Cures for Hunger by Deni Béchard (story books for 5 year olds txt) 📕

It struck me then as odd that I hadn’t crossed—that a person could simply choose his freedom and leave.

A wall of fog descended the shore. I could hardly see my lifted hands before it passed. Then the sun broke in along the clouds, revealing a range of crystalline mountains that shone against the sky.

BORROWING FACES

“So that’s it? You’ve made up your mind?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said and went back to my plate of greasy chicken cacciatore.

“And you know you’re on your own then? I’ll give you some money to get started, but that’s all.”

“Yeah. That’s fine,” I said, chewing between words.

We’d been wrangling over the future. He wanted me to work for him and thought his threat carried some weight: If you choose to go to school, you’ll have to move out and live on your own. He didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t living with him. I insisted on school.

After New Year’s, he drove me to the rundown house of a short, gray-haired woman who had a room for rent. Her easy smile softened the heaviness in her face. Her daughter, petite and auburn, a year younger than I was, had worked at my father’s store over the summer.

My window looked out on the highway, one broken pane patched with cardboard and held in place with masking tape. With the passing of cars, the unbroken glass shook in its crumbled glazing. Facing the window, I said, “It’s fine.”

That night, as headlights fanned across the ceiling and the engines of big trucks vibrated in the floorboards, I lay in bed. Though I didn’t like this room, I was closer to choosing my life, to being a man. Emotions fell away—fear, anger, sadness. Cars revved up the incline or swished down the opposite lane. The cold stung my nostrils, and I parted my lips. I breathed, feeling a delicate sliver of cool air between my teeth. I sensed my path taking shape.

The next evening, over a dinner of boiled pork, my landlady told her own stories, of a principled father and a suicidal mother. She sipped warm scotch cut with tap water and had difficulty walking even when sober, something to do with years of drinking.

Afterward, I called my mother. As the phone rang, I cleared my throat, trying to relax my voice.

“It’s me,” I told her.

“Deni. Hey. How are you?” She sounded happy, though every time we’d spoken since I’d left I could detect fear in her words. “Where—where are you?”

“I’m living with André.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Of course. I just called to say hi. I’m fine.”

“Oh.” She hesitated. “That’s good.”

“You know, I’m writing a lot,” I said. Since there was no way I was going back to her and Dickie, I couldn’t tell her about my life. It made me feel strong to be able to reassure her, to keep my problems to myself. Still, I had to talk about something.

“I’ve been writing stories and poetry. I even wrote a short novel, but I’m not sure it’s any good.”

“I bet it’s great.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you send me some stuff?”

“Maybe. I need to read everything again, but I wrote a poem that might be okay. Do you want me to read it to you?”

“I would love that.”

I already had the page, and I tried to take my time with the words, but halfway through I realized how childish the poem was—about the world in the mind’s eye, its freedom. I sped up, mumbling the last lines.

“Oh,” she said. “That was great.”

“Really? I don’t like it anymore.”

“You went a bit fast in the end, but I liked what I heard.”

After we said good-bye, I lay staring at the ceiling. She loved art and studied it at university before running away with a draft dodger. Every now and then, when I was little, she drew a picture that amazed me—a lightly penciled, perfectly realistic tree and house for the cover of a story I’d written, or, when I struggled with my portrait of Frankenstein, unable to make his strangler’s paws believable, she sketched a hand with creases and smudged, shadowed areas. It looked more real than my own, as if it had just finished changing a truck tire and might now reach from the paper to snatch my pencil.

The air brakes of semis thudded on the highway. I didn’t understand why she’d given up art. When I was seven or eight, we were in a mall where artists set up stands and drew portraits. One exhibited caricatures: a vampiric, hooked-nosed Pierre Trudeau; Reagan with a massive jaw and a tuft of goofy hair. Impressed, I wanted to know if she could draw like that, and she told me it was easy.

“Will you do one when we get home?” I asked over and over until she agreed.

That afternoon, while she was sitting on the back steps in the sunlight, I brought a pencil and pad for her, pushing them into her hands. My brother and sister edged close.

“Draw André,” I requested.

She began to smile as she sized up the blank page and started her sketch. My father’s head took shape like a balloon about to pop, stamped with a ridiculous toothy smile and the big blank eyes of a happy idiot. Yet it was unquestionably him, with his beard and curly hair.

“What about his body?” I asked when she’d finished.

She moved her pencil down and drew a miniature torso, its arms and legs sticking out like pins.

We all stared a long time, and then my sister threw her head back and burst into laughter. She couldn’t stop, and after a few seconds, we joined her.

✴

I FOUND A job at an Italian restaurant, washed dishes and minced garlic and ate everything sent back: small pizzas that I folded and forced into my mouth, risotto that I spooned rapidly, my cheeks bulging as I went about my tasks. I rode there each evening on a rusted, rickety bike without brakes that I’d found leaning against the wall