Read Online A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers - Free Book Online

second he might say sorry (Dean unfortunately did not), at which time he would have gotten a hug like anyone else. As strong as she was physically, most of the power was in her eyes, small and blue, and when she squinted, she would squint with a murderous intensity that meant, unmistakably, that, if pushed, she would deliver on her stare ’ s implied threat, that to protect what she cared about, she would not stop, that she would run right over you. But she wore her strength casually, had a trusting carelessness with her flesh and muscles. She would cut herself while slicing vegetables, cut the living shit out of her finger, usually her thumb, and it would bleed everywhere, on the tomatoes, the cutting board, in the sink, while we watched at her waist, awed, scared she would die. But she would just grimace, wash the thumb clean under the tap, wrap the thumb in a paper towel and keep cutting, while the blood slowly soaked through the paper towel, crawling, as blood crawls, outward from the wound ’ s wet center.
    Beside the TV there are various pictures of us children, including one featuring me, Bill, and Beth, all under seven, in an orange dinghy, all expressions panicked. In the picture, we seem surrounded by water, for all anyone knows, miles from shore—our expressions certainly indicate that. But of course we couldn ’ t have been more than ten feet out, our mother standing over us, ankle-deep, in her brown one-piece with the white fringe, taking the picture. It is the picture we know best, the one we have seen every day, and its colors—the blue of Lake Michigan, the orange of the dinghy, our tan skin and blond hair—are the colors we associate with our childhoods. In the picture we are all holding the side of the little boat, wanting out, wanting our mother to lift us out, before the thing would sink or drift away.
    “ How ’ s school? ” she asks.
    “ Fine. ”
    I don ’ t tell her I ’ ve been dropping classes.
    “ How ’ s Kirsten? ”
    “ She ’ s good. ”
    “ I always liked her. Nice girl. Spunky. ”
    When I rest my head on the couch I know that it ’ s coming, coming like something in the mail, something sent away for. We know it is coming, but are not sure when—weeks? months? She is fifty-one. I am twenty-one. My sister is twenty-three. My brothers are twenty-four and seven.
    We are ready. We are not ready. People know.
    Our house sits on a sinkhole. Our house is the one being swept up in the tornado, the little train-set model house floating helplessly, pathetically around in the howling black funnel. We ’ re weak and tiny. We ’ re Grenada. There are men parachuting from the sky.
    We are waiting for everything to finally stop working—the organs and systems, one by one, throwing up their hands— The jig is up, says the endocrine; / did what I could, says the stomach, or what ’ s left of it; We ’ ll get em next time, adds the heart, with a friendly punch to the shoulder.
    After half an hour I remove the towel, and for a moment the blood does not come.
    “ I think we got it, ” I say.
    “ Really? ” she says, looking up at me.
    “ Nothing ’ s coming, ” I say.
    I notice the size of her pores, large, especially those on her nose. Her skin has been leathery for years, tanned to permanence, not in an unflattering way, but in a way interesting considering her Irish background, the fact that she must have grown up so fair—
    It begins to come again, the blood thick and slow at first, dotted with the black remnants of scabs, then thinner, a lighter red. I squeeze again.
    “ Too hard, ” she says. “ That hurts. ”
    “ Sorry, ” I say.
    “ I ’ m hungry, ” says a voice. Toph. He is standing behind me, next to the couch.
    “ What? ” I say.
    “ I ’ m hungry. ”
    “ I can ’ t feed you now. Have something from the fridge. ”
    “ Like what? ”
    “ I don ’ t care, anything. ”
    “ Like what? ”
    “ I don ’ t know. ”
    “ What do we have? ”
    “ Why