Read Shining Sea for Free Online Page A

sounds out of breath, so he slows his pedaling. Eugene’s glasses, swiftly crammed inside his pants during the dive, are crooked. If their mothers find out what they did, there will be trouble.
    “You coming over?” he asks when they reach his house.
    “Nah. I promised my mom I’d be home before sundown. You know.”
    He does know. Talk about the riots is everywhere. On the television, on the radio, in his house.
    Luke at the table, last night: They have good reason to complain. People treat Negroes like dirt here in Los Angeles.
    Mike: That doesn’t give them a reason to tear up their own neighborhood .
    Patty Ann: Oh, shut up, both of you. We’re starting a world war over in Vietnam. Why not set our own backyard on fire?
    Which made his mom stand up from the table, sharply enough to rattle the dishes.
    Patricia Ann, his mom said, that’s enough . You do not know what you are talking about. I’d like to see you live under the Communists.
    It’s enough to make him want to hide under a rock when they get started like that. Luke with Mike, Patty Ann with his mom. When his dad was alive, no one ever argued. Or at least very rarely. When Luke didn’t help wash the car. Or Patty Ann held hands with a boy in grade school. Patty Ann was his dad’s, Luke his mom’s. Mike was everyone’s. That left no one for him, but at least there was a balance in the house. Nowadays, it’s like an ongoing game of Chinese checkers, the rest of them jumping over one another, clickety-clack, no one ever winning. His little sister, Sissy, at only three, folds her arms over her chest like a mini Buddha and tut-tut-tuts. Sometimes it makes his mom stop quarreling and laugh. Sometimes no one seems to hear her. But he hears her. He hears everyone.
    Sissy is sitting on their mom’s bedroom floor as he slips past it to the boys’ room at the end of the hall, facing the bathroom. She looks up at him, and he puts a finger to his lips. She won’t give him away. For a three-year-old, Sissy’s all right.
    “Francis!” his mom calls out.
    He drops his wet shorts on his bedroom floor and pulls a dry pair out of his dresser drawer. Luke is lying on his bed reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut. Luke says Kurt Vonnegut is a genius and his books should be required reading for the whole world.
    “Mom called you,” Luke says, turning a page.
    “Yes, I did.” His mom is standing in the doorway. “Didn’t you hear me? I want you to carry some boxes to the car for the Labor Day church sale.”
    He follows her back down the hall. Two boxes of neatly folded clothes stand on the floor of her bedroom. “This, too,” she says, taking one last dress from the closet. He can see his dad’s four suits hanging in there, as though waiting for his dad to appear in his undershirt and boxers and black socks to button up a dress shirt and put one of them on for work. His dad’s dress shoes, still shiny, wait below them.
    The dress in her hand is the one she wore to the wake. Yellow, like the paint they had just put on the house.
    It has to be yellow . Almost the last thing his dad said.
    He takes the dress from his mom and stuffs it under the other clothes.
    “Come on, Francis. Not like that. It will get all wrinkled.”
    His mom pulls it back out, folds it in half, then quarters it. She lays it on top of the box. Then she looks at it.
    “Never mind,” she says, picking it up again and shaking it smooth. A calling card falls out of the pocket. “I’ll keep this one a little longer.”
    He picks up the card and reads it silently: RONALD M. MCCLOSKEY, PRESIDENT, MCCLOSKEY AIR CONDITIONERS.
    “Oh, look at that,” his mom says, taking it from him. “That man goes to our church. I forgot he gave me his card.”
    “Are you going to give away Dad’s things, too?”
    His mom smiles—not her strong, happy smile, but the other, softer one she’s developed since his dad died—and shakes her head. “Just my maternity clothes. I