Y: A Novel Read Online Free

that’s
     where her paycheck goes, too.
    “I’m real sorry, superstar Shandi,” Raquelle says, tapping her nails on the social
     worker’s desk. “But your new parents’ll have lots more money than me.”

    They do. Julian and Moira have me baptized and change my name to Shannon. They are
     both lawyers. We live on Olive Street in a periwinkle character house with white trim,
     in a nice, middle-class neighborhood two blocks from the ocean. Some of the houses
     on our block are built to look like ships, porthole windows lining the top floor,
     curved white walls like windblown sails. Ours is a big, bright house, two stories,
     with wainscoting in the living room and an upright piano. A wooden spiral staircase
     leads upstairs to a master bedroom with cathedral ceilings and an en-suite bathroom
     with a newly glazed claw-foot tub. My bedroom is across from theirs and is the size
     of a jail cell. I have a squeaky white crib, a small antique dresser, and a nonworking
     coal-burning fireplace.
    It is colder in this part of town, and the air smells of salt and seaweed. The park
     across from our house is filled with families during the day and empty at night. We
     have a large front yard and an even bigger backyard; instead of a fence, we have a
     rock wall. It surrounds the property, save for the entrance, which is marked by an
     ornate wrought-iron gate, chunks of sea glass wedged between the tracery. A Garry
     oak takes up most of the front yard, and the back is carefully manicured, a shale
     stone path leading from the deck to a wooden gazebo with a bench swing.
    A week after my new parents bring me home, they have a party to celebrate my arrival.
     I sleep in Moira’s arms while she and Julian share what they know about foundlings.
     I’m eighteen months old now and although I can walk and say a few words, I still look
     like a baby. I have yet to grow any hair. To hide my baldness, Moira has knitted me
     a little cap that looks like a bluebell.
    “Some mothers,” she is saying, “think their baby is possessed, and the only way to
     save it is to kill it.” She is tall and stocky with a down-turned mouth. She has curly,
     chin-length hair and an apple-cheeked face peppered with pale-brown freckles. There
     is something beautiful about Moira—her Scandinavian features, that white translucent
     skin—but something cagey in her eyes. In photographs, she is often not looking at
     the camera.
    Five of her colleagues are gathered in the living room, all women. Julian mulls wine
     in the kitchen and talks to a group of men from work with whom he plays racquetball.
     The soundtrack to the movie Diva plays out of large black speakers.
    “You know, we looked it up,” Julian says and slides a cinnamon stick into the steaming
     pot. He wears one of Moira’s floral aprons. “In the States, twelve thousand babies
     are abandoned every year—in hospitals. That number doesn’t include the trash bins.”
     He snickers, and the men shift their weight.
    From the love seat in the living room, Moira can see her husband stirring the mulled
     wine. “Don’t repeat that awful statistic,” she calls.
    He isn’t a handsome man. Soft in the stomach but skinny everywhere else, and his hair
     sticks up like a hedgehog’s. He looks a bit like a hedgehog, too. Sharp snout, full
     cheeked. Moira shifts me onto the lap of one of her coworkers and goes into the kitchen
     to put the cobbler in the oven. Since I arrived, she has rediscovered cooking, and
     has made molasses cookies and applesauce from a recipe her mother gave her.
    The evening drags on too long, and I become fussy. Julian carries me upstairs and
     muscles me into my crib, where I wail so loudly that he returns five minutes later
     and sticks me in the back of the closet.
    “Fuck, shut up,” he mutters as he comes down the stairs. One of Moira’s coworkers
     hears him and shoots him a look. He takes her hand later, after everyone has had too
     much to drink, and