Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012
- Автор: Макдермид Вэл, Манфредо Лу
- Год: 2012
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012». Краткое содержание книги:
Dearbhla sat on the edge of one of our armchairs, her eyes eager, hands holding her cup in a way that spoke pure elegance. My mother, her face white and strained, her hair still pulled back in the grubby ribbon, had lost her look of girlishness. Her belly rounded out a little and her neck no longer arched the way it used to. When my father propelled me forward to Dearbhla and boomed at me to say hello, I was crushed in silk and perfume and Dearbhla’s slightly harsh voice breathed affectionately in my ear, “Well, there’s the darling.”
Her presence unsettled me. It was as if something alien, wondrous, and scary had come into our little cottage, enveloping it with an aura I had never experienced before. When I had lain under my mother’s feet back then, I had felt such security, but in Dearbhla’s arms I sensed danger and excitement. Her embrace was too cloying and yet delightfully warm, her fingers wrapped around me and dug in like claws. I looked over to my mother’s fingers, which were lacing and unlacing each other in tension. I saw how short and spatulate they were. Fingers that would get lost playing the difficult octave spans that Dearbhla was to show me, though I could not know that at the time.
It was my father who first suggested that Dearbhla play something. She smiled, but looked uncomfortable at the suggestion. “Oh David. Should I, really?” I could tell from the tautness of her body, still holding mine, that she longed for it, but did not dare say yes. Not openly. Not yet.
But my father, his voice queer and rough, said, “Yes. Play. Play!” His command was heavy with a weird ache.
“Well,” Dearbhla said. “If you insist.”
My mother’s eyes widened. The pupils in them had shrunk into tiny black dots and they were all iris. She stood up in a jerky, unlovely movement, walked over to Dearbhla’s chair, and pulled me out of her arms. I squeaked with alarm.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dearbhla said good-humouredly, getting out of the chair.
I could tell my father was about to say something to my mother, but then Dearbhla sat down at the stool, her fingers running lightly over the keys without pressing them. I shuddered as they did so, imagining them clinging hard to me, even though her touch on the keyboard was delicate. I looked over at my father. His eyes were closed, lips parted open. Now it was he who looked as if he were in a trance.
“What shall I play?” Dearbhla asked gaily.
“Anything,” my father whispered.
I did not look at my mother.
After what seemed like an age, Dearbhla hit two black keys and then let loose. I was later to learn that the piece was a Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor by Chopin, but at the time it was just a roaring tumble of notes, all pouring out sweetly and asynchronously into the air. The energy in the room changed as she played. Her eyes glazed over as left and right hand concentrated on maintaining the difficult cross signatures the composer demanded.
My limbs were stiff with awe, almost rooted, though I felt the urge to pee. I’d barely shifted when my father placed a hand on my shoulder. He shook his head briefly, curtly. I stayed to listen to Dearbhla play.
It ran down my leg. I felt the trickle seep through my red cord dungarees, warm, burning, immediate. The music enraptured me so that I felt no shame. Dearbhla and my father remained oblivious also. But Mother was not of that world, and saw.
“That child.” She pointed at me. “Look at those wet pants. Look at them.”
Dearbhla stopped playing.
“David,” my mother continued, glaring at my father. “Are you going to do something? Look at those wet pants. They’re disgusting.”
I was embarrassed, not for myself, though my thighs were beginning to chafe with the urinous sting, but for my mother. Even at that young age, I sensed that she, not I, was in the wrong, that her motives for humiliating me were suspect.
“Ah, don’t worry, Lily,” Dearbhla said, getting up. “It was an accident. It could happen to any child.”
My mother stood up too and faced Dearbhla. For a moment, it looked as if she were going to hit her. My father sat down, crossed his legs, and folded his arms. The moment seemed interminable. Then my mother crossed over to the piano and sat on the stool, breathing heavily.
“Lily, for God’s sake.” My father was angry now.
Ignoring him, my mother breathed in a sob, pulled her hair ever more fiercely into a ponytail, and launched into — yes, you guessed it, same old same old — the Gymnopédie. Her playing it all wrong made it even worse. As she made mistake after mistake, she started to cry openly. At the major seventh chord that resolves into the final D, she made the worst clanger of the lot, hitting an F sharp and then going to the wrong place in the bass. I prayed she would stop, but no, she kept going. Dearbhla, to give the woman her due, kept her face an emotionless cast as the whole miserable, cringe-inducing ritual dragged on.
“Lily, stop.”
“No, I won’t. I won’t stop. And I won’t have that woman telling me how to rear my children.”
Dearbhla gasped discreetly.
“Now,” my mother looked at me, “I’m going to finish my piece. Your favourite, honey, remember?”
I felt my voice come from a very faraway place.
“No. It’s not my favourite. I like Dearbhla’s better. And you were mean to me in front of people. Daddy told me not to go to the bathroom. And,” I felt my father’s and Dearbhla’s relief and satisfaction surge towards me even though their faces still betrayed nothing, “you don’t play it right. You make mistakes. Dearbhla never makes mistakes.”
For the last fifteen years I have regretted saying those words. Perhaps if I had stayed silent, none of this would have happened.
There is little else to remember about my mother. A few weeks later, I remember my father buying ice creams for everyone. She burst into tears. He asked her what was wrong with the ice cream. I joined in, also angry at her always crying and ruining our fun. We couldn’t do anything without her crying now. I came to dread her presence.
She puked up her ice cream. All of it, in a yellow-white mess, over the kitchen table. It had that sharp hydrochloric smell of vomited food and I couldn’t bear to eat any more of mine after that. I didn’t understand about morning sickness then. As my father cleaned up, his mouth was twisted in disapproval, a disapproval I shared.
Another day she shouted at him, in front of me, “Why won’t you love me? Why do you go to her all the time?”
I thought my father would shout back, the way he had once or twice before then, but no, he just cleared his throat and left the room. I didn’t understand why he wasn’t angry, but something in his demeanour made me terribly afraid all the same. As a child, I did not understand what it is to be indifferent to someone: I do now. The years I’ve spent in this place have flattened me out pretty well, to the point where I am pleased to say I am indifferent to almost everybody.
One day I opened the wrong door at the wrong time, and saw a pair of feet. Familiar feet in off-pink ballet pumps. They were at about eye-level, which looked rather strange, and swayed softly from side to side, as if they were performing a little dance, though they did not move or point.
Then a bulky body intervened. Pinching fingers grasped my shoulders; I was hurled away.
“Go back,” my father hissed. “Go back, for God’s sake, you silly boy.”
Later he told me about my mother. She had hung herself with one of those soft threads used to tie back the drawing-room curtains. I was a bit confused and asked if there would be any baby now. He said no, there wouldn’t be, that it had disappeared away. That it was all for the best.
It didn’t really make any sense to me, why she had done it. She was annoying, but I still didn’t want her to go away like that. For some reason I thought it had something to do with the ice cream.