The Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

dreamed itself into root and bark. Anna offered her face to the sun and gave silent thanks. The tempest raised by the boy had passed, almost forgotten now. She’d run into Richard Strand at the food store one afternoon.
    “Come to dinner,” he said.
    “Who’s coming?”
    He waved a casual hand. “Kids, a couple pals, the usual. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
    She looked around her. “We’re always here. How come we’re always here?”
    Richard Strand had considered the question neutrally. “We’re buying food.”
    “I know. But it’s like we’re enslaved. We’re always here, with our little carts, running into each other, buying food.”
    “You get all worked up. Why do you get all worked up?”
    “I’m not worked up.”
    “Come for dinner.”
    “No.”
    Richard Strand’s eyebrows had shot up.
    “No?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’ve got a friend in the hospital.” And she’d taken off, leaving Richard Strand standing, jaw a little slack, in the cheese section.
    Since then, life had lost its sting. Esperanza’s transmission had died a sudden death and Anna had gone around to the shop. “Three thousand dollars,” she’d told Esperanza that evening, handing her the bill. Esperanza had slapped a hand on her mouth.
    “Ohi, mi madre!”
    “ Ohi, mi madre is right,” Anna had said; and so for now, until Esperanza worked off her debt, there were three of them in the house: Anna in her study pushing words around the junkyard of her mind, Esperanza and Eva eating popcorn on the couch.
    The two were thick as thieves. “Mom,” Eva called out the day Esperanza moved in, “you need to get Espi Jenny Craig!”
    In her study, Anna pressed save on her computer once more.
    “What’s Jenny Craig?”
    “Diet meals!” Esperanza shouted. “It’s how Mary Martinez got skinny! She was big, no? And now she’s wearing skinny jeans!”
    “You owe me three thousand bucks, Esperanza.”
    “But I’m here, no? I’m working!”
    “Three thousand, Espi.”
    “Eee, your mother is hard, but I’m a sure thing, right, Eva? I’m a sure thing,” and Eva, whose wrists were like popsicle sticks, yelled out, “I want Jenny Craig, too!”
    At her desk a few days later, in the same agony of silence, of failure, of new and old beginnings, Anna saw Esperanza’s head pop in through the opened door. “We’re going to Sonic.”
    “What’s Sonic?”
    “The slushy place!” a small voice shouted from behind the door. “No slushes,” Anna said, and a couple hours later there was half a Frito pie and two empty bucketfuls of orange slush in the trash.
    None of it, however expertly orchestrated, prevented Espi from getting it in the neck.
    “Espi.”
    “Yes, mijita .”
    “Your eyes are always red.”
    “Eee, I know! What can I do? I don’t know what to do! I’m always putting this stuff in!” And Esperanza pulled out a bottle of maximum-strength Visine—pure bleach by the look of it—and waved it in the air with clear animosity. “And it’s expensive! Five dollars a bottle. Six with tax! And it lasts me a week!”
    “Espi?”
    “Yes?”
    “Why are your eyes always red?”
    “Don’t ask me! Ask my mother! It’s how I was born!”
    “You were born with red eyes?”
    Espi, whose crimson sclera were the result of prodigious beer drinking after Eva went to bed, cast a furtive glance in Anna’s direction.
    “Eva, go do your homework.”
    “I don’t have any homework.”
    “Go do something.”
    “Like what?”
    “Go run around outside. Take Paco with you.”
    “Paco’s tired,” Eva said as the Lab, having perceived a summons and sensed the possibility of some retrieving, stood salivating by her leg.
    “Paco is not tired. Paco is dying to go.”
    Eva took Paco’s head in her small hands. “You’re tired, aren’t you? Aren’t you, Paco?” and the dog, spiritually attuned to the child in a way Anna had always found miraculous, lay down and let his head rest on her feet.
      
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