"Goonan, Kathleen Ann - The String" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goonan Kathleen Ann)

Jessica have a good, stable home. Anita didn't have to work so hard, every
evening, and weekends too. She could afford to let some of that slide.
As he worked that evening, anger slowly subsided into a self-righteous
stubborness. But earlier than usual, Dan decided that he was too tired to make
much more headway and put it away. The bedroom door was still locked, so he lay
down on the couch and threw the afghan over himself.
#

The next evening, Frank came by. His footsteps on the old wood treads of the
back porch were tired and hesitant. He stood outside the screen door for a few
moments just staring, not into the room, but just staring.
Dan jumped up from the table. The string had felt dead in his hands tonight, and
he felt as if he was making no progress at all. No sooner did he pull one strand
out than another portion knotted even more tightly. He opened the door and
pulled Frank in. "Sit down," he said. "What's wrong?"
Frank's face worked, but he didn't cry, as Dan feared he would. Instead he said,
"One of the kids ran out in the road today and got hit by a car."
Anita looked up from across the room. "Oh, no," she breathed. "Yeah, well, it
was real lucky. Kid just bounced off the car and got a lot of scrapes. Flew
through the air onto the grass next to the road. But it was my fault."
"It was?" asked Dan.
"Yeah," he said. "I think so. They told me it wasn't, that it was Cassandra's
job to be watching the kids, and another aide that's been there for years, but
I'd just turned away to tie somebody's shoe and this silly kid was over the
fence--kind of a wild boy, everybody says, they've been thinking about telling
his parents they can't handle him anyway--"
"So it wasn't your fault, Frank," said Dan.
"It doesn't sound like it to me," said Anita. "Don't be so hard on yourself."
"I'm too old for this sort of thing," said Frank. "I saw him go, but you know, I
just can't move too fast any more."
Jessica ran downstairs. "Frank!" she said, and hugged him. Then she was out the
door.
"I don't think I'm going back," said Frank. He stood and shrugged.
"You're not leaving already, are you?" asked Dan. "Have a beer."
Frank did, but they couldn't coax many more words out of him, and after an hour
he left.
When Anita shut down her computer just afterwards, Dan was startled. "So early?"
he asked. "What's the use?" she asked. "I've given it my best. I've tried as
hard as I can try. I know I've done good work. I know the proposal was
excellent. I don't know what happened, Dan. What's the point? I might as well
face it. I'm just going to be another obscure, faceless architect working in
some huge firm, pandering to the vision of some old fart prima donna all my
life." She laughed wryly. "I thought I'd be that old fart prima donna. Oh, Dan,
I had so many hopes."
That night Dan slipped the string into the drawer very early and went to bed. He
didn't get it out again the next night, or the next.
"Why aren't you doing your string, Dad?" Jessica asked one night.
"Oh, I just got tired of it," he said.
"Please do it some more," she asked. "I liked it when you did."
"No," he said. "It was just a silly thing."