The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Nick Burd
- Language: English
- Genre: Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Marriage & Divorce Issues
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
My father, Ned, ran Cedarville’s only luxury car dealership, and my mother,
Peggy, was an art teacher at St. Jude’s, the smaller of the two Catholic
schools in town. When I was thirteen we moved from the country to
Cedarview Estates, a new housing development in the eastern part of
Cedarville. The houses were all painted safe colors. Taupe, beige, and dusty
blue. At night their windows glowed with a soft golden light. My mother
hated it there.
“It’s like a village of futuristic lighting fixtures,” she said. She was out on
the front porch smoking a rare Marlboro Light. “Sometimes I feel like if I
stare at them for long enough I’ll start to see them moving real slow. Like
glaciers.”
My parents had initially moved out of Cedarville and into the country
when they found out they were having me. My mother wanted to raise her
kid in a farmhouse. She wanted an unnamed cat and a few chickens that she
didn’t know what to do with. She wanted the space and the sunsets, the
weird bugs in the yard. I spent my days wandering off the porch into the
cornfields that ran behind the house. I would stand in the middle of the
field, close my eyes, and spin myself around to try to make myself as lost as
possible. One evening at dinner my father told us that he’d heard good
things about the new Cedarview Estates being built in town and that maybe
we should think about moving.
“It’ll be great to move back into town,” he said. “We’ll be closer to
everything. Plus, a guy from work knows a couple of the guys behind the
development. He said it’s going to be gorgeous. Real state-of-the-art living
style.”
“I don’t see anything gorgeous about cracker-box houses,” my mother
said.
“Well, we’re not twenty-five anymore, Peggy,” he said.
She slammed her silverware onto her plate and asked what that had to do
with anything, and I took my food up to my room so they could fight in
peace.
The house in Cedarview Estates was too big for us. We had three extra
bedrooms and a huge basement that my mother had taken over with art
projects. Headless mannequins painted blue. Black stick figures acting out
Biblical scenes on shattered mirrors. There was a fireplace we used one
Christmas Eve and a stainless steel refrigerator with built-in flat-screen
television. We had a pool out back and a man who came to clean it once a
week. There were stereo speakers installed in the walls, and sometimes the
house would sing.
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