Embrace Me Read Online Free

home from school with a new idea. If he didn’t agree, he said nothing. If he didn’t like my clothing, he’d drip a silent stare down my frame.
    No wonder my mother committed suicide.
    How’s that for a confession? Nobody in the world knows this but my father and myself. And now you.
    â€œSo are you traveling this week, Dad?”
    â€œYes. To Lynchburg, Virginia Beach, and then out to the Springs.”
    â€œThe big three.”
    â€œI’ve planned a new strategy. You won’t recognize things in a decade. It all hinges on the gays. They should have never opened up this marriage can of worms. I think we can use it to the hilt.”
    The man’s nerves would bong like a gong if you struck them with a tire iron.
    â€œWon’t that bring up other marriage issues that people don’t want to think about?”
    â€œYou’re talking about divorce?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, that’s a separate issue.”
    The last thing my father wanted was for any of his candidates’ supporters to think about sanctity in marriage across the board. My father understood that people used votes to express a morality their lives didn’t mirror. They count on hypocrisy in politics.
    Outside the window snow fell, and I said I had to go. I’d never cut my father off before. But I couldn’t listen to one more word.

    Twelve noon and all is well. I lean over and grab the bottle of gin beside the bed. There’s a bullet hole in my nightstand. A bullet hole. What’s next? Roaches? A severed head?
    I take a sip.
    The phone rings. Gotta be a wrong number, but might as well get it.
    I reach over.
    â€œIs Drew Parrish there?”
    â€œYes, I’m Drew.”
    The woman hangs up.
    I feel almost scalded.
    So familiar. I give my ear a good rubbing with my index finger. Can’t place the voice.
    And how did she know who I was and where I was? I thought I was pretty good at covering my tracks.

TWO

    VALENTINE: 2008
    N o kids I ever knew pictured themselves being sideshow freaks someday. I didn’t either.
    I pack away my costume, folding it in tissue paper and laying it gently into a shallow plastic tub. The sequins wink in the illumination from the hood light over the stove where a pot of chicken and dumplings simmers, almost ready. Atop the gown I lay the iguana green evening gloves.
    Lella watches as I do the same to her costume. “Valentine, you surely pack more neatly than anybody I’ve ever seen, even my mother, God bless and rest her, and that is truly saying something.” The dinette made into a bed, Lella lies with her head propped on two decorative pillows.
    A cold snap woke us up this morning.
    â€œI’m glad the last show is done, Lell.”
    We’ll get on the road this afternoon, and then Mount Oak, here we come. I hate Mount Oak, but that’s where Blaze lives, and Lella loves staying at Blaze’s during the off-season.
    A knock shudders the door to my truck camper in which I’ve traveled with Roland’s Wayfaring Marvels and Oddities for the last four seasons. We’re a freak show, or sideshow if folks prefer. Most prefer sideshow and I don’t blame them. I’m off base calling us freaks, but I can’t help it. I look at myself in the mirror and I see a freak and that’s all I see, all I’ll ever see.
    â€œIt’s Roland. That’s definitely his knock.” Lella.
    I get the door. Lella can’t. She’s our legless-armless woman. She’s not a freak. She’s disabled but has been doing this for so long, the thought of getting government assistance hasn’t occurred to her, and I’m not about to clue her in.
    â€œHey, Roland. Come on in. You’re in time for grub. As usual.”
    â€œI could smell it all the way in my own trailer! Smells like chicken.”
    â€œChicken and dumplings!” Lella announces.
    â€œIt’s not bouillabaisse or