"Bowes-ShadowAndGunman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bowes Richard)

But in one, she had caught my mother walking into a room with a glass in her
hand. At first, the photo appeared to be a double exposure. Two mothers looked
up. But instead of being identical, one wore a tired smile. The other, partly
eclipsing the first, looked angry at being caught.

That night after the TV stations left the air, I sat sleepless at the kitchen
table staring at papers. Some documents had my name on them. Every time there
was a creak or bump in the house, I half expected the front door to open and my
mother to come in. Once I looked up to find Tay watching me.

"Ah, Kevin, you're so wise and owl-eyed lately. And you haven't been eating.
There's ham and eggs in the ice box."

"I'm not hungry."

"Cocoa then. You always liked me to make cocoa." Tay moved to the sink to fill
the kettle. She looked over my shoulder at a picture of my mother at her junior
prom. "She was her father's favorite." I nodded, interested.

Then she said, "Remember the story I told when you were small. How once there
was a king with three sons who did not suit him and a daughter who suited him
very well indeed? And as it happened. . . ."

Impatient at what I saw as bedtime stories, I said, "And she gets cheated and
gets turned into a magic hawk or something. I remember but I'm a little old for
that. There's stuff about me, Tay . . . I need to figure things out."

She waited, but words could take me no further. After a long pause, she reached
out and patted my hair. "Faileas," she said.

It didn't occur to me that she recognized my trouble and was also struggling to
put words to it. Sullen, I turned away from her. That Monday, I took the double
photo of my mother and the papers with my name on them to school and stuck them
in my locker, intending to study them later.

That year, family Thanksgiving was at Uncle Jim's house in Milton. Crying, "God
bless us," Gramny and Tay were lost in the flurry of little cousins as soon as
we came in the door.

Thanks to the speed, I ate almost no dinner. But I drank quite a bit.
Afterwards, kids laughed and screamed, women washed the dishes and my uncles
leaned on the furniture with their glasses. As the oldest nephew, I was allowed
in their presence.

They were talking about Kennedy. "Sure, a great day for the Irish," said Bob
with a phony brogue.

"The black Irish," said Mike.

"That's niggers to you," Jim said and they looked my way, noticed my distaste.