Disturbances in the Field Read Online Free

wolves, could chimps really be taught to speak and if so, was it speech as we know it. I promised to come in and kiss her good night when I returned.
    “I hope Daddy can figure out how to weigh air.” Her parting shot.
    “Is it okay if Darryl comes over? He’s going to help me with physics.” Althea brushed back her fair long hair, pushed up her sleeves, and edged the potatoes expertly into a saucepan. Neat and efficient; beneath the jeans and sweatshirt, voluptuous. Not shy about the boyfriend but aware of cleverly managing me.
    “Sure. Thanks for the help. And watch out for that hair over the flame,” I kidded her. Months ago, Althea’s French teacher had invited her prize students to tea in a dim Victorian-style apartment lit by half a dozen candles in brass candlesticks. “Attention aux cheveux!” Mlle. Riviere cautioned, waving her waxy hands nervously. “You have the kind of hair that easily ignites!” Althea came home with an unusual fit of giddiness and a French accent. “Did you know I have the kind of hair that easily ignites?” Her brothers have adopted the joke. Phil lights matches and holds them perilously close. Alan brandishes scissors; he wants to send a sample to the Guinness Book of World Records. Vivian stares at her own wistfully and says, “Do I? Do I have the kind of hair that easily ignites?”
    I kissed Althea’s cheek and went to see the boys. Rather, I wanted them to see me. My visibility was like money placed in the collection box at church, overtly to maintain a worthy institution, covertly to buy a share of safety and salvation. For outside I was an unregenerate sinner, impassioned by my work.
    Phil was sprawled on his bed eating gorp and reading Sports Illustrated. He looked like a television-comedy version of the typical teen. In his room, the only soothing place to rest the eye was the wall opposite his bed, where he had hung four large posters, close-ups of each Beatle. Phil himself had something of the intelligent, defiantly insecure look of George Harrison, only he was not quite so dark or so gaunt. My efforts at small talk evoked mostly grunts. “I have to go out now.” “So I see.” “Althea is cooking, so would you help clean up, please?” A grunt of concession. I took a step forward, but no, he did not look as though he wished to be kissed good-bye.
    In Alan’s room, on the small phonograph Victor got him for his birthday, the Beatles’ White Album played: “Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these broken wings and learn to fly ...” Alan, at his desk, glanced up, smiled gallantly, and sniffled. His nose was still running from the ski trip. I smiled back and rested my hands on his shoulders. Before him were problems with fractions of the most unwieldy kind. “All your life,” Paul McCartney sang, “You were only waiting for this moment to arise. You were only waiting for this moment to arise.” “Are you sure you can concentrate with that on?” “I can’t concentrate without it,” he said, tolerant and undefensive. We had this dialogue all the time. “That’s a pretty song,” I said. “Yes, but it’s not my favorite.” “What is your favorite?” “‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?’” I nodded. Alan was suave beyond his years, and very deadpan. Sometimes it was hard to recognize a joke. At the door I changed my mind about interference. “You can’t subtract those until the denominators are the same.” He clapped his hand to his forehead, widened his eyes, and let out an exaggerated “Ah!” of discovery. He has acted in several Victorian melodramas at school. “Odds bodikins! Thanks, Mom.” “Don’t mention it.”
    Downstairs in the lobby I met Victor lugging a twenty-four-inch TV set. The sight of him, as always, brought a flicker of elation. He looked good to me even in a blue down jacket which could make a well-shaped person shapeless, and a brown wool cap pulled over his ears. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold;