Breaking the Fall Read Online Free

the barest, breathy whine of its hinges.
    My breath caught.
    My dad was sitting in the living room, gazing at the television, which was not on. He held a beer in his hands, but the beer was not open. The light at his elbow was the only light on in the house, illuminating an unopened Wall Street Journal on the table at his elbow.
    But it was only my father. His arrival was always hard to predict, but there was no reason why the sight of his profile should startle me.
    He spoke to me after I had passed. “What’s up, Stanley?” he said.
    I came back into his presence, and he found me with his eyes. His gray suit was rumpled, his new red tie unknotted, the thin half flung up across his shoulder. His briefcase was on his lap, unopened.
    â€œOut late,” he said. It was his usual way of asking a question, even making an accusation.
    â€œThe Trents had a party.”
    â€œA party,” said my father, not a question—an acknowledgment. “That’s good,” he said, reflecting on what I had said. “Did you talk to anyone interesting?”
    â€œThere were Russians.”
    He stirred, blinking. He had kept awake only as long as he had because worry had pricked him and kept him there.
    â€œAstronomers from Russia?”
    â€œI guess so.”
    â€œFiguring out the universe.” He said this without sarcasm or cynicism. My father works at a foundry, but instead of making manholes or drop-forged can openers, he balances the books and runs the computer that cranks out the paychecks. The foundry is just about broke. My father keeps the factory in business by sitting at his desk in the factory office with a calculator. He lives on aspirin.
    My mother has a similar job, doing, as she puts it, “everything,” but her calendar takes her to Chicago and Boca Raton to drink coffee with people who design computers. My mother knows how to help software companies save costs. She had just bought a twelve-hundred-dollar briefcase, and was spending the night in Seattle.
    Her absence stepped into the room like a spirit, a new, worse kind of silence for a moment. “Homework,” said my father.
    â€œI’m caught up.” I added what was not a lie. “Jared helps me with the math.”
    â€œThat’s good.” Again, no irony, nothing arch or insincere. My father wanted me to go to college, and he had always encouraged me to spend time with Jared and his parents. “Don’t live the way I do,” he had told me once, drunk with paperwork, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see his laptop with its deep blue screen and rows of silver numbers. “Do something wonderful with your life.”
    He broke the silence as I was about to leave. “She left a message on the machine.”
    â€œIs she having a good time?”
    An idle question, an exit line, but it was the wrong thing to say.
    Lately I had begun to wonder. I was wondering right then, and my father didn’t like me thinking about her. We probably shared the same thoughts.
    He cleared his throat. “You ate?” he asked.
    â€œA burrito with Jared.”
    â€œI couldn’t find the Weenie.” He meant the gizmo that turned on the television, which he called the Magic Weenie. And his words were a kind of shorthand. He meant: I couldn’t get Ruth on the phone. He also meant: I’m worried about you.
    For some reason I asked him a question I had never asked him before in my life. “Did you have supper?”
    He stirred, perhaps surprised at my question. “I more or less forgot.”
    â€œYou can’t forget something like that. You’ll get an ulcer.”
    I was about to add, “I’ll make you something,” envisioning a can of chili, or a microwave Salisbury steak, when he said, “There was a lot of unusual paperwork.”
    His tone told me more than his words.
    â€œA bad day,” I suggested.
    â€œOh,” he sighed, a long vowel that