"Suzette Haden Elgin - Lest Levitation Come Upon Us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

LEST LEVITATION COME UPON US
Suzette Haden Elgin

[06 feb 2002тАФscanned, proofed and released for #bookz]

Suzette Haden Elgin is a linguist, writer, and folk singer known both for her science fiction
and fantasy novels and her tall tales and musical performances at fantasy conventions. Some of
her best fiction suggests her concern with feminism in a style free of rhetorical jargon, as with this
witty and, perhaps, subversive tale in which the wife of a prominent lawyer discovers to her
dismay that she seems to have become a saint, miracles and all. As her miracles become gaudier
and seem likely to hurt her husband's prominence, she decides something must be done about
them.

If it had been only her circumstances, her own convenience, only her own self to be considered,
Valeria thought she might in fact have been able to manage. There would have been adjustments and
accommodations, but she was a woman; and, accustomed as all women are to adjustments and
accommodations, she would have coped somehow. If nothing else, she could have let a tale be leaked,
one bit of trivia at a time ... little note cards in a spidery hand with weak excuses on them, and the word
going round of a chronic disease. Nothing fatal, and nothing ugly; but something that would have made
coming by to see her a chore to avoid, while at the same time explaining why she was never seen in
public anymore. And pretty soon she would have been forgotten, one of those enigmatic and eccentric
Southern ladies with a decomposing corpse to protect in the cupboard ... the teenager who delivered her
paper, and the elderly man who could still be hired to deliver groceries if the order was kept to just a bag
or two, they would have set things down on her front porch and made hasty tracks. For fear of what they
might see behind Valeria Elizabeth Carterhasty's spotless white curtains.
But it was not like that, as she was no longer a Carterhasty, nor could she consider her own self.
She was much-married, mother of three, wife to Julian B. Cantrell, up-and-coming attorney-at-law, and
consideration of self was far down the list of her priorities, somewhere below keeping the flea collars up
to date on the requisite dog and pair of Siamese cats. Clearly, she was going to have to think of some
way to deal with this inexplicable affliction an unknown deity had seen fit to visit upon her.
That Julian had been furious the first time it happened seemed to her entirely reasonable; after all, a
lawyer does not maintain a practice at $100,000 a year and support a family without maintaining a certain
image. The elegant home, with the redwood deck. The pleasant wife with the knack for noncontroversial
conversation. The matched set of well-groomed and well-behaved children, each with a hobby that might
in time become a profession. Daryl, with his microscope and his white mice. Philip, with the ranks of
labeled shoeboxes each containing an electronic something-or-other, and the lust for a personal
computerтАФeven without a printerтАФthat Julian sternly refused to satisfy. "When you have earned and
saved half the money for it, I'll match that with the other half, young man." That was Julian's way. And
Charlotte. With Charlotte it was ballet. Charlotte had not really wanted to take up ballet ... had wanted
to go into baton-twirling, actually ... but when it was explained to her that there would be a problem
making that fit into Daddy's image, she had sighed, and exchanged glances with her mother, and gone
dutifully into the ballet classes as requested. Whether she ever took out the wooden baton with the gold
dust and the red tassel and the cheap silver cord, won at a carnival and put away in her closet, Valeria
did not know and was careful not to ask.
They had been at the Far Corner, she and Julian and a Mr. and Mrs. Tabbitt from Memphis, right
between the cocktails and the trip to the salad bar, and Valeria had known Julian was satisfied by the
way things were going. He'd leaned back a little in his chair, and the tension in his hands that came from
trying to quit smoking had relaxed a bit. The light was dim enough to make everyone look attractive, but
not so dark you couldn't see what you were eating, and the Muzak was doing "Rhapsody in Blue," when
it happened. Mr. Tabbitt ... Wayne? ... she thought he had been a Wayne ... had leaned forward and