Turow, Scott - Kindle County Legal 04 - The Laws of Our Fathers by Turow Scott

Author:Turow, Scott [Turow, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780759521872
Google: rI9HgdygdUYC
Amazon: 0446604402
Publisher: Warner Books
Published: 1996-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

DECEMBER 9, 1995

Sonny

The home in which Nikki and I live is a narrow, rehabbed greystone in University Park. The contractor carved a garage out of the cellar and laid a downsloping drive that floods in the winter thaw. Beneath the limestone ledges of the tall double-hung windows of the upper floors, wrought-iron flower boxes hold fall geraniums, now withered in their terra-cotta pots. Charlie and I paid too much for this place and I will never get what I need if we sell, a step I often contemplate. The suburbs on the East Bank, with their stable, well-funded public schools, and quiet tree-lined streets, seem tempting. At least a quarter of the families of the children who started in Nikki's nursery-school program are gone to that safer world, but whenever I contemplate the move, I hear Zora. "The suburbs!' she used to exclaim. 'Better a lobotomy.'

This morning, Saturday, is crowded. Nikki demands a pancake breakfast and then time with her cartoons. I have to get the car

into the shop; it's leaking oil again, a shimmering, gunmetal puddle on the garage floor. Walking home from Boyce's Repair, both of us are grumpy. I fret about how to handle the working woman's travail of Saturday grocery shopping without a car, while Nikki fears we'll miss Sam, Charlie's son by his first marriage, who is coming by to take his little sister to the Drees Center for a production of The Princess and the Pea.

I often say that I had more anxiety about parting from Sam than Charlie. From infancy, Sam was with us every weekend. He is a special kid, even more so to me, because he proved to be the one human being on earth who finally reassured me I would check out okay as a mother. Sam's own mom, Rebecca, is high-strung and still scorns me a decade later as a homewrecker. Once Charlie left, I was positive she'd never allow Sam back into my home. But Sam tolerated no change. He calls Nikki at least once each week and bikes over from his mother's house, a few blocks away, most Saturday afternoons. He lets himself in, sits while I run errands. He makes them snacks. They play at the computer. I find them, both agape before the screen, Nikki seated on one of his knees.

It's all a mystery. How could a crabbed soul like Rebecca have raised a boy like this? He is funny and brilliant, with the heart of a hero. He plays the piano with passion. He acts in plays. At twelve, he is full of feeling and, not so incidentally, pain. After all, he is Rebecca's son, she of the shrewish moods and damaging tongue. Worse, he's been deserted by Charlie. He seems to cling to Nikki because they are joined, not merely by blood, but by circumstance, not just the gene load Charlie left behind, but the longing. Sam, I often think, has decided to heal himself by being a better man to Nikki than his father has been to both of them.

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