"Fish, Pat - Happy Last Birthday To You" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fish Patricia)

HAPPY LAST BIRTHDAY TO YOU
By
Pat Fish

They say you can pick your friends but you can't pick your family. "They" are so right. Because for sure I would never have picked Roberta to be my sister, and it isn't because we fight. In fact, we get along just fine. The reason I dislike Roberta so much is because she is the meanest person on this earth, who murdered her most recent husband while he celebrated his birthday. To make matters so much worse, she arranged for me to serve him his death meal.

It isn't just husbands that Roberta has murdered. Throughout our childhood years, there were many animals that met their demise at the hands of my sister, to include mice, cats, dogs and rabbits. As an adolescent, Roberta murdered her boyfriend. Her first husband also met an untimely death in a fatal automobile accident that Roberta had somehow miraculously escaped by rolling out the door before the car fell down a steep embankment to a fiery explosion.

My mother thinks Roberta is wonderful and wonders why bad things keep happening to good people like Roberta. I was on to her the day she killed my puppy.

"Janice I just had no idea it would get that hot in the car. It is March after all. I thought the car thing was only in the summer."

Mindy, my 8 month old Golden Retriever, lay dead on the back seat of Roberta's tiny VW Rabbit. Roberta left him in the car while she went into the mall for a few minutes. Which turned out to be two hours, and when she finally retrieved her vehicle she threw her purchases on the front seat and drove home with no thought to the dead puppy in the back.

Just as soon as Roberta's VW pulled into our driveway, I rushed out to the car looking for the missing pup. That's when I found Mindy, dead from heat stroke on the back seat. That's also when, for possibly the thousandth time in my life, Roberta claimed ignorance that had resulted in another death.

I picked Mindy's limp body from the back seat and walked to the tiny back yard. I didn't say a word to Roberta. There was simply nothing to say.

I buried Mindy the same way I had buried my goldfish that died from swimming in a fishbowl full of hot pepper flakes ("I had no idea, Janice. I thought it was fish food"). I laid the dead puppy into her shallow grave just as I laid my cat Bootsie in his grave ("I just can't believe you can't give them chicken bones, Janice. They eat mice. They have bones!"). I covered the puppy with dirt just I had the bunny of old Mrs. Schmidt next door ("I had no idea they could run that fast, Jan. When I took that flying leap I just could not imagine that I would smash him. I'm so glad you buried him for Mrs. Schmidt and didn't tell").

It's plain to see there is/was a pattern going on, and I suspected when Bootsie choked on a chicken bone and was certain when Mindy suffered heat prostration from being deliberately locked in a car in the direct sun.

"Mom, she likes killing things!"

I was engaged in putting two lab mice in a shoe box when I finally shouted to my mother what should have been obvious. The two mice were, by the way, dead. Seems they got "stepped" on by a sleepy Roberta who had accidentally opened their cage door.

"Hush your mouth Janice....saying such a thing about your sister! You think I don't know she's a total ditz? Feeding hot pepper flakes to the fish...stepping on the mice....feeding chicken bones to the cat? But she's not trying to kill anything, Janice. You've been reading too many Nancy Drew mysteries. But she's accident prone about everything, Janice. Always has been. When she was two years old, she got her head stuck in the toilet bowl and almost drowned. Then she was flying a kite one time and almost electrocuted herself. I guess you're going to say she's suicidal too?"

I sighed in a stage whisper. Well, yes, I thought, it was entirely possible that Roberta was suicidal because Roberta was crazy. But my widowed mother could not ever accept that along with being left with two daughters to raise alone that she would also be burdened with one that was crazy. It would be I, and I alone, who would ever know the true evil that existed in my sister Roberta.

One cannot be two years younger than their sibling with whom all non-school moments are spent without early on recognizing odd behavior. It was the day that Roberta and I stole down to Mrs. Schmidt's root cellar that I first realized the depth of Roberta's madness.

"Keep the door open, Jan. Just keep the door open. Make sure there is light coming in."

Roberta had already made her way into the spooky cellar and I was climbing down the steep steps right behind her. We were only kids, fooling around and on a lark to see who would chicken out first. Just as soon as I got my left foot inside the cellar stairwell I reached behind me and grabbed the handle of the big overhead door and pulled it closed.

Instead of giggles or at most some mild screams, Roberta went crazy. She threw her whole ten-year-old body on my eight-year-old one. Then she pulled at my hair and clawed at my face until she had me screaming for my life.

"Open....op...open...op....Jan...open the door....Jan....I swear I can't breathe." As Roberta struggled to get this out, I struggled to save my eyeballs and retain a few strands of my hair. Even as the words she gasped were being said, her body was going limp. Then I was more frightened. I was convinced she was dying and my hand pushed up in desperation to open the overhead doors and admit some light. I was successful.

Roberta's lips were blue when the sunlight finally found her. I screamed her name and slapped her face until she let out a sputter and ran out of the cellar. I ran out right behind her. I was convinced that had that door remained closed for another minute, Roberta would have died.

I tried to discuss this incident with my mother, along with the other strange things such as large piles of dead flies in the attic and the mice caught in traps neither I nor my Mom had ever placed about. But I was only eight years old and my mother was either a total fool or too busy with work and raising us to notice that Roberta was a certified lunatic.

For several years after the cellar incident I began to stupidly acquire pets that would always end up dead. When Roberta took my puppy Mindy for the pup's ride to hell, I was certain she was psychotic. I vowed to never bring any sort of animal around Roberta again. I also vowed that as soon as I could I would get very far away from her. Even as crazy as I knew Roberta to be, I had never believed that she would start killing people. Her rampage began with Roger.

Roger was Roberta's first boyfriend. He was almost 6 foot tall with several more years to grow, very skinny with a big nose that looked even bigger on his skinny face. He honest to God wore a pocket protector and a band aid on his glasses. He was a total nerd and I wondered why Roberta had chosen him.

The thing that must be understood about Roberta is that she was not only beautiful, but the personification of an angel. Angels are, of course, pictured to come in all shapes, sizes and statures. If the most popular concept of an angel is a female with perfect skin, limpid blue eyes and celestial blond hair, than Roberta would be well cast in the role. She resembled Jodie Foster, but with all of Jody's sharp edges rounded off.