Read Online Apart From Love by Uvi Poznansky - Free Book Online Page B

excited. He so looks forward to becoming a father, the second time around. I can just see him in my head, like, holding the baby’s hand, guiding him already in his first steps. Then, letting go, he’s gonna take a step or two back, and hold his breath, waiting there for the little one to walk into his open arms.  
Lenny’s gonna buy him a brand new tricycle, and teach him how to set his little feet on top of them pedals, and push, push harder, even harder—yeah! Just so! And again: Go on, push, until—oh boy! With great joy, he’s gonna clap his hands, because here—for the first time—you could detect a move, a slight move ahead.  
And then, a few years down the road, he’s gonna surprise our child with a large, shining bicycle, and adjust the training wheels as time goes by, until they wasn’t needed no more; at which point, Lenny would remove them, and hold them in his hands, like, to weigh them for a moment, and try to wipe the rust, and wish that time would like, slow down, just a little, because it’s hard, so hard for the old heart to let go.  
Yes, Lenny needs a son: someone to need him, trust him, and make him trust himself again.  

I turn the page over, only to find some of them words much too long—but I read them anyway and like, I enunciate them, as slowly and as clearly as I can, ‘cause it’s gonna make him proud of me, and make me worthy of him.  
The book says that just four weeks after conception , basic facial features will begin to appear, including passageways , I repeat, passageways that will make up the inner ear, and arches that will contribute , contribute, I say aloud, to the jaw. And it says that the baby may now be a quarter of an inch long, which sounds like they’re talking about some lizard, or maybe a fish.  
But the book don’t say nothing about what I’m really worried about, which is: how to be become a ma—and at the same time, how to be totally different from my ma.  
Me, I often wonder about that, ‘cause it’s kinda hard to know the right thing to do, even with the best of intentions, when all you have before you is nothing, nothing but a life cursed by violence, and by misery, and by a long list of mistakes.  

Like the time when I was fourteen, and ma called me Bitch , for no better reason than me telling her that, like, I’d missed my period. I wasn’t sure if she called me that because I was pregnant—or because she didn’t want to hear it.  
At any rate, ma pondered the situation . This was what she called it back then, a situation. And she gave me a smack across my face when she figured it was Johnny's baby, which was real bad, not only because he was already married—but because he was also dating her at the time. And if there was one thing she hated, it was the idea of sharing.  
After the blow I could taste blood in my mouth. And when I touched it with my tongue, one of my teeth felt kinda loose, and after a while it started to rock back and forth.  
Once she simmered down, ma said, “There’s still time. It’s not too late.”  
And she took me to that clinic, where she’d just joined the cleaning staff. And they did her a personal favor, so that instead of paying a full charge, she could put in some extra hours, like, for a few months. And there, they took care of the situation , but not of the tooth.  
And so, I ended up losing it.  

Me, I’m awful lucky, ‘cause you can’t tell it’s missing—unless I’m having real good fun and busting out laughing, which sometimes makes me forget to keep my mouth shut.  
But right now I have to bite my lips.
Either that, or dig my nails, like, deep into the flesh of my hand, so that them cramps, they’re gonna stop, or at least fade away. So I close the book, reach over to the bedside lamp, and click its knob.  
And at once, the place has changed. All these fancy pieces of furniture, and this entire bedroom, in which I don’t really belong, with its walls—those here around me and