An Available Man Read Online Free

Nick demanded. “What is it?” Amanda echoed anxiously on another extension. They often spoke to Edward or Bee in stereo like that.
    “Let’s wait until I get there, okay?” Edward said, already trying to mitigate what he had to say. But he couldn’t help it—his tone was flat and somber.
    Julie cried out, “You’re not splitting up, are you?” She was five when her father had left, and she’d taken it harder than anyone, according to Bee. “No, never,” Edward said, and her heavy sigh of relief shattered his heart. At least, he consoled himself, the child that he and Bee had wanted but failed to make together wouldn’t have to be told.
    Everyone wept that evening, except for Edward. Like those soldiers who are sent to deliver terrible news to families, his mission was to inform and give solace without breaking down. Bee was wrong about his ever needing a bereavement group; if he could do this on his own, he could do anything. Soon, eventually, he would even be able to tell Gladys, although he secretly wished she would die in her sleep before then, or “lose her marbles,” as she was always threatening to do.
    The worst moment came when Julie bleated, “Mom, Mom,” sounding as plaintive as some lamb separated from the flock. Or maybe it was when Nick kept asking desperately hopeful questions about alternative treatments and experimental trials. Edward had searched medical websites in the middle of the night when Bee was finally asleep, seeking those same miracles despite everything he knew. He did his own weeping in private, too, justas she had once predicted, down in the sanctity of his basement lab, or in the shower where he used to belt out songs to the pulsing beat of the water.
    On the way home from speaking to the children, he pummeled the steering wheel and moaned and yelled with the car windows rolled up. But he was able to compose himself before he approached their house, where Bee, with Bingo like a sentinel beside her, was waiting for him in the doorway.
    Maybe, he thought later, Amanda’s swollen silence was the worst thing, and the way she’d gripped Nick’s hand, as if to keep him beside her, breathing, forever.

Lessons in Death
    B ingo was almost fifteen years old when Bee became ill. He was the last in a long line of pets they’d acquired over the years, for the children’s sake. True to that ludicrous cliché, Nick and Julie had promised—no,
sworn
—to care for, in turn, goldfish, turtles, a hamster, a lizard, and a couple of kittens. Bee believed that giving in to their pleas and pledges would make Nick more responsible and help raise Julie’s self-esteem. Edward liked having animals around, but he thought of them more as first lessons in death. Most domesticated creatures had shorter life spans than humans, and then there were accidents.
    He’d had a dog when he was a boy, a German shepherd mix called Schultz, after the neighbor who’d given him the puppy from his dog’s litter. The canine Schultz had been hit by a car and killed after Edward’s father had whistled for him across the street, and the entire family had suffered the loss. Bud Schuyler,talented whistler, especially of birdcalls, never whistled again. And Edward, who should have been walking the dog that night instead of being off somewhere with his friends—he and Catherine had also promised faithful care and feeding—shared his father’s guilt. Sometimes he wondered if his interest in ornithology began back then, with the wonder of imitation birdsong and then its cessation.
    Nick and Julie’s pets had died, too, or mysteriously disappeared—the lizard and the hamster—one after the other. Edward remembered that Julie, a “minnow” in her swim class at day camp, came into the kitchen one morning in her Speedo and announced that Goldy was doing the sidestroke. She had poked at the floating fish gently with a pencil, trying to right it. “Do something!” she’d commanded Bee and Edward, as the truth began