Read Online The Book of Why by Nicholas Montemarano - Free Book Online Page A

I’d have to face her, I’d have to say something or nothing, and then she might say it—that it had been my fault, how many times had she told me, this was God punishing me for not doing what I’d been told, for doing what I’d been told not to do, this was my cross, hers too, this was permanent, irreversible, did I know what that word meant, it meant the rest of our lives.
    The cab ride home, the two of us without him. My mother beside me on the backseat.
    Two boys threw eggs at the cab. One boy was shirtless and had tiny nipples; the other boy wore a red bandana, which was something I’d asked for the previous Christmas because it looked like you had a wound under it and I thought it was romantic to have a wound, people would consider you tragic and brave, but instead my mother got me a herringbone-tweed cap other kids made fun of.
    The eggs hit the window where I was sitting, but I didn’t flinch. The streets were dark but for jack-o’-lanterns still lit in windows and on stoops. Then streets I recognized, streets close to ours, houses I knew. Our house. The brown car my father drove, had driven , which my mother didn’t know how to drive, which would sit in front of our house for five years; I would start it once a week, twice a week in winter, until I was old enough to drive.
    A magic wand was stuck in our tree. Wind blew candy wrappers along the sidewalk. In the street were a glittery princess slipper and a cracked vampire mask. On our front door was a shaving-cream smiley face and below it the words, I’ll be back.
    The dark house, the click of a lamp turned on. A closet opened, my mother’s coat hung on a hanger, the smell of mothballs. Her footsteps, then mine, up the creaking stairs. My mother in her room, what had been their room, and me in mine, where it had happened.
    Even in the dark I could see the outline of the closet door. I got out of bed, turned on the light, and put my hand on the knob.
    It was all a trick, I realized—the ultimate illusion. My father was that good. Better than anyone, even Houdini. A trick to make the heart stop. A trick so good that it fooled the men who’d come to the house and breathed into his mouth and pushed on his chest and put a mask over his face and pressed a plastic ball that sent air into his body; so good that it fooled the doctors and nurses at the hospital.
    I imagined him laughing as he stood up from the operating table, where they must have pronounced him dead. I imagined him tiptoeing into the hallway, down the stairs, and outside to a cab. He could have gotten home before us. He’d disappeared, and now, if I focused my thoughts, he would reappear.
    I stood with my hand on the knob, listening for his breathing.
    He might wait until morning, I thought.
    He might wait until the wake or the burial—a knock from inside the coffin as it’s lowered.
    He might wait years.
    Until then, he would be the voice in the static between stations; the creak on the attic steps; the rain against my bedroom window; the wind that blew leaves across the backyard; a blue jay on our clothesline; footsteps, shadows, silence; any sound that broke silence.

 
    IT WAS THE year of rules.
    So was the next year, and the next. With every year came more and more rules, refinements of old rules.
    You couldn’t break one, or else.
    The first rule, the most important, was Think positive .
    Every thought was positive, negative, or neutral, and you had to be careful.
    With practice negative could become neutral and neutral positive, and with more practice, negative could bypass neutral and become positive.
    The negative I t’s cold and snowing and someone will throw ice at my face became the neutral It’s cold and snowing, became the positive Thank you for morning sunlight reflecting off the white world , became a mantra you could repeat all day, became a song, Thank you for sunlight, thank you for the white world , all day to