Gentlehands Read Online Free

still anextraordinarily handsome man. I’d turn around on the street to get another look at him, even if he wasn’t my grandfather. He’s that kind of man. You notice him; you know he’s special in some way. He’s in his sixties, but he’s one of those men who you don’t think of as an old man. When I went to Montauk to see him that time with my mother, I thought all those same things about him, but I was trying to see him through my mother’s eyes, and I didn’t let myself admire him. I tried to imagine how I’d feel if my dad just ducked out on me while I was growing up, and then reappeared and tried to say he was my father. I’d have had the same reaction, I guess: you can just take that father bit and stuff it!
    But he hadn’t done anything to me , had he? At some point bygones had to be bygones, and I guess we were at that point that night. I was, anyway.
    My grandfather had this opera going on the stereo when we walked inside the house, and Skye gave another squeal and said it was her favorite aria of all, and she sang “ Un—bel—di ,” and did a little spin and clapped her hands. “ Madame Butterfly !” she said.
    She said to me, “Butterfly is singing ‘One fine day,’ Buddy. She’s saying one day there’ll be a thread of smoke rising from the ocean, and her husband’s ship will come into the harbor, andhe’ll rush up to the little house on the hilltop to greet her.”
    “Very good,” my grandfather said.
    I didn’t say anything, but I’d noticed that Skye realized I didn’t know one opera from another, which didn’t make me feel great even though it was true. About the only serious music we ever played in our house was Perry Como’s version of “The Lord’s Prayer.”
    My grandfather’s house was filled with books and paintings and the kind of furniture my mother called “fancy antique stuff.” Skye waltzed around admiring everything, and I remembered when I visited there with my mother, the thing that impressed me the most was the view of the ocean from the windows. Skye saw that view all the time at Beauregard. We couldn’t see it very well in the dark, anyway, but we could hear the waves crashing down on the beach, and we could see the lights of the other houses arcing down the coastline.
    There was a glass of wine on the table beside a large leather chair. In front of the chair, on the oriental rug, there was a bag of sunflower seeds. My grandfather explained he was just about to fill his bird feeders.
    “The birds like to feed early in the morning,” he said, “before I’m up. I’m a night owl, so I fill the feeders before I go to bed.”
    “Oh, you’d love Mummy, my mother,” Skye said, “she’s a bird lover, too, and she keeps track of every bird she’s ever seen, about one hundred and fifty varieties, and when I was a kid she’d drag me out here to the walking dunes at Oysters Pond to spot birds. I mean, what did I care about birds, but now I wish I’d paid attention because I don’t know an oriole from a robin.”
    “It’s never too late to learn,” said my grandfather.
    “I’d really like to learn,” Skye said. “I really admire birds, they’re so free . I mean, they symbolize freedom.”
    “Far from it,” said my grandfather.
    Skye said, “ What? ”
    “I said far from it. Birds look free but they’re not, you know. They’re very restricted. They’re prisoners, really, of their own territory. They can’t move easily from one territory to another.”
    Skye looked at him a moment, eye to eye, carefully, the way she’d looked at me in the driveway at Beauregard when she told me she wanted me to be happy with her. Then she said, “I really admire you, Mr. Trenker. You’re subtle. I mean, you’re really subtle—and I like all of this—” her arms sweeping out to indicate the whole room, everything. “I do.”
    When Skye called something or someonesubtle, it was her highest compliment, I gathered. I just sat on the couch and let them