Page 68 of The Man I Hate

“Books. There’s three of them. Decide which one you want to start with. Let me know what you decide. We’ll read five or six chapters, and then discuss it.”

“Like a book club. Sounds fun,” she said. “I haven’t read a book in forever.”

I nodded toward the box. “Those are my three favorites.”

She picked up the box and peered inside. Seeming giddy with excitement, she looked up. “Give me a few minutes to decide, and then I’ll give you a call.”

“Okay.”

I’d read Angela’s Ashes twice, cover to cover. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize the year after it was published, the book was proof that there’s always someone whose struggle is worse than your own. The tale is told from the perspective of the Irish American author, Frank McCourt. He grew up in the early 1900’s, living in poverty with his mother, father, and six siblings. During his childhood, his sister and twin brothers died from various causes. His mother was manically depressed over the loss of her children but somehow managed to maintain her keen sense of humor. His father was an alcoholic who loved to tell Irish folk stories.

I’d probably read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time a dozen times. The book’s narrator, a teenage boy who was a mathematical genius with a behavioral disorder, had an entertaining voice. Although written by a man in his forties, the book seemed to have been written by the 15-year-old boy. I found each page of the story as interesting as the next.

The History of Love, one of Nicole Krauss’ many novels, spanned the lifetime of an 80-year-old man, Leo Gursky. Following the German invasion of Poland, Leo and his then girlfriend are separated, leaving her to raise Leo’s child in the United States without his immediate knowledge of being a father. It was a story woven with many pieces of yarn, each thread being a story in itself. I’d read the book more times than I could count. Every reading provided another morsel of the author’s intention.

I wondered which book Anna would choose. My father had carefully selected each of the stories, shipping them overseas when I was deployed. Ready to get started, I sauntered home and sat down at the kitchen table.

I thumbed through the books for thirty minutes or so before Anna called. Eager to find out which of the three books she had chosen, I answered the phone filled with nervous excitement.

“Did you decide?” I asked.

“These are really interesting choices,” she said.

“Have you read any of them yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Which one are you thinking?”

“This is cute,” she said with a laugh. “You sound really excited.”

“I haven’t been this enthusiastic about something in a long time,” I admitted. “The last time I read a book was when I was overseas.”

I was excited for many reasons. I wanted to share the books with Anna more than anything, but I also hoped that reading could take me away from the reality of my life. A life in which my father was hospitalized, sickened by a disease that had no known cure.

“Well?” I asked, fanning the books out in front of me. “Which one?”

“I’m going to suggest we start with the one about the dog,” she replied. “It sounds fun.”

“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. That’s probably my most favorite of them all.”

“How are we going to do this?” she asked.

“I was going to suggest we read five chapters or something like that, and then discuss what we’d read. The author in that book only used prime numbers for the chapters. So, it starts with 2, and then goes to 3, and then 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, etcetera, etcetera. I guess we could read 2 through 23. The chapters are really short. We can play it by ear after that.”

“Do you want me to call you when I’m done?”

I grinned at the thought. “Sure.”

“Okay. Dog book, it is. I’ll call you when I get done with chapter 23.”

I reached for the book. “Okay.”

“Talk to you in a bit.”

I hung up the phone and opened the book to chapter 2. It seemed that no time had passed and I was finished. Instead of re-reading the previous chapters, I read ahead.

I laughed at the antics of the book’s teenage narrator, Christopher. When I began chapter 41, my phone rang. Anxious to find out what Anna thought of the book, I nearly knocked the phone on the floor when I scrambled to reach for it.