Primal Read Free Page B

the arm and they leave the office.
    Doctor Kim, “Warden, I do not see your conflict here.”
    “Doctor, no offense, but you have no idea what you’re
asking.”
    Doctor Kim walks over to Tummelson’s desk and tosses the
picture on it. The young woman’s face smiles up at him.
    “This is Jennifer Booker. She has three children under
seven. Look at this while you’re thinking it over.” Then, he leaves too.
    * * *

Chapter Four
    “Yeah, well you’re so ugly when you walk past ‘em, flowers
die,” Jimmy teases his best friend.
    Alan counters, “Yeah, well you’re so ugly you make my cat
throw up.”
    “Yeah, well, you’re so ugly your mom has to tie a pork chop
around your neck so the dog will play with you.”
    The two-story Kraft home pulses with relatives celebrating
Jimmy’s birthday. Nine-year-old Jimmy is stringy: his legs are spurting out of
his body with so much speed his weight cannot keep up. He looks like an egret,
all limbs and long neck. At the rate he is growing, his own arm length is
constantly changing, and so, he knocks over nearly everything he reaches for;
one day last week, a frustrated mother volunteer, at school, called him clumsy
and Alison got mad. She explained to Jimmy (within the woman’s hearing) that if
her arms were longer every single week she’d misjudge things, too. “Jimmy, your
dad is six-foot three-inches tall, so you are definitely on your way up,
kiddo.”
    Classic rock pours out of speakers all through the home.
Every room is wired for sound; it was the only thing that was important to
Hank. The two-story bungalow is brightly lit and the rooms are alive with arguments,
tall tales, and laughter. Uncles tell the stories they have told for decades,
and laugh in all the same places; some teens pay attention to the stories for
the first time, and without meaning to, become tomorrow’s carriers of the
family’s oral tradition. The littler cousins, in a never-ending loop of
catch-me-if-you-can, and looking like chipmunks, dart from the warmly
upholstered family room of rich gold and red hues into the petite dining room,
barely clearing the legs of Alison’s antique French reproduction table. And
while Aunt Ruth constantly yells at them to slow down, sit down, calm down,
Alison never does. She notices this evening that they look exactly like the DVD
she played for her class today of the lion cubs socializing in the Maasai Mara.
This is the Kraft pride - the tribe she married into and it has been tricky.
She can decide the course of her own friendships, she can even turn away from
her own family, if she chooses - but her in-laws have a permanence in her life
that she cannot influence or control; the spouse decides. Alison is an only
child, so it is easy for Hank. He did not need to integrate with her brothers
or sisters. He was not subjected to the treacherous dynamics of an unfamiliar
family with its long-held grudges, inside jokes, and uneven affections. He did
not need to understand why different allowances were made for different family
members, why for instance, Cousin Keith was forgiven everything while Cousin
Carl was forgiven nothing. For Alison, none of it was easy. She married into a
sizeable and voluble tribe. She has found that with Hank’s extended family
there is a lot to adjust for, to compromise with, and to forgive. The
forgiveness requires the most plasticity. Alison learned that it is compulsory
to forgive in-laws for flaws and situations that would not generally merit
forgiveness in any other association. Alison finds ways to balance herself
around the harried, sometimes jagged edges of Hank’s family, with its outbursts
and its treaties, while always feeling a little unnerved by the pitch in the
room.
    Alison was raised by her father. It was just the two of them
in a hushed world. She was eight years old when they buried her mother on a
dazzling sunny day. Allie believed people should only be buried on rainy days
and she never quite forgave the sun for