Running with Scissors Read Online Free Page A

hyperventilated on the sofa, smoking cigarette after cigarette, the doorbell rang. “Oh, thank God,” she said, quickly getting up from the couch to answer the door.
    He was carrying a balloon and there was a button on his jacket lapel that read, “World Father’s Organization.” He peered over my mother’s shoulder and looked directly at me. “Hello there.”
    I moved back, unsure.
    “Please, come in,” my mother said, motioning him inside. “I’ve just been a frantic wreck waiting for you to get here.”
    The doctor said, “It’s okay now, Deirdre.” Then he reached in his pocket and handed me a button, identical to the one on his lapel. “Would you like one of these? As a gift?”
    “Thanks,” I said, taking the button and inspecting it.
    Then he reached in his pocket again and withdrew a handful of balloons. “And these,” he said.
    “Okay,” I said again. The colorful balloons seemed out of context, given my mother’s mood, but I liked them anyway. I could blow them up, tie them into a bunch and then attach them to Cream’s collar or tail.
    The doctor turned to my mother. “Where’s Norman?”
    She bit the nail of her thumb, her brow creased with worry. She’d gnawed off all the polish and the nail itself was chewed down to the quick. “He’s downstairs. Drunk.”
    “I see,” he said, removing his heavy black coat and draping it over the chair in the front hall.
    “I was afraid for my life tonight,” she said. “I thought for sure he was going to kill me. That this would finally be the night.”
    Earlier in the evening, my parents had been screaming at each other. The screaming escalated until my father was chasing my mother through the house with a Danish fondue pot held high above his head.
    My mother began to calm down now that the doctor was here. “Would you like a Sanka?” she offered.
    He asked for a bologna sandwich with horseradish.
    And then he looked at me and winked. “Don’t worry about your parents, buckaroo. We’ll get this all sorted out.”
    “I just pray to God that Norman doesn’t snap. One of these days he’s going to snap and kill us all,” my mother said as she busied herself in the kitchen making a sandwich for the doctor.
    “Enough,” Finch said loudly. “That’s not the way to talk around your son. You need to comfort him, not frighten him.”
    My mother said, “That’s right, I know. I’m sorry. Augusten, I’m just very upset right now. The doctor and I need to speak.” Then she turned to him and lowered her voice. “But I am worried, Doctor. I do believe our lives are in danger.”
    “May I have one of those?” he asked, pointing to a hot dog he glimpsed as my mother opened the refrigerator door to put away the lettuce.
    She look puzzled. “Oh. Would you like a hot dog instead of the sandwich I just made?”
    He reached into the refrigerator, sliding the raw Oscar Mayer wiener from the pack. He took a bite. “No, just like this. As an appetizer.” He smiled, causing the white whiskers of his mustache to twitch as he chewed.
    I liked him. And with his jolly, red-faced cheeks and his easy smile, he really did seem like Santa. Although it was difficult to imagine him being able to fit down a chimney, it was just as hard to imagine him wearing a white jacket. He certainly didn’t seem like a real doctor, the kind of doctor I worshiped. He seemed like he should be in a department store letting kids pee on his lap and whisper brand-name bicycles in his ear.
     
    As my mother saw more and more of Dr. Finch over the year, I needed to be reminded constantly that he was a real doctor. “An M.D. doctor?” I would ask my mother.
    “ Yes ,” she would say with exasperation, “ an M.D. doctor . And as I’ve told you a hundred times, he earned his M.D. at Yale.”
    I’d even asked her how she found him, imagining her riffling through our outdated Yellow Pages or reading restroom stall walls. “Your own doctor, Dr. Lotier, referred me,” was her