Read Online All We Want Is Everything by Andrew F. Sullivan - Free Book Online

in one swift motion in a bus station bathroom and Deidra already had two kids in college. She never bothered finding another man after Bob was hit with two heart attacks in a row while cutting the lawn. It was Harriet, the youngest, who was lagging behind. Their mother would not have been impressed. Harriet’s sisters visited the graveyard once a week to talk to their mother’s marble gravestone and Harriet was pretty sure all they did was discuss how the youngest Donoghue had failed the family. They even brought letters about her to read. Harriet discovered them when she showed up with flowers on her mother’s birthday. Pieces of paper fluttering around the cemetery, listing all her faults and failures chronologically with footnotes and everything. It was a long list.
    The phone rings again and Harriet picks it up. Doris is on the other end again.
    “Do you think I have the money for a plumber? Do you realize how expensive this dump is to heat once October hits? It ain’t cheap, I can tell you that much. And if you hang up on me again, I swear to God—”
    Harriet leaves the phone off the hook and rolls over to go back to sleep. Henry does not move. He has become impervious to noise. Harriet closes her eyes and tries to dream of a plant that will never die. All she can find are cactuses that stretch up into the clouds.
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    In the morning, she drives by the old house Henry surrendered to Doris during the divorce. The windows are covered in dust and half the trim has begun to rot away. Henry is still only allowed to see the boy on weekend visits with a social worker present. A minor sex offender conviction when he was in high school has become a ghost, a fifteen-year-old girl floating over every conversation; her parents demanded an officer press the charges.
    This ghost appears at random, unravelling the many lives Henry’s tried to build since they were caught in her basement without pants or excuses. It pokes holes in resumes and drives away investors from his growing hot tub empire. It sulks in corners and lashes out in courtrooms and custody battles. Henry tells Harriet she would like his son, but he’s not allowed to bring anyone to the visits. Doris has filed a petition about corrupting influences. She isn’t wrong exactly. Harriet is the one who broke up their marriage, the one who slowly pulled Henry away from a life of baseball games and barbecues and cold bed sheets. Harriet is the one who diagnosed their marriage, the one who reached inside and pulled out a heart crusted in bile. She does not regret any of it, but sometimes she does regret there was a child. Doris holds him up like a trophy and the doctor says Henry’s sperm are still energetic, still thriving. Harriet wants to blame it all on the hot tubs, but the doctor says that isn’t the case. She tries to avoid thinking about other options. She focuses on Doris and what she would look like floating face down in a hot tub.
    The boy is sitting on the porch with a deflated basketball. He tries to bounce it off the concrete steps, but it barely reacts. Harriet pulls over and watches him try to blow air into the tiny hole. The kid’s face turns red and then purple before he surrenders and tosses the ball away into the overgrown grass. Harriet rolls down the window and yells out into the street.
    “You’re Henry’s kid, right?”
    The boy is only six. He doesn’t say anything at first. He stands on the steps and looks toward the front door, but doesn’t move. Harriet climbs out of the car. She remembers all those public service announcements about strangers in cars. No matter what her sisters say, Harriet knows she is not a monster. She just doesn’t always think things through. Henry says it wasn’t her fault that they fired her from the cereal factory, but he doesn’t know about the lift she dropped on Debbie Anderson or the medical bills her family has to pay. Harriet doesn’t think he’d want to know. She bought a hot tub from him with