The Slide: A Novel - Softcover

Beachy, Kyle

 
9780385341851: The Slide: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385341857 ISBN 13: 9780385341851
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

At once an offbeat love story, a moving portrait of a family in crisis, and a darkly funny American comedy, Kyle Beachy’s arresting debut novel—written in prose that is swift, stunning, and sweet—heralds the arrival of a remarkable new voice in fiction.

Potter Mays retreats immediately after college graduation to the safe house of his childhood home. Like clockwork each morning, his mother makes him eggs, lovingly fried into hollowed-out pieces of toast. His father, in the midst of a campaign to revitalize downtown St. Louis, promises to “poke around” for gainful employment for his son. Potter’s best friend, Stuart—an “Independent Thought Contractor” working out of his parents’ lavish pool house—is willing to serve as a kind of life coach, provided, of course, that Potter pays for his services all summer.

However...

Altogether elsewhere, Potter’s (former? future?) girlfriend, Audrey, is backpacking around Europe with her beautiful bisexual traveling companion, Carmel. Potter was not invited, and getting a good night’s sleep has recently become an issue for him.

As enigmatic packages arrive from Audrey, the refuge of life at home soon proves illusory. Potter’s parents are oddly never in the same room together, the neighbor girl is looking quite adult, and Stuart’s much-needed counseling service is subcontracted to a third-party denizen of the pool house with an agenda all his own. And just what are those noises coming from the attic?

Kyle Beachy has woven a uniquely affecting story of the long and hard, then quick and hard, struggle to grow up.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kyle Beachy lives in Chicago. This is his first novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One


What was good about the road was that the road’s decisions were already made. For two full days I’d watched it emerge on the horizon and disappear beneath me. I saw it change colors, from black to gray to brown, and sometimes felt the seams between them, a clunk against the steady tremble. Los Angeles giving way to glittery Vegas, Martian Utah, and a blind nighttime passage through the Rockies. Then a fresh morning of eastern Colorado fading into prodigious fields of Kansan wheat, forever-sized and flat like nothing you’ve ever seen, until finally Missouri, blunt and dark, a series of brake lights to guide along the final leg. I surrendered to the road. Only once did I pick up my phone and call Audrey. After eight rings I heard her voice mail, and here I likely should have made some gesture, but everything had already been said, repeated, thrown around like rolled-up socks.

Then I was back in the driveway, engine idling, wondering just what in the shit to do now. There was a new addition to the house jutting into what used to be side yard. I could imagine my parents in the living room, quiet and mostly still, cozy within that special silence of the long-married. If I unfastened my seat belt, the car would beep at me.

Soon enough the front door opened to reveal parents silhouetted against the yellow glow of home. I cut the engine, stepped into the night, raised a hand, and smiled. Hello. The air felt and tasted heavy and wet. A hug, a hand pressed flush against cheek, and even though it wasn’t a week since we’d all been together at commencement, I sensed relief in them both. During her second hug my mother swayed and spoke quietly to the air, our boy, our boy, our boy.

“Makes more sense to unload now,” my father said. “Twice the hands.”

She said to make a pile of laundry and she’d take care of it in the morning. “Are you hungry? I’ve got salami.”

Car unloaded, shoes off, I sat on the counter above the dishwasher and chewed a sandwich. My parents watched. I always needed this, when they would stand as a pair, sharing the same frame. These are my parents, these two adults. I am their only remaining child. My brother, Fredrick Alan Mays, drowned at the age of five when he chased his rubber four square ball into the leaf- and tarpaulin-covered swimming pool at the Sheldon Woods apartment complex. At the time my mother was spoon-feeding a ten-month-old me special prescription formula. My father was at work, making his way through a small mountain of legal briefs. There were no witnesses. Freddy falling onto an ancient, heavy tarp improperly anchored to the pool’s deck and becoming entangled, sinking beneath fetid off-season water while my mother ensured I was taking to the new formula. One splash, then many more as his arms flailed, little puddles on the deck, ball bobbing, Freddy sinking. This took a moment of active deliberation: I was their son who didn’t drown. To their credit, my parents understood. They remained side by side and gave me a second.

