Adultery & Other Choices Read Online Free

learn the trumpet but he said they should take the French horn. He took them up the wooden stairs to the second floor and unlocked the bandroom and showed them a French horn. He said if they learned to play it they could easily play the trumpet and cornet as well; but they should learn the French horn because the band had all the trumpet players it needed for years to come but soon there would be a shortage of French horns. If they worked hard they could start playing in the regular band in two years when they were only in the seventh grade; they would wear uniforms and go on band trips to play at football games and they would march in the homecoming parade and Mardi Gras parade and many colleges gave band scholarships. He raised the horn to his lips and blew a series of notes.
    When Paul got home he told his mother and sisters. Amy said Maybe he’d be a famous trumpet player like Harry James, Barbara said It might be nice and his mother said It was very exciting but they would have to wait and see what Daddy said. She made cinammon toast and a pot of tea and they all sat at the kitchen table. When his father came home Paul listened through the closed kitchen door to him and Mike. From windows he had watched Mike greeting his father as he emerged from his car, his father’s near-scowling face suddenly laughing as the dog ran to him and leaped up at him, his father crouching and pushing Mike back with gentle slaps, Mike growling and wagging his tail and barking, jumping again and again to his father’s hands and loving voice. Now in the living room they were laughing and growling, and they came into the kitchen, Mike following through the swinging door, and his father’s sweeping glance quizzical in the silence which he then broke with hello, kissed Paul’s mother, poured bourbon and water, and went to the living room to read the evening paper.
    Usually at supper his mother and sisters talked about school and the nuns or a dress his mother was making for one of them or about other things that Paul paid no attention to while he ate. But that night they were quiet and he knew they were waiting for him. Mike came to watch them and his father said: ‘Mike, you know better than that. Go back to the living room. Go on.’
    Mike went back and lay on the rug, watching them.
    â€˜Paul?’ his mother said. ‘Did anything new happen at school today?’
    Paul looked at her urging brown eyes. Then his father said: ‘Why should anything new happen?’
    Watching his mother he saw that the question was to her.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ his mother said. ‘It can’t be the same eve ry day.’
    Barbara was watching him. He looked at her and said: ‘It’s pretty much the same every day.’
    When they finished eating, his father took a piece of ham to the living room and dropped it between Mike’s paws.
    That night Paul lay in the dark in his room adjacent to the living room and listened to them through the wall. He knew it was eleven o’clock because his father had finished reading. Every week he read The Saturday Evening Post, Time, Collier’s, The Reader’s Digest, Life , and a mystery or a book by a golf pro. While he read Mike slept beside his chair and now and then his father’s hand lowered, with stroking fingers, to Mike’s head. At eleven o’clock he slept.
    â€˜Paul wants to take the French horn.’
    â€˜Where’s he going to take it? To the picture show?’
    â€˜He’s serious about it.’
    â€˜Who, him? Who talked him into it?’
    â€˜Nobody did. Eddie’s going to start, and they’ve talked it over, but I’m sure Eddie didn’t—’
    â€˜Ah: Eddie. When was all this?’
    â€˜Today.’
    â€˜Today. All of a sudden he’s a musician. Did you ever hear that boy say he wanted to be a musician till now?’
    â€˜Well there has to be a first day for