Tiger, Tiger Read Online Free PDF

scolded me for doing it. The only thing I didn’t like about Peter was that he could be pushy. So I decided to distract him by flopping onto his lap, sideways, almost knocking him out of his lawn chair.
    “Be careful!” said Mommy. “You know Peter has a bad back!”
    Peter didn’t get angry; he just started tickling me. At one point, Ricky came into the yard and Peter handed him the garden hose so he could spray me. He chased us both until Ricky got bored and left. As the hours flew by, the yard became engulfed in long shadows. My mother started to say after a while that we should probably get home for dinner. Peter said, “Why don’t we have a little barbecue here? You said on Fridays Louie leaves leftovers?”
    “Yes, every Friday after work it’s off to the bar,” said Mommy, and Peter shook his head.
    As Peter cooked hot dogs on the grill, Inès wandered into the yard with a sandwich on a paper plate. “Want some dogs instead?” Peter asked her.
    “Nah, I’ve got olive loaf on wheat,” said Inès, and she lay on a flowered towel with a book, reading while she picked at her sandwich. “I made the guys some, too,” she said. She always called her sons “the guys.”
    Later, Inès got up to make a call, leaving her barely eaten sandwich lying on the towel as we ate grilled hot dogs with an open can of cold pork and beans. On the walk home, my mother told me that when she walked by Inès, her sandwich had been covered with tiny, swirling brown ants; apparently, Inès had bitten into them without even noticing.
    “She’s a dreamer, like you,” Mommy said.
    Sometimes my mother liked to get Peter started up about how terrible Poppa was. Lately, I’d been joining in, too, and one Friday the three of us were making fun of Poppa as we ate lunch at the Blimpie on Bergenline Avenue. As Mommy ate her tuna on rye and Peter and I shared salami and provolone on Italian bread saturated with oil and vinegar, Mommy started talking about Poppa’s obsession with one of the kitchen cabinets.
    “He has everything in his cabinet so neatly arranged, each pen has to be in order, and he has this perfectly folded handkerchief, he said he got it from Madrid, and he has matchboxes from every country he ever visited while he was in the army in these precise little stacks. One time, Margaux, when she was three, little devil that she can be sometimes, climbed up on the countertop and got into that cabinet and moved everything, and when he came home—keep in mind, I wasn’t aware of what she’d done—he took one look in there, and went to his closet for his belt. I knew how scared Margaux was of his belt so I tried to get in the way, and he ended up hitting me with it, but at least Margaux wasn’t hurt. Anyway, Peter, get this, he has a pair of actual nunchakus—did you ever meet anyone who has a set of nunchakus in his house? He does tricks with them to be impressive; he’s such a show-off.”
    Right in the middle of the Blimpie, I mocked all of Poppa’s finest moves with the nunchakus in front of Peter and Mommy, getting them to howl with laughter. That night, when I saw Poppa, I felt a little guilty. I knew he only did these tricks for my entertainment, and to convince me that he could protect us in case an intruder broke in.
    Poppa, Mommy, and I were sitting outdoors under a large bright umbrella at a Westchester restaurant. Poppa liked to stop here for a basket of steamers on our way to City Island; then, for dinner, we’d eat lobster or fried clams in white-and-red paper baskets at Tony’s by the ocean. Tony’s had video games, so I’d run to Poppa constantly for the quarters he kept in his pockets as he drank Heinekens, smoked cigars, and talked to Mommy. At home he didn’t speak to her much, except to yell, but if we were eating at a restaurant he’d get into all kinds of subjects with her. Maybe he just didn’t like the apartment or he was happy on the weekends when he didn’t have to work. Whatever the