B008J4PNHE EBOK Read Free Page B

agree. Thanks.” It was easier to submit. The sun was warm on Sam’s face. He breathed the good scents of dirt and leaves and thought about the drive to come, the privacy of his car, his future, not seeing having to see this man.
    “You are perfectly welcome. But you see, this is a story about college students, and you have endowed it with the gravity of the Manhattan Project. And that is what I mean when I say that it could be construed as a bit portentous .” Booth gave the railing of the deck a sharp knock for emphasis and beamed out at the treetops as if he had conquered them. “Think about letting some light into the thing. You can do that, can’t you, think about it?”
    Sam nodded. He wasn’t changing a fucking thing.
    “Good! That is all I wished to say. However it turns out, I am terribly proud of you.” Booth spread his arms wide. “You are, and always have been, and always will be, an incomparable delight to me, and—I am sure I don’t need to add—to your mother. She could not have loved you more. I could not love you more.”
    Sam touched his father on the shoulder and slipped inside the house and upstairs to the attic.
     ■ ■ ■ 
    Other people found Booth charming. Women generally agreed that he was witty and adorable. Men instinctively took him as an authority. Tom Ritts, as forthright and sterling a character as Sam knew, let Booth sponge off him incessantly. Allie, Sam’s mother, had continued to coddle him after their divorce. It could make Sam feel wild if he thought too much about it, as if the whole world were an airtight tank filling with water, but no one else would admit that they were getting wet, let alone help him find some way to escape.
    His mother had given up everything for Booth: college, music, her business. Tough, resourceful, a withering teaser, Allie had never been one to suffer nonsense—except when it came to Booth, from whom she had been capable of suffering nearly any amount. Tom at least had the excuse of having grown up with Booth. Allie had essentially raised the man’s child on her own and absorbed his absences and adultery for nearly twenty years before divorcing him. Then, after everything, she continued to invite Booth to holiday dinners, where he was allowed to sit in his old chair, and talk his bullshit, and eat way more than his share, and act altogether as though he had never been cast from their home.
    Sam could recall a particular Christmas Eve in the early nineties. Booth’s arrival had been imminent. His mother had been in the kitchen, cooking for her ex-husband.
    “I’m disappointed in you, Mom,” Sam blurted. He had been thirteen, a craterous zit aching and glistening in the center of his chin.
    Allie looked up from the trellis of piecrust that she was attempting to puzzle out. She frowned, blew her bangs out of her eyes. His mother had been one of those middle-aged women whose faces remained smooth while her brown hair spilled white. “Not too disappointed to help set the table, I hope.”
    “Why?” Sam asked. “Why does he have to come?”
    “Because I love him, kiddo,” said Allie. “Because he’s your father.” She smiled and shrugged, her expression full of sympathy and love for Sam, before adding, “And because it’s my damn house.”
    His ears had grown hot. “Mom.” What was he supposed to say to that?
    His mother had tipped her head from side to side, the same way shedid when she was contemplating a restaurant menu. “Just set the table.” Without waiting for a response, she returned her attention to the crust. “Oh,” she added, “you know, I was flipping through TV Guide. Hard Mommies is on sixty-four tonight. Have you seen that one? That’s the one where Booth plays the mumbly mobster.”
     ■ ■ ■ 
    After Allie’s death, Tom offered his attic to absorb the few possessions that weren’t liquidated with the house. This was why Sam had come south from Quentinville—the location of Russell College and of