Labor Day [antikvár]

C H A P T E R 1 IT WAS JUST THE TWO OF US, my mother and me, after my father left. He said 1 should count the new baby he had with his new wife, Marjorie, as part of my family too, plus Richard, Marjorie's son, who was six months younger than me though he was good at all the sports 1 messed up in. But our family was my mother, Adele, and me, period. 1 would have counted the hamster, Joe, before including that baby, Chloe. Saturday nights when my father picked me up to take us all out to dinner at Friendly's, he was always wanting me to sit next to her in the backseat. Then he'd pull a pack of baseball cards out of his pocket and lay them on the table in the booth, to split between Richard and me. 1 always gave mine to Richard. Why not? Baseball was a sore spot for me. When the phys ed teacher said, OK, Henry, you play with the blues, all the other guys on the blue team would groan.