Read Online Breaking the Fall by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online Page A

communication is a long-running argument. You save up wise things to say. Reality as a sort of baseball game. You score points.”
    â€œRuns.” I clamped my teeth on my tongue.
    â€œI’m going to spend the night drinking coffee on the plane and finishing a report, have breakfast, look fresh and cute, and then I’m going to get on a plane and fly back here to an empty house.”
    I glanced at her, expecting an irritated, impatient person. Instead, I saw that she was near tears. “And you think you’re so smart,” she said, her voice soft and cutting. “Completely disengaged. Just a passenger on this trip. You have nothing to do with anything.”
    I ached. I wanted to put my arms around her. I wanted to hide. “I’m sorry,” I said, lips numb, my voice a rasp. I wanted to add a dozen other questions, but I gripped the arms of the chair. There was a honk outside.
    â€œSorry,” she echoed, and I could sense her measuring me, wanting me to be a different sort of son, wanting her life to be something it wasn’t.
    She moved fast. She flung the carry-on over her shoulder, and only looked back from the door. “It’s a disaster,” she said, so calmly that it made her statement into a statement of fact, ugly and beyond dispute. “A complete disaster.”
    And she was gone, just like that, her eyes glittering with things she wanted to say, or was afraid to say, and I sat there, my words drying up, gazing after the closing door.
    I made a point of eating with my father that night, an uncommon event. We had Mrs. Paul’s clam crisps and a spinach soufflé in a plastic bag that looked like a green rock until you cooked it. I asked how things were going at the foundry, hoping to hear about molten steel and gigantic drop forges slamming out axles or exhaust manifolds.
    â€œOur dental plan has fled the country,” said my father.
    He said this with just the slightest wry tone, so I knew I was supposed to ask for more information. I was slow that night.
    â€œI have spent the afternoon talking to the world’s rudest dental receptionists, those sweet ladies who reassure you when you lose a filling.” He put down his fork. “I knew there was trouble,” he said, “when Macroplan wouldn’t answer the phone for two months.” He let air out through his teeth. “I should have played it differently. Finessed it somehow.”
    I got ready to ask him to tell me all about it, but when I looked at him, I really studied him. He was tired, dark smudges under his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved very well that morning. There was a little stand of whiskers under one nostril. He had a handsome, craggy face, and looked exactly like what he was—a smart man with many worries. He was drained, and not just from recent struggles. He was getting used up.
    â€œYou know what life comes down to,” he said with a little smile. It wasn’t a question. It was one of those topic sentences my father liked to use in conversation: “you know what really pisses me off” or “you know what the problem with unemployment insurance is.”
    I gave him a look of interest, a hopeful smile.
    â€œA good filing system.” He laughed, an ironic sort of laughter I did not feel invited to join. “Isn’t that depressing?”
    I made a little questioning sound.
    â€œDepressing because you expect life is a question of courage or brains or love or something. But the guy who knows where he put things, where the money is, where the facts are, and who can put his hands on the hot numbers the quickest is the winner. It wins wars. It wins hearts and lives. It cures the halt and the lame. Not genius. Not the tireless, merciful soul. Those are nothing compared with a good information retrieval system.”
    He chewed, and I said: “Mother isn’t happy.”
    His answer was quick. “Happy,” both ironic and a little sad.