SURFNETKIDS GROWN-UP NONFICTION BOOK CLUB Got shopping? Get discounts! Visit Surfnetkids: Coupons, Deals and Bargains for hundreds of discounts from dozens of online stores. week's book: THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE FROM HERE by Felicia C. Sullivan *New to the book club? Just click on the Missing Read link below for any emails you may have missed. Go to: (Today's book starts after the "Dear Reader" column.) Dear Reader, Remember, if a book isn't a good match for you, simply hit the delete key. We start a new book every Monday. Keep the book club fun and guilt-free reading. Looking for some good new recipes? Be sure to visit my Recipe Box at and see some of my favorites--and you can view the recipes from readers who have sent in their favorite recipes, too. If you'd like to contribute a recipe to my Recipe Box, send it to: Today is the last day to enter the March Chocolate Chip Cookie Giveaway. I'd love to bake for you. See photos of some of last month's winners and enter: Have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends. Warmest regards, Suzanne Beecher *Read the Classics: THE OUTSIDERS by S. E. Hinton and enter the free Penguin Classic's Drawing. Go to: Surfing the Net with Kids: Email me: Missing an email? Go to: =====TODAY'S THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE FROM HERE by Felicia C. Sullivan (nonfiction) Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill ISBN: 9781565125155 Copyright (c) 2008 by Felicia C. Sullivan To reference this email: THESKY (Part 5 of 5) ** I'd love to bake for you! To enter this month's Chocolate Chip Cookie Giveaway and to see photos of some of last month's winners, go to: The "how-to-enter" information is on the third page. I'll be choosing at least four winners this month! *This book contains adult language. (continued from Thursday) My grip tightened around the handles of the plastic bag that held the Pumas. I picked at the plastic, tearing off slivers and dropping them to the ground like snowflakes. Furious with my mother, I shredded the plastic until the shoes tumbled to the floor, barely making a sound when they hit, one then the other. A young woman with fluid dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail clutched a clipboard. The nurses behind the station laughed. I heard static from their radio. I leaned over my chair, picked the Pumas off the floor, and held them to my nose, breathing in. They smelled like my mother, the perfume and sweat from her beige nylons. This was how it always felt, waiting for my mother. CHAPTER TWO Of My Kind MANHATTAN 2001 Over dinner my friend Merritt tells me, "We're warriors, look how far we've come." We clink glasses. Later Merritt will snort crushed horse tranquilizers and Vicodin like dime-store candy and I will do thick lines. But now, in this restaurant, she plays the role of a successful hedge-fund manager and I of a project manager at a media company that sells cable, high-speed internet service, and over two hundred TV channels I'm not sure anyone needs. Merritt cackles when she laughs, and lives her life as if these are the last days of disco. She is blond, like all the friends I keep. We are twenty-five, invincible. We ease into a second bottle of wine. Glass tips. Wine spills. "Come, drink," it calls. "Have another." "Do you hear me?" she says, "We're f ucking warriors, 'survivors.'" "Warriors and survivors are two different things," I say. "You're a dictionary now?" I tell Merritt that tomorrow I have an appointment, a consultation to sell my eggs. To cover credit-card debt, rent for the apartment in Little Italy, I say, but my friend knows better. Merritt knows how much cocaine eight thousand dollars could buy. I describe the cryptic phone calls from the clinic--it's all very covert--the forms I've filled in, and the fact that I've leveraged myself much like a dirty junk bond; I'm worth more because of my Ivy League pedigree. "But you're on leave from Columbia," Merritt says. "They don't need the details," I say. "They'll test you." "I don't plan on failing," I say. I remind Merritt how I soared through my company's drug test. I cleaned myself up for a week, practically overdosing on vitamins and green tea. "When does your trip back to sobriety begin?" "Tomorrow," I say. Around me the air thickens; a sedative cloud forms and everything is dulled. The volume in the restaurant turns down low. Voices thin to a singular sustained drone. People move in slow motion. But the lights, they're still too bright and glaring. I notice my empty glass. "Well, then," Merritt says, glancing at the bathroom, "let's do you a proper bon voyage." Later that night I gnaw at my pillow, coil the sheets to a double helix around my ankles. I can't wake up. In my dream there are children everywhere and my mother and I are the only adults among them. We are in the country this time, and they run through fresh-cut fields. There is no sound here, but there are black squirrels, rabbits, possibly a fox. Two freckled, pale-haired, peach-skinned children appear to me in microscopic detail. Their clothes are the color of sky--they wear blue pantaloons and white sailor caps. They're beautiful and clean in a way that disturbs me. These are children who are children. Nothing about them resembles my mother or me or our somber landscape of blacks and grays; they must take after the father they're privileged to know. They collect around my mother's knees, which are tan and smooth. She never used to shave. When did she start shaving? I can't see her face; daylight shields her from me. The children tug at my mother's arms, their faces scrunched up, eyes narrowing into slits as if they've been staring at the sun for longer than they should. They are happier than I've ever been because my mother loves them. The children are her property. They call her mommy, and then they point at me and say, "Why does that lady look just like you?" My mother's feet move in reverse. The children follow her. They always do. My grinding teeth wake me. In the waiting room I fill out more forms. Parenting magazines are spread out on the coffee table, the glossy ones that show blue-eyed infants on the cover, feet dangling, wide smiles exposing chickpea teeth. I've called in sick to work, which is a lie but not entirely untrue, because I feel sick. The air conditioner's frigid gusts are more aggravating than refreshing. My stomach turns. In this large room, I'm the only one waiting. I'm good at this, I think, the waiting. Ever since I was ten, I've sat alone in hospitals while doctors dispensed tranquilizers to my mother, tried to calm her down because she loved her cocaine and she kept doing too much of it. An hour later I sit in another carpeted, air-conditioned office, pimping myself out to a stranger. Degrees from NYU, Johns Hopkins, and Hunter hang on the walls. I say all the right things. I glance at the intake coordinator in her flimsy acrylic dress, matching blazer with pilled sleeves, worn leather pumps, the eyeglasses too big for her face, and then up at the framed degrees, and I wonder whether she really earned them. The intake coordinator goes on about how rare it is to meet a candidate who is both creative and pragmatic. Here is my work history in order: Chase, Morgan, a now-defunct dot.com, and currently a media company. Eight years playing the clarinet, two years of operating a private online business that I incorporated--I get the sense that this woman might skip all the tests and adopt me herself. Fidgety, I continue to speak in exclamation points. We schedule a follow-up appointment for the physical and psychological evaluation. Before I leave, she briefly confirms some basic health-related questions. I deliver her a potential egg donor in perfect health who drinks one, maybe two, glasses of wine a week and has never experimented with drugs. "Not even marijuana?" she asks. "Maybe in college? Perhaps with friends on the weekend?" I laugh and say, "Look at me. When would I have the time?" Tonight she's naked, swathed in my overwashed blue cotton baby blanket with the matching blue satin trim. I was never a child who took to pink. My mother lies in my bathroom sink, arms stretched wide, calling out to me. The room smells of bleach and cigarette smoke. She's chalk white save for black pearl eyes and the thatch of hair below her navel. The dream begins this way--I'm the one in control--and ends differently. Her voice is garbled, all baby talk and drooling coos, when I cut In. "Speak up," I say, tapping my watch. "I don't have all night." Her lips press together hard, in a way that makes me tense. Her face might splinter, erode like paint chipping or peeling, like walls collapsing inward. I see Avi. I see rolled-up hundred-dollar bills and Afrin nose spray. I remember cutting my foot on glass in Atlantic City; Avi licked the wound clean. Wrapping his wife beater under my foot, he said, "You don't need alcohol. You don't need that kind of pain." Inside the casino, my mother made a killing at the slots. "You probably thought you were stronger. I can't say that I blame you. Watching Marisol overdose, I thought I was, too. But it sneaks up on you, it does," my mother says, still in the sink. "How could I have possibly helped you?" "Who said I need you? Who said I ever needed you?" I say. Hardcover: Today's read ends on page 19. Monday we begin the book THE LAST GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER by Edward Beauclerk Maurice. =========BUY Use this link to get the best price on this week's book: To locate or purchase OTHER BOOKS use this link: =======SHARE THE You can forward this email to your friends and relatives. Encourage them to join our book clubs. It's a great way to stay in touch even if you live thousands of miles apart. Questions, comments or book suggestions? Contact me, Barbara J. Feldman, at: Inc., 991C Lomas Santa Fe Dr. #415 Solana Beach, CA 92075 You are currently buy onlined to surfgrownup as: To purchase send a blank email to To join any of the free Surfnetkids Book Clubs, visit:

