The First True Lie: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

winter here, it’s summer there.”
    The Australia of kangaroos and duck-billed platypuses.
    And then Mama, who never wants to go away anywhere, says, with a swoosh that sounds like a wingbeat: “And birds of paradise, can you imagine? It must be paradise on earth. Maybe we should all go off to Australia, every last one of us.”
    Who knows if Kolly would like to go back to his part of the world and climb eucalyptus trees.
    “What do you say, Kolly? Would you like to go visit your relatives on the other side of the world?”
    We could also go sleep with Mama, but if she’s really dead I’m not sure I want to be close to her. If she’s dead she’s already an angel. She’ll come and visit me without my even hearing her steps on the wooden floor, without running into the furniture, without hurting herself on the corners. She’ll come in her silk nightgown and, like a guardian angel, make it so that I dream in color. She’ll slide along without touching the ground, like a rapper. I don’t know anymore if guardian angels exist. They tell you so many whoppers with the excuse that you’ll like the stories, but you’re never completely sure if they’re true or not. Or maybe Mama’ll transform into a zombie. I feel like a zombie myself now, but Mama is too beautiful to become a monster. She’s never a monster, even when she gets mad and makes a nasty face. Eventually it passes and she goes back to being nice. She’s nice now too, it’s just that she forgot to wake up.
    Grown-ups forget so much. Especially among themselves. They’ll see each other for a while, they’ll call each other, they’ll chat, say “my dear,” “my darling,” and then forget each other.
    “Sometimes people just fall into oblivion.”
    Oblivion is like a long hallway but vertical, a hole like the one on the landing we throw trash down, with scratchy cement walls and a shiny gray hatch like a sulky mouth. People fall into the hole, plop, and then stay there, squashed one on top of the other, waiting until someone wonders whatever happened to them.
    “For example, do you remember that one guy, what was his name? Who knows whatever happened to him?”
    That one guy, like my father, or maybe it is my father.
    I think Mama and I have fallen into someone’s oblivion too, because people don’t seek us out so much, maybe because she’s sad, and when she’s sad she’s not much fun. You’ve really got to love her to put up with her then. Only if it’s your own mother can you be fine with it—you can’t do anything else, she’s the only one you’ve got.
    We’ve definitely fallen down the dads’ memory holes, my real dad’s and the other ones’ as well, the contenders’. Now it really seems like everyone has forgotten everything, that the world is far, far away, like in science-fiction movies where you see Earth from another planet.
    I’m sure there’s lots of life on other planets, it’s just that we’re light-years away here in the megagalaxy of the eighth floor. There are lights in the windows across the street, people carrying dishes from the dining room to the kitchen, TVs that flicker with a bluish light, but we’ve lost touch, even Mama says so.
    “You know how it is, in this city it’s so easy to lose touch.”
    It would take a super–remote control to beam yourself into those living rooms where big families eat popcorn in front of a good movie, where they celebrate real Christmases with great big Christmas trees that touch the ceiling with their golden tips.
    I hate Christmas because none of this ever happens. I hate the candied fruit in the panettone, I hate the crooked figurines in the nativity scene in the school lobby, and I hate the fat priest with the sticky hands who wants to bless me.
    “Go with God, my son.”
    “No, thanks, if you’re coming too.”
    It always turns out I get sadder because I’m supposed to be happier. I can’t wait for Christmas to be over so that I don’t have to think about it