Read Like People in History for Free Online

sauce we were looking at in Redbook?"
    To which she would gush some vaguely affirmative reply and vanish back into the kitchen to try the recipe.
    She used to ask me.
    Or, it would be after dinner. I'd be in the living room, playing with my Lincoln Logs, building not one of the dumb, expected log cabins illustrated on the outside and inside of the box, but instead my version of a Bronze Age fortress, using other logs snapped together to more or less form ships with battering rams, like the bulky triremes I'd recently seen in some movie about Roman times, and my dad, reading the paper nearby, would say, "What do you think? The Dodgers going to take the pennant this year?"
    Before I could formulate an answer, I'd hear Alistair—in the opposite chair, checking his stocks in another section of my father's paper—say, "They're overrated. They have little real batting strength and their pitching is almost nil. The Giants will show them up for how second-rate they are. And I pick the Indians to sneak by the Yankees to clinch the American League pennant."
    I could have been invisible for the rest of their detailed conversation, replete with batting averages and ERA and RBI statistics.
    And the truly awful thing was, Alistair was right. Not ten months later I'd be in Ebbets Field with my dad, watching the third and final play-off game—much more exciting than any World Series game to follow that season—and I'd watch the Giants fulfill Alistair's predictions and blow away any hopes the Brooklyn Bums had for a Series title.
    But... my dad used to ask me.
    What Alistair thought about sports, finance, world politics, favorite TV personalities, the latest movie, the newest hairstyle, the up-and-coming pop singer filled our house, my ears, and my mind day in and day out, unceasingly. Jennifer would mention that her friend Sue's family had just gotten a golden retriever puppy, and Alistair would expatiate upon how to train the breed, what not to feed them, and what illnesses they were prone to. My dad would mention that a friend of his had just landed a position at a large advertising agency, and Alistair would know not only the company's top executives, but several of its most successful ad campaigns—and the year's past billing.
    Because the clothing he'd brought with him, despite being two suitcases full, proved to be inadequate to Alistair's needs once he'd joined the fourth-grade crowd's afterschool activities, my mother loaned him mine. When I found them going through my closet and drawers and began to complain, my mother quickly said, "Don't be so selfish. These are just old things anyway." The "old things" included my favorite, perfectly worn dungarees, which naturally fit Alistair to perfection; my green felt and white-leather-sleeved stadium jacket, in which he looked like a young honor student; even my extra-comfortable pullover cable-knit sweater.
    It was just that outfit that Alistair was wearing one evening, a few minutes before dinner, when he sped up to the front of our house and skidded to a stop on my bicycle—which he hadn't even bothered to ask to borrow. I'd gone outside to wait for him by the garage, so we could have it out, over his taking the bike, without disturbing the others. But my dad had decided that was exactly the right time to spray his over-pampered and underachieving roses. And my mother had come out to tell my father he had a phone call. And my sister had that second stepped out, to tell my mother that the water for the noodles was boiling on the stove.
    I watched from a slightly hidden spot not four yards away as Alistair wheeled up, got off the bike and smiled at the massed and admiring group. I couldn't help but see them all stop as though frozen as he approached. Couldn't help but see him—on my bike, dressed in my clothing, resembling me—completely fulfill for each member of my family what I had never been able even to approach. It was a profoundly disturbing few moments, as he pulled the