The Book of Why Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t know everything I’m about to tell you in this book, and neither do I, but you know all too well about my complicated relationship with light and dark. Many nights I fell asleep beside you, whether I was reading or not, with a lamp still on. When you complained, and you had every right, I bought an alarm clock whose face glowed just enough for me to see the outline of the chair by the window, the dog stretched on the wood floor near the heating vent, the shape of you beneath the covers. I want to tell you now, and I mean it, this isn’t loneliness speaking, that you were light enough. A few nights we lost power and the clock face went dark. If I could have those nights back, I would not check the circuit breaker, I would not look outside to see if the rest of our block had lost power, I would not find a flashlight and leave it on on my nightstand. I wouldn’t get out of bed at all, wouldn’t leave your side. I would get under the covers with you where it was darkest, where it was brightest despite the dark.

 
    THE WEEK BEFORE Christmas meant extra light in the house: a small tree in the window, a flashing wreath on the door.
    I was seven years old. Lucky seven, my father had told me.
    My mother sat with me, rubbing my back until I fell asleep.
    Later, I woke alone and blind in the dark. I was floating deep in space, a million light-years from home.
    I snuck out of my room, tiptoed across the hallway, testing for creaky parts before committing my full weight, and sat on the stairs. My parents were watching The Bishop’s Wife , an old Christmas movie about an angel. My mother liked Cary Grant movies because he and my father, with the exception of my father’s mustache, looked alike. Through the banister I saw the angel—he might as well have been my father—help a blind man cross a street, cars braking just before hitting them. Then he saved a baby from getting run over by a truck. He could appear and disappear at will; he could fill a glass with wine using his mind; he could decorate a Christmas tree in a few seconds. I decided then, before falling asleep, that I wanted to be an angel. When I woke, the angel was making a typewriter type without touching it. I fell asleep again.
    Later, I’m not sure how much later, I woke on the stairs: the front door opened, then closed; a man’s low voice, not my father’s.
    Then my mother crying.
    I moved down a few steps to see better.
    My father stood facing the door, his arm around my mother. Smoke rose in a thin line from his cigarette. Some nights he’d wake from sleep just to smoke. The smell, especially during the night, soothed me. My mother tried to make him quit; she asked me to help by stealing his cigarettes and running water over them, but I didn’t want him to quit. It was difficult to imagine his face without a cigarette between his lips.
    When I saw the man, I’m not sure I understood that he was real. Maybe he’s an angel, I thought. But then I saw that he was holding a knife. He wore a flannel shirt but no coat. Short red hair, a wide nose, face covered with freckles. I was afraid of freckles; I thought they were contagious. My mother had freckled hands, and when she touched my food I wouldn’t eat.
    The man wasn’t taller than my father, but was much bigger; he was breathing heavily, his chest heaving as if he’d just run up the hill to our house.
    My father stepped in front of my mother; he kept smoking his cigarette, but never touched it with his hands. The smoke went in through his mouth and out through his nose. I wasn’t sure what he’d do when the cigarette ran out; that was when he always lit another one. He smoked between bites of roast beef; he sipped beer between inhale and exhale.
    The man took a step toward my father, who remained calm. He spoke gently, as if to a child. “This is my wife,” he said. “She’s scared, as you can imagine.”
    The man