The Stone Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

his daddy’s plate and sticking them up his nose.
    As a matter of unshakable habit, Madame Préau would ask her son a disagreeable question over dessert. She didn’t miss her chance.
    “Have you had any news from your father?”
    Martin folded his napkin and pushed back his plate.
    “No. But you could call him, you know.”
    “I don’t like the telephone, Martin. There’s too much static on the line. I’m not sure that I even want to keep the phone in the house, for that matter. I think it’s a needless expense.”
    “I don’t think so, Mum. You have to be able to reach me if there’s a problem. And I want to be able to call you. You’re not in an apartment building anymore; you’re alone in the house.”
    “I was born in that house. What do you think could possibly happen to me?”
    Madame Préau grabbed her spoon. She furrowed her brow. Martin knew this expression well: the martyred mother.
    “And besides,” she sighed, “my son could easily come over from time to time for a chat instead of leaving me with some idiot nurse underfoot.”
    “Mum, you know full well that we’re understaffed—between being on call and being at the surgery, I’m overwhelmed with work.”
    “It’s lovely to write, too. It hones your spelling and grammar.”
    “That’s it, Mum. Get me some writing paper.”
    “Oh no! I can’t read a word of your chicken scratch. It’s worse than your father’s.”
    Madame Préau plunged her spoon into her dessert.
    “I don’t know how you did it, forgiving him for abandoning you,” she blurted as soon as she’d swallowed her first mouthful.
    The man turned his napkin over to hide a stain.
    “Mum, we’re not going to talk about that again. It’s you who told him to leave. Not the other way around.”
    “Mmm. All the same, I was hardly in a position to feed my child and cover living expenses on my teacher’s salary. Your father was well aware of that.”
    Madame Préau saw her son pull a familiar face. Her mouth was full of egg white and caramelized sugar, and Martin couldn’t bear to listen to her speak with her mouth full. When he was a child, it would make him sick to his stomach. His parents’ past troubles as a couple triggered a similar response; he had grown up with nausea. She knew how dearly Dr. Martin Préau paid for dinner every Thursday with his mother—it was his cross to bear. He kept her company, stuck a fork into a piece of meat to put on a good show, but he didn’t have the appetite for it. If he had indigestion once he got back to his apartment, Madame Préau wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. She hurried to empty her mouth.
    Martin leaned toward his mother’s
île flottante
.
    “All right, listen. I don’t want to talk about Dad. Besides, it’s been thirty years. And you were already a headmistress.”
    “Hmm. I’m not so sure about that. Still, do you remember how they ‘thanked’ me when I was three years from retirement age?”
    “You’re confusing things. That was in ’ninety-seven. Be quiet and finish your dessert.”
    “Fired for gross negligence—hah! It was slander, obviously. I didn’t write a single letter to the County Council. That’s not my style. They never had a thing on me.”
    “You’ve already told me this a hundred times.”
    “What’s that in your pocket?”
    Martin readjusted his jacket by the shoulders.
    “It’s nothing, Mum.”
    “Because you’re putting your hand in your inside jacket pocket a lot.’
    “It’s my wallet, that’s all.”
    “This
île flottante
is delicious.”
    “Are you having a coffee?”
    “No, thank you. It’s your father who drinks coffee in the evening. Not me.”
    Martin asked for the bill with the weariness particular to the children of divorced parents. He regretted feeling like he had to get a gift for his mother, again, and it was as obvious as a garden gnome in a flower bed. He had unearthed on the Internet a little inlaid Louis XVI table in rosewood and sycamore