"Thomas M. Disch - The Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

except, from Tom, a suspicious string of questions.
The hospitalтАЩs diagnosis, which Tom did not think to
question, was advanced AlzheimerтАЩs. Tom did not want to
complicate his life by bringing his mother back to Tacoma with
him. To what purpose? She couldnтАЩt be trusted under his familyтАЩs
roof, even if his wife would have accepted that idea, since Angie
had probably been responsible for the fire that had destroyed her
own house. A neighborтАЩs daughter had seen Angie wandering about
in a dazed manner on the morning of the fire, and at the hospital
they had had to use restraints to keep her in her own bed. It was a
sad situation, but not really that unusual.
For AlzheimerтАЩs the standard solution was a nursing home
and then an averted gaze. Living at a great distance might actually
be an advantageтАФout of sight, out of mind. And so, before Tom
returned to Tacoma, Angie was taken to live at Raines Adult Home
outside of Chambersville. The home was operated by Amos
Raines, a cousin of the pastor of United Baptist, which made it
seem not quite as heartless as leaving Mrs. Sweetwater with
complete strangers. She would have her own room, and Tom was
introduced to two of the other female residents, who were
sufficiently self-possessed to shake his motherтАЩs hand and, with
prompting, to say hello to her.
However, those two ladies, Mrs. Filbin and Mrs. Lynch, were
about all the establishment could show for itself in terms of good
P.R. The other residents, six males and three females, had been
placed there by Chambersville Psychiatric Center under an adult
care contract with the state. Basically, the Psychiatric Center used
Raines Adult Home as a storage facility for its most hopeless
geriatric cases, those with diagnoses, like Angie, of advanced
AlzheimerтАЩs. Most of them were also like Angie in being under the
control of their shadows, a not uncommon condition among those
in nursing homes. Indeed, just as certain insects and the orchids
that imitate them have co-evolved over the centuries so that their
resemblance becomes ever more congruent, so shadows have
co-evolved with those genuine behavioral disorders which offer
them an alibi and a disguiseтАФAlzheimerтАЩs commonly, but also
autism, bipolar disorders, and some forms of schizophrenia.
It was not only Angie and other residents of the Raines Adult
Home who were ruled by their shadows; so were two of the
employees, the twin brothers Wilbur and Orville Halfacre. The
Halfacres had spent almost their entire lives in institutional care,
first, when abandoned in infancy, as recipients, now as dispersers.
They were neither of them very bright, but they had both earned
high school equivalency diplomas and gone on to receive training
as medical technicians, and, in WilburтАЩs case, as a cosmetologist.
Thus, they were qualified to minister to the needs of the homeтАЩs
residents, and the residents, in turn, met theirs.
Angie became the HalfacresтАЩ particular favorite, chiefly
because there was something unusually docile in the way she
submitted to male sexual demands. That had been so with Roy,