Read Online The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu - Free Book Online

been hand-carved out of a single block of wood; walls that were painted a subtle shade of gold that was perhaps picked up by the massive vase of plastic sunflowers in the corner. Rarely did I ever see the people who lived in those houses, as if each were merely display-case props of revitalization. Sometimes I thought of what I was doing as window shopping.
    An old record player and radio the size of a desk, made of wood and with a dozen chrome knobs, sat in the hallway. The living room had a heavy black wall-mounted phone from the early twentieth century, and a silver clock stuck permanently on two-twenty. The leather couches, chestnut colored and densely packed, were separated by a wooden coffee table that had at least fifty small drawers along its side. It was all so solid, comfortable, and familiar, as if Judith had deliberately picked only pieces of furniture that had proven their ability to withstand time.
    From somewhere in the house, Judith called out, “I’ll be right down. I just have to finish something up.” Behind her voice I could hear Naomi’s barely restrained cries to be left alone. In one of those rooms upstairs, Judith was pulling away at her daughter’s hair, while her daughter was pulling away from her mother’s confused, desperate hands. It was a subtle negotiation of unspoken differences.
    When the two of them came down the stairs fifteen minutes later, each looked spent and frustrated. Naomi’s hair was now all in braids, more or less evenly separated. She led the way, with her mother just a step behind. Judith was wearing her glasses, which gave her small, narrow face an added sense of depth that seemed to be previously missing.
    “I’m sorry we kept you waiting so long. Naomi and I had some unfinished business to settle.”
    We kissed each other on both cheeks. Judith’s hand lingered for what I thought was a second beyond polite on my back.
    “You’re the first dinner guest we’ve had in our new house.”
    “Well, I feel honored.”
    “You should. Naomi hates having other people in the house.”
    “Is that true, Naomi?”
    Naomi was standing pressed against the wall with her hands tucked behind her.
    “Yup,” she said.
    She popped her lips hard on the “p” for emphasis as she rocked back on her heels.
    “You’ve got good taste for someone your age,” I told her.
    Judith led me to the dining room, which was still overrun with boxes of books that she said she didn’t know what to do with. Most of them, she said, were terribly boring academic books that she didn’t want to think about or look at anymore. In another life, she had been a professor of American political history.
    “And for a while, it was great,” she said. “I loved it. The students, the summers off. I could pick Naomi up from school every day. And at night I still had the energy to go out for dinner or watch a movie.”
    “What happened?” I asked her.
    “I’m not sure,” she said. “That life seems so far away now. Naomi’s father left. That didn’t help. We moved from Chicago to Boston to Virginia, and now here. Nothing felt good enough anymore.”
    She had the habit of tucking and untucking her hair from behind her right ear as she spoke. She hesitated for a few seconds before speaking again.
    “Suddenly I saw myself twenty years in the future saying the same thing over and over to students who stayed the same age, and I couldn’t believe that this was what I had planned on. It’s hard sometimes to remember why we do anything in the first place. It’s nice to think there’s a purpose, or even a real decision that turns everything in one direction, but that’s not always true, is it? We just fall into our lives. How did you get to own a grocery store?”
    “Some people are just lucky,” I said.
    “Is that what that was?”
    “It also helps if you don’t care where you land.”
    Instead of sitting at the dining-room table, Judith suggested we eat on the couch.
    “We can be less formal