You Are My Heart and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

houses I’d made so far, I showed Karen, I began by drawing the main walls and roof sections on a single sheet of oaktag—the way, on the backs of cereal boxes, cowboy ranches, fire stations, or Army bases were made of one piece of cardboard that you cut out and folded along dotted lines—and with my razor blade and a steel straight-edge, I’d make half-cuts along the lines that showed where the walls and roof sections of the houses joined to each other. I’d prick the corners of windows and doors with a straight pin first so that the unneeded pieces fell out cleanly, after which I’d cut out pieces of celluloid a little larger than the window openings, and, with a phonograph needle held in a pin-chuck, I’d scribe in the sashes that separated the window panes, then tape the celluloid to the back side of the openings.
    I kept most of my materials and tools (razor blades, nails and pins, files, compasses and protractors, scribers, small saws and hammers, rolls of adhesive tape, jars of poster paint, glue) in an old dentist’s cabinet I’d gotten a few years before when our family dentist renovated his office. It had lots of compartments, including three flat slide-out drawers where I kept different size and color papers I’d been collecting for glueing to the outside walls—imitations of brick, stone, wood, and stucco—along with sheets of oaktag, Bristol Board, celluloid and—my favorite—a flexible glass called Perspex.
    After Karen and I had laid out and put together the main section of the house (I decided to construct it in two parts, then to join the parts together), I cut out a large piece of Perspex, drilled holes in it for attaching it to floor and roof, and then, with a small Bunsen burner, began experimenting with warming it to different temperatures in order to bend it to the shape
we wanted. The great thing about Perspex, which was almost as rigid as glass when it cooled down, was that it could be used for walls without needing any extra supports. The not-so-great thing about it was that it was almost impossible to find and maintain the right temperature for bending it.
    About ten days after we’d been working together, on an afternoon when we were as close as we’d been to getting the Perspex to stay fixed (I’d cut out a curved piece of wood to use as a form around which to mold the glass), and when we were trying to set it in place on the model, we suddenly heard noise behind us—the front door opening and closing. A few seconds later my mother pushed the door to my bedroom open.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” she demanded.
    â€œHelping Alan with a school project,” Karen answered quickly.
    â€œOf course you are,” my mother said. “Of course you are.” She shifted a bag of groceries from her right to left hand so she could wag a finger at Karen. “But let me tell you something, young lady—you don’t fool me for a minute, do you hear me? You don’t fool me for a minute, you or your famous brother.”
    After saying this, my mother did an about-face and left. I thought of apologizing for her—of telling Karen that my mother’s bark was worse than her bite (which wasn’t true), or of following her out of the room and ordering her to come back in and apologize to Karen, but I knew my mother would use anything I said to stir things up more, so I just stood there, and after a few seconds, Karen put down the tube of cement she’d been holding and reached for her coat, which was on my bed.
    I pointed to the clock on top of my dresser. It was nearly seven-thirty.
    â€œI guess we lost track of time,” I offered.
    â€œYeah,” she agreed, and then: “They say that’s what happens when you’re happy, right?”
    She put on her coat, picked up her books, and walked to the
door. When she turned and looked back at me—her cheeks were flushed, a patchy