... Back to listing 1

... Back to article 30 | SITEMAP | Next to article 32 ...

We would like to express our gratitude to all those who are kindly providing this unique content, especially to:

office@a3ides.com
olga@bemobile.md
tirlik@brainchildhunter.com
office@bemobile.md
sharuha@causeni.info
info@webconsulting.md
irina.gorea@bemobile.md
office@milieukontakt.nl
igor.romanyuk@bemobile.com.ua
yuri.sekretar@olympia.net.ua
info@tophost.md
webmoldova@yahoo.com
admin@bemobile.md
webmaster@bemobile.md
emil@a3ides.com
olea@bemobile.md
yuri.sekretar@bemobile.com.ua
contact@a3ides.com
info@a3ides.com
vitaliy.lozovskiy@bemobile.md
drugg83@yahoo.com
rector@usm.md
gaugash@usm.md
acad.rudic@mail.md
acadrudic@yahoo.com
veaceslav.vasilache@gmail.com
s.bakker@milieukontakt.nl
katea.melnicenco@gmail.com
mkoe.moldova@vox.md
musteata@doctor.com
renat.buga@ase.md
s.molenkamp@milieukontakt.nl
si_problemme@mail.ru
willem.tjebbe.oostenbrink@planet.nl

Tag cloud:

Merritt, children, because, friends, Felicia, mother's, mother,, Sullivan, month's, waiting, plastic, warriors,, Missing, Chocolate, winners, manager, tranquilizers, matching, currently, thought, purchase, coordinator, waiting., VISIBLE, cocaine, through, possibly, they're,

Similar listing on: