The Instant When Everything is Perfect Read Online Free PDF Page A

the wrapped person, and somehow, the person catches it. She watches the person, her gaze coming closer and closer to him, his very body making her feel like she’s trapped and suffocating. But she can’t stop watching. All his body parts seem to scrabble around inside the wrap as he tries to find the ball. And then there is stillness. The person has found it, a round lump under the wrap. Mia finds herself moving closer to the person, staring at the ball right there on the person’s chest, when suddenly, she is the one in the wrap, she is the one that can’t see, can’t hear, can’t move freely, and then she wakes, gasping, her heart pounding against the cage of her ribs.
     
     
     
    Ford and Harper are at the table, finishing the last of the chicken pelaponese. As Mia picks up the empty dish from the table, Ford smiles but his eyes focus on the kitchen wall as he talks.
     
    “That was really good,” he says, twirling a fork on the table, his face vacant.
     
    “Thanks,” she says, taking a plate to the sink and turning on the water. But what she really wants to say is, Where are you? What Mia wants to know is what he won’t tell her. But because this weeknight family dinner is rare—he’s often traveling for business during the week—she doesn’t want to start something they can’t finish, pulling Harper into the mix.
     
    “Mom?” Harper says.
     
    “Yeah?”
     
    “I need twenty dollars. My English class has adopted a family in Oakland.”
     
    Ford sits back in his chair and looks at Harper. “Don’t you usually do that at Christmas?”
     
    “Mr. K forgot. So we decided to do it for Easter.” Harper puts down his fork. “Oh, not Easter. We have to call it a spring break gift. In case they’re like Muslim or something.”
     
    Ford puts his hand into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. He arrived home late as he often does these days, and he’s still in his suit pants and white button-down shirt. His tie curls like a snake on the kitchen counter next to the colander. His dark bangs stand up straight from his forehead.
     
    “Here.” He slides a twenty across to Harper.
     
    Harper nods, his eyes on his plate. “Thanks.”
     
    “I wish someone had adopted us when we were in college. Or even later. We could have used a benefactor,” Mia says, thinking about the apartments they lived in, the worst one just after Harper was born. The plumbing drained right into the ground below the house. Mold grew like wild green hair in Mia’s shoes in the closet.
     
    Ford shakes his head and wipes his mouth. “You are such an exaggerator. It wasn’t that bad. Don’t make this into a scene for one of your novels.”
     
    She knows he doesn’t like to think of those days, so long ago and so different from how they live now. In fact, when she brings up the stories of the horrible apartments and the horror of months with thirty-one long days between paydays, he quickly changes the subject. But back then, surrounded by moldy shoes and parades of ants coming up through the floorboards, how could either have imagined this house in Monte Veda, Ford’s wonderful job with Baden Randolph Myers? When Lucien was a toddler and Harper a baby, how could they have envisioned Mia at the university and then an author? Maybe they had dreams, but the reality was night school and buckets of dirty cloth diapers, disposable too expensive to buy.
     
    And strangely, they are living the dream they both conjured up so long ago—two healthy children, a nice home, plenty of money, great careers. But somehow, they forgot to think up later dreams, other goals, future plans. What is the story for their old age? What are their plans for five, ten, twenty-five years from now? It’s as if the plot of their lives stopped, leaving them where the sequel should begin.
     
    Mia opens her mouth as if to ask, but then thinks of Sally and David. Maybe it’s best to let the future stay a blur. In case it doesn’t even show