The MaddAddam Trilogy Read Online Free PDF

what was the occasion? Place setting, paper napkin –
coloured
paper napkin, like parties – the sandwich peanut butter and jelly, his preferred combo; only it would be open-face and round, a peanut butter head with a jelly smile-face. His mother would be carefully dressed, her lipstick smile an echo of the jellysmile on the sandwich, and she would be all sparkling attention, for him and his silly stories, looking at him directly, her eyes bluer than blue. What she reminded him of at such times was a porcelain sink: clean, shining, hard.
    He knew he was expected to appreciate all the effort she had put into this lunch, and so he too made an effort. “Oh boy, my favourite!” he would say, rolling his eyes, rubbing his stomach in a caricature of hunger, overdoing it. But he’d get what he wanted, because then she would laugh.
    As he grew older and more devious, he found that on the days when he couldn’t grab some approval, he could at least get a reaction. Anything was better than the flat voice, the blank eyes, the tired staring out of the window.
    “Can I have a cat?” he would begin.
    “No, Jimmy, you cannot have a cat. We’ve been over this before. Cats might carry diseases that would be bad for the pigoons.”
    “But you don’t care.” This in a sly voice.
    A sigh, a puff of smoke. “Other people care.”
    “Can I have a dog then?”
    “No. No dogs either. Can’t you find something to do in your room?”
    “Can I have a parrot?”
    “No. Now stop it.” She wouldn’t really be listening.
    “Can I have nothing?”
    “No.”
    “Oh good,” he would crow. “I can’t have nothing! So I get to have something! What do I get to have?”
    “Jimmy, sometimes you are a pain in the ass, do you know that?”
    “Can I have a baby sister?”
    “No!”
    “A baby brother then? Please?”
    “No means no! Didn’t you hear me? I said no!”
    “Why not?”
    That was the key, that would do it. She might start crying and jump up and run out of the room, banging the door behind her,whuff. Or else she might start crying and hugging him. Or she might throw the coffee cup across the room and start yelling, “It’s all shit, it’s total shit, it’s hopeless!” She might even slap him, and then cry and hug him. It could be any combination of those things.
    Or it would just be the crying, with her head down on her arms. She would shake all over, gasp for breath, choking and sobbing. He wouldn’t know what to do then. He loved her so much when he made her unhappy, or else when she made him unhappy: at these moments he scarcely knew which was which. He would pat her, standing well back as with strange dogs, stretching out his hand, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And he was sorry, but there was more to it: he was also gloating, congratulating himself, because he’d managed to create such an effect.
    He was frightened, as well. There was always that knife-edge: had he gone too far? And if he had, what came next?

3
~

Nooners
   ~
    Noon is the worst, with its glare and humidity. At about eleven o’clock Snowman retreats back into the forest, out of sight of the sea altogether, because the evil rays bounce off the water and get at him even if he’s protected from the sky, and then he reddens and blisters. What he could really use is a tube of heavy-duty sunblock, supposing he could ever find one.
    In the first week, when he’d had more energy, he’d made himself a lean-to, using fallen branches and a roll of duct tape and a plastic tarp he’d found in the trunk of a smashed-up car. At that time he’d had a knife, but he lost it a week later, or was it two weeks? He must keep better track of such things as weeks. The knife was one of those pocket items with two blades, an awl, a tiny saw, a nail file, and a corkscrew. Also a little pair of scissors, which he’d used to cut his toenails and the duct tape as well. He regrets the loss of the scissors.
    He was given a knife like that for his ninth