Read Online The Love Children by Marylin French - Free Book Online

wouldn’t know what she was doing—we never knew when he might appear, and whenever he was home, he searched her desk and trash basket. He wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to do this, even if I saw him. I’d told her about it. He’d always done it, even before he left.
    Mom did find a job, late in June, right before I was to leave for Vermont. She was hired at Moseley in Boston, luckily, starting in the fall. The night they called to offer her the job, we were in the kitchen together, preparing vegetables. She dried her hands and took the phone. She didn’t say much, and when she hung up, she stood there for a while, as though thinking deeply. Then she said, “I got a job, Jess.”
    â€œGreat! Where?”
    â€œRight here,” she was almost crying. “In Boston. Moseley.”
    â€œTerrific!” I meant it.
    She took off her apron. She poured a scotch. She sat down at the table. “Sit with me, Jess.”
    I put down the leek I’d been about to slice.
    â€œYou know I wanted to get a full-time job, a tenure-track job, so I could earn enough to support us.”
    I knew.
    â€œI’m going to be paid thirteen thousand dollars,” she said. “We can live on that.”
    â€œGreat.”
    â€œThat means I can divorce Daddy.”
    â€œNo!” I cried.
    She sat there in silence as I bent forward, crying. My heart was broken.
    â€œI’m really sorry, honey.”

    â€œIt will kill him. Do you have to? Do you have to?”
    â€œIt won’t kill him. And I do have to. You know why. His constant rage . . . It makes me hate him. And living with someone you hate is unhealthy. It makes me hate myself. It’s bad for my health. And it’s bad for you. And I want a happy life. I’m thirty-eight years old. I still have a chance for a happy life.”
    â€œIt will kill him!”
    â€œNo, it won’t. He’ll think it will, but it won’t. He’ll find someone else to rage at fast enough.”
    â€œI won’t ever see him!” My voice rose.
    â€œWe’ll try to fix it so you do,” she said.
    But I was inconsolable, and she had to finish making dinner all by herself. I went up to my room and lay on my bed. In the end, I came down. I was hungry, and we were having veal chops with a puree invented by Alice Waters, a great chef in California, of leeks, potatoes, celeriac, and white turnips, something I really love. And stewed tomatoes.
    She made the divorce another reason for me to go up to Vermont. She said I should be with Dad while I could. He didn’t know she was intending to divorce him. I sure wasn’t going to tell him: I didn’t want to pay for her sins. Not only did she make me go, she sent me up there by bus.
    Â 
    As it happened, that summer in Vermont wasn’t so bad. Dad was easier when Mom wasn’t around. He stayed out in his studio from about ten in the morning until eight or nine at night. His housekeeper would carry out a sandwich and a beer and some cookies around one in the afternoon, and she left food on the stove when she left in the afternoons at about three, when her kids finished school. He was supposed to heat the food up for his dinner, but he never did; he ate it lukewarm, right out of the pot. But at least food was available. I heated it up when I came in from work, and always thought of Steve. It wasn’t spaghetti like his grandma’s, it
wasn’t bad, and maybe it was even good, but heated-over food is never delicious, and I was used to delicious food.
    Dad would come in around nine, pour a stiff drink, and sit down. He’d just sit there, staring into space for a while, drinking fast, pouring drink after drink. After a while, his soul would come back into his eyes, and he’d get up and grab a pot and a fork and sink into a kitchen chair and eat. He’d slice off a hunk of meat and eat it with his fingers. He ate this way when he was alone—he