Arcadia Read Online Free

making soy cheese and onion quesadillas, Abe beams at him, saying, Renovation, honey. But Hannah squeezes Bit and whispers, I think your word is apt. Re-novelization. Reimagining our story. She touches under his chin with her soft fingers, his mother, and he laughs for the happiness of pleasing her.
    It is morning. Hannah has put hot coffee into Abe’s thermos. She has made them scrambled yeggs, soft, fresh tofu yellowed with nutritional yeast. When Abe marches up the hill to fix Arcadia House, his toolbelt jingling, Hannah goes to work in the Bakery.
    Bit is building a castle out of woodblocks with Leif and Cole when he sees Hannah trudge back across the Quad and go up into the Bread Truck. He waits all day, but she doesn’t come to get him. Twilight spreads over the windows. All around the Quad the cold air sounds with the voices and bootsteps of the menfolk and ladies who are coming home. The Family Quonsets are abuzz, the Pink Piper spills kids into the dusk, the scents of fried onions and tempeh rise from the Singleton Tent, the tinny wail of baby Felipe is answered by the echo of a smaller baby, Norah or Tzivi, startled awake. Doors open, doors slam, voices call out in the raggedy homecomings of Ersatz Arcadia. At last, he gets Sweetie to suit him up and walks home alone.
    Hannah sits up from the bedclothes, stretches, and gives Bit a piggyback outside for a pee, hopping barefoot over the frozen ground. Inside the loo, it smells like wet muskrat, though it is warm out of the wind. Hannah curses when she eyes the wipe-nail, filled with glossy squares cut from a Life magazine. Glossy means sharp and cold against your crack, itching later.
    When they come in, the damp chill of the Bread Truck seems somehow colder than the outdoors, and Regina is standing at the kitchen table, a loaf of bread before her. She turns and gives a small wave. Hey, she says.
    Hey, Hannah says, setting Bit down. He runs to the bread and tears off a hunk to gnaw. Bit hid when Hannah didn’t pick him up for lunch, and hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He’s starved. Hannah crouches to start a fire in the white ashes of the woodstove, the pinecones a fragrant kindling.
    So we missed you this afternoon in the Bakery, says Regina. I looked up to ask you to make the granola, and you were gone. She has flour in her black crown of braids and a smear of something shiny on her cheekbones. Her eyes are tiny and set deeply in her head, her eyebrows are crows’ wings.
    I got sick, Hannah says. Her voice is taut, but when she touches the match to the kerosene lamp, her face looks normal in the glow. I didn’t want to get anyone else sick, so I thought I’d go home.
    Oh. Uh-huh, says Regina. Okay. It’s just that what with the Arcadia House project, it’s just me and Ollie up at the Bakery when you do that. Which is okay on the days you tell me, but when we’re relying on you, it’s a real pinch.
    Sorry, Hannah says. I’ll be there all day tomorrow.
    Is this about what happened in the fall . . . begins Regina, but Hannah makes a shushing sound. Bit looks up to find Regina peering at him.
    Really? Regina says. I mean, it’s not really our style to hide, you know? It’s a matter of life—
    He’s so little still, Hannah says. We’ll tell him when it’s time. It’s our choice.
    Handy says that kids don’t belong to individ—
    My kid, says Hannah, more forcefully. I don’t care what Handy says. If you had one, you’d know.
    The women turn away from one another and pick up things to examine: Hannah a match, Regina the coffee percolator. The air is rich with the silent adult language that Bit can never understand. All right, says Regina. She sets the percolator down with a bang. She picks Bit up, squints at him. Little Bit, make sure your momma pulls her weight, okay? she says. No slackers allowed in Arcadia.
    Okay, whispers Bit.
    When the door clicks behind Regina, Hannah says, Nosy bitch.
    Bit waits for the sourness in his stomach to pass, then