Eleanor & Park Read Free Page A

first
    day?’
    ‘Sure. I mean, yeah, it was just
    school.’
    ‘Will you have a lot of
    catching up to do?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    Her mom wiped her hands on
    the back of her jeans and tucked
    her hair behind her ears, and
    Eleanor was struck, for the ten-
    thousandth time, by how beautiful
    she was.
    When Eleanor was a little girl,
    she’d thought her mom looked
    like a queen, like the star of some
    fairy tale.
    Not a princess – princesses are
    just pretty. Eleanor’s mother was
    beautiful. She was tall and stately,
    with broad shoulders and an
    elegant waist. All of her bones
    seemed more purposeful than
    other people’s. Like they weren’t
    just there to hold her up, they
    were there to make a point.
    She had a strong nose and a
    sharp chin, and her cheekbones
    were high and thick. You’d look
    at Eleanor’s mom and think she
    must be carved into the prow of a
    Viking ship somewhere or maybe
    painted on the side of a plane …
    Eleanor looked a lot like her.
    But not enough.
    Eleanor looked like her mother
    through a fish tank. Rounder and
    softer. Slurred. Where her mother
    was statuesque, Eleanor was
    heavy. Where her mother was
    finely
    drawn,
    Eleanor
    was
    smudged.
    After five kids, her mother had
    breasts and hips like a woman in a
    cigarette ad. At sixteen, Eleanor
    was already built like she ran a
    medieval pub.
    She
    had
    too
    much
    of
    everything and too little height to
    hide it. Her breasts started just
    below her chin, her hips were … a
    parody. Even her mom’s hair,
    long and wavy and auburn, was a
    more
    legitimate
    version
    of
    Eleanor’s bright red curls.
    Eleanor put her hand to her
    head self-consciously.
    ‘I have something to show
    you,’ her mom said, covering the
    soup, ‘but I didn’t want to do it in
    front of the little kids. Here, come
    on.’
    Eleanor followed her into the
    kids’ bedroom. Her mom opened
    the closet and took out a stack of
    towels and a laundry basket full of
    socks.
    ‘I couldn’t bring all your
    things when we moved,’ she said.
    ‘Obviously we don’t have as
    much room here as we had in the
    old house …’ She reached into the
    closet and pulled out a black
    plastic garbage bag. ‘But I packed
    as much as I could.’
    She handed Eleanor the bag
    and said, ‘I’m sorry about the
    rest.’
    Eleanor had assumed that
    Richie threw all her stuff in the
    trash a year ago, ten seconds after
    he’d kicked her out. She took the
    bag in her arms. ‘It’s okay,’ she
    said. ‘Thanks.’
    Her mom reached out and
    touched Eleanor’s shoulder, just
    for a second. ‘The little kids will
    be home in twenty minutes or so,’
    she said, ‘and we’ll eat dinner
    around 4:30. I like to have
    everything settled before Richie
    comes home.’
    Eleanor nodded. She opened
    the bag as soon as her mom left
    the room. She wanted to see what
    was still hers …
    The first thing she recognized
    were the paper dolls. They were
    loose in the bag and wrinkled; a
    few were marked with crayons. It
    had been years since Eleanor had
    played with them, but she was still
    happy to see them there. She
    pressed them flat and laid them in
    a pile.
    Under the dolls were books, a
    dozen or so that her mother must
    have grabbed at random; she
    wouldn’t have known which were
    Eleanor’s favorites. Eleanor was
    glad to see Garp and Watership
    Down . It sucked that Oliver’s
    Story had made the cut, but Love
    Story hadn’t. And Little Men was
    there, but not Little Women or
    Jo’s Boys .
    There was a bunch more
    papers in the bag. She’d had a file
    cabinet in her old room, and it
    looked like her mom had grabbed
    most of the folders. Eleanor tried
    to get everything into a neat stack,
    all the report cards and school
    pictures and letters from pen pals.
    She wondered where the rest
    of the stuff from the old house
    had ended up. Not just her stuff,
    but
    everybody’s.
    Like
    the
    furniture and the toys, and all of
    her mom’s plants and paintings.
    Her grandma’s