"Lisa Goldstein - Fools Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldstein Lisa)

"Earth," Amanda whispered. "You're Earth. And she is -- she is--"

"Go on," the woman said. She sounded infinitely kind.

"She's my mother. I lay in her, before I was born. And now she -- She's going to
die, isn't she?"

The brown woman nodded.

No one said anything for several seconds. "Come on, come follow," one of the
small band said, but it was clear his heart wasn't in it.

Her mother. The woman who wore the purse, and smelled of lemons, and sang the
wordless lullaby. The woman in the stained glass window, tall and regal as
death. Her mother couldn't die. What would she do, how would she live, without
her mother's ancient love and protection?

She wanted to run, to lose herself within the forest and never come out. Could
she do that, could she stay in the darkness forever, as the brown woman had
said? Or could she find the courage to face the thing she had been running from,
running not just for a night but for the last several years, ever since that
dreadful diagnosis?

She turned to the tattered band surrounding her. "Thank you," she said. "Thanks
for songs and the laughter, the trees and the stars. For all the distractions.
But I can't run any longer. I've got to go now."

"To work?" one of them said hopefully.

She laughed in spite of herself. "To visit my mother," she said.

And then it was morning, and she was walking up the sidewalk in front of her
mother's apartment building, the small fat brown woman leading the way. As she
approached she saw the man with the umbrella and the woman with the pearls
coming out the door. "I'm too late, aren't I?" Amanda said.

"No," the brown woman said. "They haven't taken her yet -- you have one last
chance. Go make it count."

"Thank you," Amanda said, and went to knock on her mother's door.