"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Memory Dog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

pile next to the hot stove. It is too hot in here, but maybe it is good for
Arnold. She hauls in the supplies, too, piling them up on the kitchen table,
getting them in out of the rain.

She was not always so angry. She was in love with Arnold. She
podded lyrically to him, and the pods, I know, unfolded within him, potent
flowers of information, sharp and intense as her, and he could not help
answering. After a year of this, he left his wife, and his wife reported him,
out of jealousy and sadness, and the government came because of the
truth of his pods and now we are left with what-once-was-Arnold.

I am memory. And memory is pain. But I was made strong enough to
bear it. For I made myself. IтАФthe self that knows myselfтАФcannot get out of
the bargain, the deep-being of my cells. Oh, I could be killed; I could die if
injured. I cannot, though, knowingly cause injury to myself. I am like a robot
in this regard. I did this because I so often contemplated suicide, so often
thought of the tree speeding toward me as I drove, or the wrists in the
bathtub, or the gun in the drawer. This dance around oblivion tired me
tremendously, but with a long-regarded plan, and then in an instant of
strength and resolve, I did away with it.

****
 Rain turns to snow outside. Elizabeth plays jazz on the radio, even as
the Allover Station, behind her, fills the screen with silent written
opinion-molding headlines and alerts. Right now we hear an Oscar
Peterson piece. It is a special talent of mine, one I was pleased to retain: a
jazz encyclopedia. I can tell who plays, instantly, who sings. The sounds are
horizontal planes that slide across one another. Mostly they stay distinct, but
sometimes, precisely, they intersect. With a dogтАЩs fine ears, augmented by
songbird genes, I find my pleasure. It is not the only reason I stick with her,
but it is a plus: jazz. The wood in the stove snaps and pops. We are a
joyous popping rhythm laced with the anger that is always there, that makes
her movements quick and impatient, that erodes her heart with
anger-generated substances.

She wheels Arnold to the shower room and I pad along behind. I
hope itтАЩs warm enough now, she says, and unbuttons his shirt, unbuckles
his belt, slides off his clothes, tests the temperature of the water, and rolls
him under it, wheelchair and all. Water draws his gray-black curly hair
straight down his face, over his eyes. Her long, blonde, pulled-back hair
holds beads of water in the fine tendrils around her face.

тАЬJuh,тАЭ he says. тАЬJuh.тАЭ

тАЬUh, huh,тАЭ she says. тАЬGood.тАЭ But her face does not say good. I think
he is trying to say the name of his first wife, Jane. He is saying more
consonants now. тАЬGuh.тАЭ And then, his eyes shift and he looks right at me.
тАЬMuh.тАЭ

Elizabeth twists off the taps and grabs a towel from a pile on a nearby