The Best Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

put on my pajamas first. I haven’t been out. I’ve been upstairs asleep for hours.”
    Then I was gone.
    I could have circled around the block on the sidewalk, but I knew the back way by heart.
    Grandpa was by the swing where Dad could watch him all day from the garage. He’d fallen onthe ground, in his seersucker suit and shirt and tie. His straw hat had rolled away. He’d been waiting for the day to get going, to walk me to school. Except it was still summer, and I’d been walking myself to school for a year.
    I thought he was dead. It was too dark to see breathing, so I lunged at him to drag him back. I needed him back. I wasn’t done with him.
    He used to let me sit on his lap behind the wheel of the Lincoln. He let me think I was steering and grown-up and driving. He kept one hand on the wheel down low, and we’d go all over town. We ran a light once, so that was the end of that.
    But I didn’t want him to go. He and Grandma Magill were all the grandparents I had. I could barely remember my Archer ones.
    He opened an eye and looked past me up to the swing. He wanted to be up there. He sighed. Then I was yelling and yelling, till the lights came on in bedroom windows all around us. Boy, did I yell.
    And somewhere Cleo was watching with her paw drawn up, then turning away.
    An EMS van lumbered up the alley, flashing red and blue lights. They connected Grandpa to things and took him away on a stretcher with wheels.Grandma Magill rode in the van with him, in the track suit she slept in. Dad followed in the Lincoln.
    I wanted to go too, but Mom said no. She stood in the yard, holding her bathrobe around her. “I need you here,” she said. “She has her son. I need mine.”
    I hadn’t been needed before. It made me taller. So did the shadows.
    â€œHow did you know?” Mom asked.
    â€œCleo,” I said, and Mom just nodded.
    â€œIs Grandpa going to die?”
    â€œNot if your grandma Magill has anything to say about it. I think he’s had a stroke, so we won’t know for a while.”
    I went closer, and we put our arms around each other. Then Holly was with us, in her pajamas, smelling of the chlorine from the pool. We held on to one another, trying to hold on to Grandpa. I remembered how he took Dad to the first game the Cubs played under lights, as morning crept in and fell across the empty swing.
    â€¢ • •
    They kept Grandpa in the hospital till after school started. Cleo wasn’t around either. Grandma Magill, who hated all cats, put fresh food in Cleo’s bowl on their back porch every day. Squirrels ate it, and aone-eyed cat named Sigmund Freud who lived in the corner house. Chipmunks ate it. Everybody ate Cleo’s food but Cleo.
    Then on the day Grandpa came home, Cleo was back in the swing, curled up asleep in a sunny patch.
    So everybody was home, but Grandpa had to learn to talk again. Dad printed out a big card with the alphabet on it. Grandpa could point to letters with his good hand. That kept the conversation going until Grandpa was talking again. He never could walk, though. Dad got him up and dressed every morning, and put him to bed at night. Dad was there.
    â€¢ • •
    So then it was fifth grade with all the same crowd plus a new kid. Our big teeth were in, and our faces were catching up. Now I was fourth tallest behind two of the Joshes and the new kid, Raymond Petrovich, who was Gifted. Except for a girl named Esther Wilhelm, who was taller than everybody and never said anything.
    Fifth grade was the year we had three different teachers and a lockdown with cops. A really good year once it got going.
    We started in September with Mrs. Forsyth, whowas nice and quit at Christmas to have a baby. She turned expecting a baby into a lesson plan. We did a PowerPoint on her sonograms. She taught us fractions with her trimesters. It was all about babies until Christmas.
    Then, though I didn’t see this coming,