Read Online April & Oliver by Tess Callahan - Free Book Online

you?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    “Don’t
you
be ridiculous, missy. You think I didn’t notice that shiner last month?”
    April shivers as she pours shampoo in her palm and lathers.
    “Well?”
    “I walked into a door frame. You know how clumsy I am.”
    “Sure do. Always bumping into the wrong type of men.”
    April smiles. “Keep talking and the soap will run into your mouth.”
    “Spencer never raised a hand to me. They don’t make men like him anymore.”
    “What about the first one?” April asks. Nana rarely talks about Nick Simone, her first husband, who ran out on her when April’s
     father was young. Judging by the pictures on the walls, he never existed. Spencer Night is everywhere.
    “Your father looked just like him,” Nana says. “Sometimes when he walked through the door, I thought it was Nicky back from
     the dead.” She always speaks of him as dead, though no one knows what became of him.
    “I’m going to rinse now,” April says. “Close your eyes.”
    “Your father deserved better,” she says.
    “Don’t cry, Nana. I have to rinse.”
    “Remember the time Spencer found that mongrel tied to the railroad tracks?”
    April has heard the story before. She can almost recite it.
    “Imagine someone doing that to his own pup!” Nana says. “If Spencer hadn’t untied him, imagine! Poor thing, all skinny and
     beaten up. Spencer brought it home, nursed it back, taught it tricks. He loved that dog. But you know, whenever they went
     for a walk, the pup searched every face on the street, looking for his master. After all the love Spencer gave him, he still
     wanted the face he knew best, the one who tied him to the tracks.”
    April gathers Nana’s hair in her fists and squeezes out the water. “We’re done.”
    “Spencer loved your father like his own. Treated him no different from Hal. He wanted them to feel they were both his boys.
     But your father remembered his father. When the phone rang, he was always the first to answer. It was never the voice he hoped
     for.”
    April wraps Nana’s head in a towel.
    “Ay,” Nana says, straightening. She holds her back, glancing at the photograph hanging above the table. April’s father and
     Uncle Hal, nine and three, in matching children’s sailor suits. Hal’s smile is shy and impish, his legs swinging from his
     chair. April’s father, standing behind him, has the stance of a little man, one hand on his hip, the other on his stepbrother’s
     shoulder.
    For part of her childhood, April believed that her father and uncle were half brothers. Nana concocted stories about Hal’s
     birth and infancy that changed with each telling. One night he was born in a snowstorm; the next it was during an eclipse.
     “Her memory’s gone to hell,” April said to Oliver one spring afternoon when they were twelve. “I guess it’s true what they
     say; you only remember the firstborn.”
    They were sitting on Nana’s stoop, waiting for their parents to come out so they could go home.
    “Sometimes it seems like she really believes those stories,” Oliver said, nudging a loose brick. “I think she’s convinced
     herself.”
    “Of what?”
    “You know, about my father.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    Oliver laughed, and when she did not join in, he stopped. “I wonder what’s keeping them,” he said quickly. “I’ll go check.”
    She grabbed the leg of his jeans and stared up at him. Oliver sat down again. He rubbed his face in his hands and looked at
     her over his fingers. “Don’t tell me no one told you.”
    She didn’t speak. Blood drained from her face. She hated being the last to know.
    “When Nana married Spencer, he was widowed, right?”
    April nodded.
    “And he had a son. Eighteen months old. My father.”
    April leaned away from him. She closed her arms across her chest. “Nana’s not his mother?”
    Oliver shook his head.
    “So she’s not really your grandmother?”
    “Of course she is. Just not if you’re