View From a Kite Read Free Page B

in one of the bathrooms and toasted marshmallows over a small fire we’d built in a metal ashtray.
    â€œAt least dear Leander has given her something new to think about,” we agreed.
    Our conversation drifted, as it often does, in the direction of sex. Mary made cynical comments like, “Never met a man who wasn’t an easy lay,” and I tried to wheedle details out of her. She’s had at least four steady boyfriends and I’m sure she’s had sex or something so close as makes no never - mind. She says she’s a virgin, but she’s such a good liar, I never know when to believe her. She plans to get married as soon as she gets out of here and finds a suitable candidate. Not me, I want to write novels and plays and have tragic love affairs. She’s decided to collect a husband, a split-level ranch, and two children. She’s so smart and funny—how can she want such a pedestrian life?
    Sometimes, the days get so long, I think the planet must have slowed down. Got stuck in space debris or something. I’m allowed up for most of the day now, which is better, but up or down, life just crawls. It’s enough to make you crazy, this coasting in neutral.
    The grass is starting to get green; after school the little kids are wild in it, rolling and screaming and playing scrub ball. The light is so bright and the sky so blue I feel if I don’t get out of here soon the ache in my chest will crush my ribs and my lungs will be of no use, healed or not. I will die of boredom and misery. What kind of an idiot would perceive consumption as a romantic disease? Maybe it’s only romantic when someone else has it, or after you’ve been dead a century or two and are nothing but an outdated hairstyle in volume six of the encyclopedia. It’s just a damn disease. Families get splashed all over the map, lives get skewed and broken. Outside the window life goes on, seasons change, buildings go up and get torn down, kids get taller, flowers bloom and die. The visitors wash in and out, week after week, the smell of fresh air clinging to their clothes, small gift-wrapped condolences in their hands. Relief in their eyes when visiting hours are over. No wonder Sister Clare is a fruitcake. No wonder men go home on passes and stay drunk for three days. No wonder girls go home and stay out all night and get themselves knocked up—whatever it takes to pretend you are a normal person with a normal life. We’re all just holding our breath until we can get out for good, not wanting one detail outside to change, so we won’t have missed anything.

CHAPTER 3
    It’s too windy today for kites. The wind is from the southwest, and fierce. The clouds are flung across the sky and you expect to hear muffled thumps as they bump into each other and then merge. Yesterday two little boys were flying a delta-wing kite on the big, empty lawns between us and the sea. Red and black, with two blue-and-white painted eyes—kites need to see where they’re going. The boys had quite a bit of trouble getting it up, it kept diving earthward and then they’d get their boots tangled in the string. Boots are no good for kite flying, you need sneakers so you can run with it. Finally it took a good bite of wind and reached for the sky, a “homesick angel,” as Robert would say when the kite would start to pull up so fast my fingers would get burned trying to hang on. Its longing for heaven thrumming back down the string.
    On my sixth birthday he built me my first kite, in the garage, me watching, handing glue and the ball of string to him as needed. The kite was made of butcher paper, a shiny brownish-pink like old blood washed down a drain. There was no bridle, just the kite string poked through a tiny hole and tied to where the keel and spar crossed and were lashed together with twine and glue. The tail was string with bits of wrapping paper from my presents tied in bows along its length. It