White People Read Online Free

Helen was so upset and embarrassed she cried most of the nights we were there. Because of the strain, she looked terrible at the wedding.
    Of course, it was Helen who was always telling Bryan he was gifted. She was enrolling him in adult art classes with nude models when he was twelve damn years old, buying him thirty-dollar picture books full of abstract paintings, driving him fifteen miles to the next town because our local barbers couldn’t “cut with the curl.” I told her she was spoiling him, but beyond that what could I do? I’d always said that the boys should have nothing but the best. No, I’mdefinitely not blaming Helen. After all, that’s one reason you make your money, so you can spoil your kids in ways you weren’t.
    You start off with a child, a son, and for the first six years he’s on your side. It’s clear there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s healthy, and you’re relieved. He’s pretty much like all the others. Not quite as noisy, maybe not quite as tough, but that might be a good sign, too. Then things somehow get off the track. He’s coming in with a bloodied nose once a week, and you know damned well that nothing happened to the kid that did it. He’s inside listening to records when he ought to be outside playing with the others. His face starts looking unlike yours and hers. You come home from a hard day’s work and find him sitting in a high-backed chair cutting shapes out of colored paper and spreading them on the rug. You wonder for a moment if this white-skinned kid can be fourteen years old; can he be half your responsibility, half your fault? Of course, there are times when everything seems well enough. He takes out girls. He learns to drive. His tenor comes and goes, then comes to stay. One day you see he’s nicked himself while shaving, and all the time you feel you should be grooming an heir he grows paler, taller, and more peculiar. He locks doors behind himself and startles you in the dark hallways of your own house. You’re afraid of his next phase—afraid how the finished product will compare with the block’s other boys, with his own kid brother who plays on the junior varsity and mows other people’s lawns for money.
    At the PTA open house a teacher pulls you aside and tells you, all excited, “Bryan can do anything he likes in the world. How few of us can do absolutely anything we like. He’s among the chosen few, and I thought you both should know.” His mother beams all evening, but afterwards you find him in the kitchen, at the table, dripping candle wax on black paper. “An experiment,” he mumbles as you walk into the room toward the refrigerator. You feel clumsy and you try with your expression to apologize for having barged in like this through the swinging door. But, after all, you tell yourself, it
is
your kitchen and your table, that is your son. The “anything” his sad teacher promised gives you more distress than comfort.
    He drops calling you just Dad and changes you to Father. One night you turn on the television and hear him say, “Television is for fools,” and dash out of the room, offended by your need to see the news. You expect more from him as he gets older, but the distance grows. He reminds you of a thin, peculiar fellow you knew slightly in the Army, a bookworm nobody spoke to.
    Till last New Year’s Eve, I felt I’d had a pretty good track record as a father. I mean, I knew I’d made some mistakes, but somehow, over the years, you forget specifically what they’ve been. Bryan had come south for Christmas for the first time in two years. Helen and I got home from a party at the Club. We were slightly drunk. Bryan was sitting up reading when we got in. He was curled on the living-room couch in a floor-length maroon bathrobe he’d worn most of his visit. He was reading something he’d brought down from New York. He laughs at our books and magazines, picks up Helen’s novels and giggles at them and puts them down again.
    Charlie