use twenty-two thousand rolls of toilet paper.”
    “Gross,” Hannah mumbled.
    “What’s gross about toilet paper?” Anthony asked. “What would be gross is if there
weren’t
any.”
    “Eeeeuuuuwwww!”
She returned to her paperback, a story of three teenage girls who explore the Arctic by themselves.
    “They’ll have elk ragout,” he said. “And walleye on a stick.”
    “That walleye’s actually very good,” Pete said. “I’ve had that. I might get it again.”
    “Listen to this breakfast,” Anthony said. “Smoked pork chop, scrambled eggs, fried dumplings, and a kolach. I’m getting that.”
    “I’m eating
only
fried food,” Hannah said.
    “Well, you’re in luck. Listen to this: They have fried ravioli, French fries, cheese curds, onion blossoms, and fried dough. And look at this: deep-fried
pickles
! Hot damn!”
    I saw the color rise in Pete’s face at Anthony’s mild epithet, and he started to turn around but opted instead for paying attention to the road. But his eyes sought out Anthony’s in the rearview mirror.
    “Sorry,” Anthony said quietly.
    “You know, Anthony, you just don’t seem to get some things,” Pete said.
    “I
said,
Sorry!”
    “He’s smiling,” Hannah said. “He’s