“Our boy,” Carla said, beaming as she wrapped up the rolls and the meat.

I could see my father preparing to talk. He was examining his hands, pulling his frame slightly inward, revving. Richard stood over six foot and was handsome the way people found reassuring. His hair, full and gray, embraced age without submitting to it. I watched him shrug slowly and look up from his hands.

“How’s the car running?”

“It’s a great car,” I said. “I love the car. Thank you guys, again, for the car.”

“Be sure to check the oil tomorrow. You know how to check
the oil?”

“Of course, Pop.”

“Of course you do,” he said. “Well, give it a check tomorrow. And then what else? Is there a plan? You check the oil and I’ll poke around if you like, find something for you. Not to say hurry up and decide. Not to pressure. Your mother and I are just glad to have you around for a while. Aren’t we, Carla? But will it hurt to start thinking about things? No it won’t. History of the world, nobody’s ever died from giving a little thought. Not a single bruise caused by thinking things over. Really: we’re just glad to have you back. Wait–I’m in Cleveland this week. Back on Thursday. Poke around then.”

I smiled and he seemed to smile kind of, and this was good,
then he nodded and looked back at his hands.

My mother moved to my father’s side. “The important thing is there’s food here whenever you want it. Chicken wings, toasted ravioli, twice-baked potatoes.”

I climbed the stairs to the second floor. I stepped into the newly redecorated bathroom and watched myself brush teeth, then spent minutes leaning onto the sink, examining my reflection. In the bedroom, I opened and closed the wardrobe and several dresser drawers. I was continually impressed by the sturdiness of my parents’ furniture, dark old wood that hinted at permanence. My poster of Ozzie Smith mid-dive hung over my bed and my sheets smelled of some theoretical sunny and breezy afternoon, the middle of a field. I lay down, closed my eyes, and breathed. Sleep, lately, was becoming an issue.

Some time later, I tossed back sheets and stood. Downstairs, I moved from one room to the next, turning corners with soft steps. Every few years my parents would hire crews of men to come and hang sheets of translucent plastic, rip up floorboards, and push walls outward. Two years ago they furnished the basement. Before that they lengthened the patio into the backyard, then they added the sunroom, where nobody ever went. The living room had once been the family room. I stood where the current living room used to end and looked into the most recent addition. The office, Richard called it. The computer room, Carla called it. I touched picture frames and ran fingers across new plaster. I leaned against the enormous desk and waited.

A timer made the rooms go even darker than before.

Back upstairs, the house grew colder and I crawled deeper into the bedding so that soon only my face was exposed. I may have been acting like a child, but in this room it was sanctioned. It was okay.

Audrey was on an airplane. Or she’d already landed.

Where was it. Paris.

There was noise directly above me, the scraping of some creature in the attic. Plural creatures. From inside the fabric-softened and spring-breezy cocoon I watched shadows of branches dance across the wall. Rain.


Breakfast was two eggs fried into the middle of hollowed-out pieces of toast. My mother poured orange juice, moved about the kitchen, disappeared, then came back to write onto a Post-it she stuck to the phone.

“I think there might be squirrels in the attic,” I said.

“Squirrels?”

Before retiring, my mother had been a universally loved
second-grade teacher. She won annual awards and was showered with Christmas gifts by the parents of her students. It took very little effort to imagine her leading a class. That short, wavy brown teacher hair, the full-length single-color dresses, flats–her whole package was perfectly educational, a surplus of maternal energy.

“We just had a man here for bees. And now squirrels?”

When she retired, much of that teacherly vigor was diverted
into her garden. In the fall she disposed of annuals and cut back perennials, covered soil with manure as one would ice a cake. She spent entire springs on her knees, dual wristbands to wipe away full days of sweat. It was her passion, basic and...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385341857
ISBN 13 
9780385341851
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland