"Thomas M. Disch - On Wings Of Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

deliberately, he added a fond P.S.: тАЬGee, Mom, I hope it works out
so you can come and live with us.тАЭ He put her on Hold before she
could reply.


Because the plane had come from New York there was a long
wait for the passengers and their luggage to be cleared through the
State Police Inspection Station. Daniel thought that several of the
women who came through the white formica doors might be his
mother, but when she finally did appear, all frazzled and frayed, the
very last passenger to be processed, there was no mistaking her.
She wasnтАЩt the mother heтАЩd imagined over the years, but she was
undoubtedly the one heтАЩd tried and never quite managed to forget.
She was pretty but in the direction of vulnerability rather than
of zest and health, with big tired brown eyes, and a tangled mass of
horsetail hair that hung down over her shoulders as if it were
meant to be a decoration. Her clothes were plain and pleasant but
not warm enough for Iowa in the middle of October. She was no
taller than an average eighth-grader, and except for big, bra-ed-up
breasts, no more fleshed-out than the people you saw in
advertisements for religion on tv. SheтАЩd let her nails grow weirdly
long and she fluttered her fingers when she talked so you were
always noticing. One arm was covered with dozens of bracelets of
metal and plastic and wood that clinked and jangled all the time.
To Daniel she seemed as bizarre as an exotic breed of dog, the kind
that no one ever owns and you only see in books. People in
Amesville would stare at her. The other people in the airport
restaurant already were.
She was eating her hamburger with a knife and fork. Maybe
(Daniel theorized) her long fingernails prevented her from picking
it up by the bun. The fingernails were truly amazing, a spectacle.
Even while she ate she never stopped talking, though nothing that
she said was very informative. Obviously she was trying to make a
good impression, on Daniel as well as his father. Just as obviously
she was pissed off with the inspection sheтАЩd gone through. The
police had confiscated a transistor radio and four cartons of
cigarettes she hadnтАЩt had the cash to pay the Iowa Stamp Tax on.
DanielтАЩs father was able to get the cigarettes back for her but not
the radio since it received stations in the prohibited frequency
ranges.
In the car on the way back to Amesville his mother smoked
and chattered and made lots of nervous not very funny jokes. She
admired everything she saw in a tone of syrupy earnestness, as
though Daniel and his father were personally responsible and must
be praised for the whole of Iowa, the stubble of cornstalks in the
fields, the barns and siloes, the light and the air. Then sheтАЩd forget
herself for a moment and you could tell she really didnтАЩt mean a
word of it. She seemed afraid.
His father started smoking the cigarettes too, though it was
something he never did otherwise. The rented car filled with smoke