Spoonwood Read Online Free Page A

he looks at me. “Why did you have to happen to me?” I say in a low voice so Howard and Elenore don’t hear.
    Birch responds with some spit-up, as if he understood me.
    â€œSit down, have something to eat,” my father says to my mother in a slack tone of gruffness that is as close as he can come to tenderness. “I’ll make you a plate.” He gets up from the table.
    â€œThanks, Howie. I’m pooped.” She sits down. I sit down.
    â€œYou want something?” he says to me.
    â€œNo, I’m not hungry,” I lie. I’m planning to grab a bite at the bar.
    Howard warms the beans and two hot dogs in the microwave.
    â€œTea?” my father says.
    â€œPlease,” my mother says.
    Howard turns up the kettle, removes the plate from the microwave, and with a theatrical gesture places the meal in front of his wife.
    â€œToast?” he says.
    â€œJust one,” she says.
    Instead of placing the slice on her plate, he tosses it artfully and it falls on the side of her plate. He stands, waiting for orders.
    â€œSit down, Howie,” Elenore says.
    Howard sits down.
    Spontaneous Combustion and Birch watch from the sidelines as if they know something is going to go pop. I just want my mother to finish her meal and dispense her news, so I can head out. I understand now what my father must have known from the start. My mother has something to say, but she’s hungry and she won’t deliver her message on an empty stomach.
    My mother is a slow, finicky eater, and she soon uses up my father’s meager store of patience.
    â€œWell?” he yells.
    â€œI’ll finish my suppah, thank you.” Two more bites to go.
    â€œWant more tea?” my father says, in a tone suggesting Elenore is about to be indicted by a grand jury.
    â€œHold your water,” my mother says. One bite to go.
    â€œSorry,” my father says, and he clasps his hands in something like prayer and looks at the ceiling. It’s one of his stock gestures and never fails to infuriate me.
    Finished, my mother pushes her plate away. “I got some pretty good information today,” she says. And she goes on, telling the whole story in her exasperating way, the drive up to St. Johnsbury, the weather, the road conditions, getting to her point in her own good time, finally speaking of her profound disappointment in the same chatty tone as the unimportant information. The records of her origins were lost decades ago.
    â€œAll’s I could find out was that I was put up for adoption, but there were no takers. Imagine that—no takers.”
    My mother is left with her childhood memories—the orphanage, the Sisters of Mercy, a series of foster homes—but no knowledge of her roots.
    â€œI’m sorry it turned out that way,” Howard says. “I know it meant a lot to you.”
    Suddenly, my mother’s face lights up with that funny look I noticed when she came into the house. She focuses the look on my father.
    â€œI didn’t find my people but I found yours.”
    â€œThis does not bode well,” my father says in a low growl.
    â€œWe’re not Elmans in this house.” My mother looks at me, and she looks at my father, and then she reaches into her handbag and gives my father a copy of a birth certificate. “This is you, Howie—you.”
    My father puts on his reading glasses and cautiously sniffs the document. He’s only learned to read in the last few years, and he always makes a big production out of the act, his mouth drawn tight, face puckered. Without a word or even a warning shot over the bow, he hands the paper to me.
    My father was born in Caribou, Maine, sixty-one years ago May 29. But it’s the name that catches my attention. My father was christened Claude de Repentigny Latour.
    I can’t help a snicker. “A Frenchman—you always made jokes about Frenchmen.”
    â€œI’ve been putting my foot in my