The Shape of My Name Read Online Free Page A

ask her: Couldn’t she have arrived twenty minutes earlier and stopped him entirely? I don’t want to know her answer.)
    In that obituary, I’m first in the list of those who survived him, and it’s the last time I used the name you gave me. During the funeral, I nodded, received the hugs and handshakes from Dad’s cousins and friends, bowed my head when the priest instructed, prayed hard for his soul. When it was done, I walked alone to the pond where the two of us had sat together, watching birds and talking about the plots of silly television shows. I tried to remember everything that I could about him, tried to preserve his ghost against the vagaries of time: the smell of Kamel cigarettes and diesel on his clothes; the red-blond stubble that dotted his jaw; the way his eyes brightened when they landed on you.
    I wished so hard that you were there with me. I wanted so much to cry on your shoulder, to sob as hard and hysterically as I had when you took me to 1981. And I wanted to be able to slap you, to hit you, to push you in the water and hold you beneath the surface. I could have killed you that day, Mama.
    When I was finished, Dara took me back to the house. We cleaned it as best we could for the next family member who would live here: there always has to be a member of the Stone family here, to take care of the shelter, the anachronopede, and the travelers that come through.
    Then she took me away, to 2073, the home she’d made more than a century away from you.
    *   *   *
    Today was the first day I was able to leave the house, to take cautious, wobbling steps to the outside world. Everything is still tender and bruised, though my body is healing faster than I ever thought possible. It feels strange to walk with a weight between my legs; I walk differently, with a wider stride, even though I’m still limping.
    Dara and I walked down to the pond today. The frogs all hushed at our approach, but the blackbirds set up a racket. And off in the distance, a heron lifted a cautious foot and placed it down again. We watched it step carefully through the water, hesitantly. Its beak darted into the water and came back up with a wriggling fish, which it flipped into its mouth. I suppose it was satisfied with that, because it crouched down, spread its wings, and then jumped into the air, enormous wings fighting against gravity until it rose over the trees.
    Three days before my surgery, I went back to you. The pain of it is always the same, like I’m being torn apart and placed back together with clumsy, inexpert fingers, but by now I’ve gotten used to it. I wanted you to see me as the man I’ve always known I am, that I slowly became. And I wanted to see if I could forgive you; if I could look at you and see anything besides my father’s slow decay, my own broken and betrayed heart.
    I knocked at the door, dizzy, ears ringing, shivering, soaked from the storm that was so much worse than I remembered. I was lucky that you or Dara had left a blanket in the shelter, so I didn’t have to walk up to the front door naked; my flat, scarred chest at odds with my wide hips, the thatch of pubic hair with no flesh protruding from it. I’d been on hormones for a year, and this second puberty reminded me so much of my first one, with you in 1963: the acne and the awkwardness, the slow reveal of my future self.
    You answered the door with your hair in curlers, just as I remembered, and fetched me one of Dad’s old robes. I fingered the monogramming at the breast pocket, and I wished, so hard, that I could walk upstairs and see him.
    â€œWhat the hell,” you said. “I thought the whole family knew these years were off-limits while I’m linear.”
    You didn’t quite recognize me, and you tilted your head. “Have we met before?”
    I looked you in the eyes, and my voice cracked when I told you I was your son.
    Your hand went to your mouth.