The Round House Read Online Free PDF Page A

key from its hiding place and went in slowly, quiet, not banging the door and slamming my books on the table as I ordinarily would have. On any other day, my mother wouldn’t have been home yet and I would have felt the sort of elation that a boy feels when he steps into his house knowing that for two hours it is all his. That he can make his own sandwich. That if there is TV reception, there might be afterschool reruns for him to watch. That there might be cookies or some other sweet around, hidden by his mother, but not hidden too well. That he can rifle through the books on his father and mother’s bedroom bookshelves for a book like Hawaii , by James Michener, where he might learn interesting but ultimately useless tips on Polynesian foreplay—but there, I have to stop. The back door had been locked for the first time I ever recall, and I’d had to fish the key from underneath the back steps where it had always hung on a nail, used only when the three of us returned from long trips.
    Which was the sense I had now: that just going to school had been a long trip—and now I had returned.
    The air seemed hollow in the house, stale, strangely flat. I realized that this was because in the days since we’d found my mother sitting in the driveway, nobody had baked, fried, cooked, or in any way prepared food. My father only made coffee, which he drank day and night. Clemence had brought us casseroles that were still sitting, half eaten, in the refrigerator. I called for my mother softly, and walked halfway up the stairs until I could see that the door to my parents’ bedroom was shut. I eased back down the stairs into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator, poured myself a glass of cold milk, and took a big swallow. It was grossly sour. I dumped the milk, rinsed the glass, filled it, and gulped down the iron water of our reservation until the sour taste was gone. Then I stood there with the empty glass in my hands.
    Part of the dining room set was visible through the open door, a roan maple table with six chairs around it. The living room was divided off by low shelves. The couch sat just outside a small room lined with books—my father’s den, or study. Holding the glass, I felt the tremendous hush in our little house as something that follows in the wake of a huge explosion. Everything had stopped. Even the clock’s ticking. My father had unplugged it when we came home from the hospital the second night. I want a new clock, he’d said. I stood there looking at the old clock, whose hands were meaninglessly stopped at 11:22. The sun fell onto the kitchen floor in golden pools, but it was an ominous radiance, like the piercing light behind a western cloud. A trance of dread came over me, a taste of death like sour milk. I set the glass on the table and bolted up the stairs. Burst into my parents’ bedroom. My mother was sunk in such heavy sleep that when I tried to throw myself down next to her, she struck me in the face. It was a forearm back blow and caught my jaw, stunning me.
    Joe, she said, trembling. Joe.
    I was determined not to let her know she’d hurt me.
    Mom . . . the milk was sour.
    She lowered her arm and sat up.
    Sour?
    She had never let the milk go sour in the refrigerator before. She had grown up without refrigeration and was proud of how clean she kept her treasured icebox. She took the freshness of its contents seriously. She’d bought Tupperware even, at a party. The milk was sour?
    Yes, I said. It was.
    We have to go to the grocery!
    Her serene reserve was gone—a nervous horror welled across her face. The bruises had come out and her eyes were darkly rimmed like a raccoon’s. A sick green pulsed around her temples. Her jaw was indigo. Her eyebrows had always been so expressive of irony and love, but now were held tight by anguish. Two vertical lines, black as if drawn by a marker, creased her forehead. Her fingers plucked at the quilt’s