"Kress, Nancy - Evolution" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

"People are scared, but they'll do the right thing," Jack said, the only other time I tried to talk to him about it. Jack isn't much for talking. And so I don't. I owe him that.
But in the city -- in all the cities -- they're not just scared. They're terrified. Even without listening to the news I hear about the riots and the special government police and half the population sick with the new germs that only endozine cures -- sometimes. I don't see how they're going to have much energy for one murdered small-town doctor. And I don't share Jack's conviction that people in Emerton will automatically do the right thing. I remember all too well that sometimes they don't. How come Jack doesn't remember, too?
But he's right about one thing: I don't owe this town anything.
I stack the supper dishes in the sink and get Jackie started on her homework.
* * * *
The next day, I drive down to the Food Mart parking lot.
There isn't much to see. It rained last night. Next to the dumpster lie a wadded-up surgical glove and a piece of yellow tape like the police use around a crime scene. Also some of those little black cardboard boxes from the stuff that gets used up by the new holographic TV cameras. That's it.
"You heard what happened to Dr. Bennett," I say to Sean at dinner. Jack's working again. Jackie sits playing with the Barbie doll she doesn't know I know she has on her lap. Sean looks at me sideways, under the heavy fringe of his dark bangs, and I can't read his expression. "He was killed for giving out too many antibiotics."
Jackie looks up. "Who killed the doctor?"
"The bastards that think they run this town," Sean says. He flicks the hair out of his eyes. His face is ashy gray. "Fucking vigilantes'll get us all."
"That's enough, Sean," I say.
Jackie's lip trembles. "Who'll get us all? Mommy..."
"Nobody's getting anybody," I say. "Sean, stop it. You're scaring her."
"Well, she should be scared," Sean says, but he shuts up and stares bleakly at his plate. Sixteen now, I've had him for sixteen years. Watching him, his thick dark hair and sulky mouth, I think that it's a sin to have a favorite child. And that I can't help it, and that I would, God forgive me, sacrifice both Jackie and Jack for this boy.
"I want you to clean the garage tonight, Sean. You promised Jack three days ago now."
"Tomorrow. Tonight I have to go out."
Jackie says, "Why should I be scared?"
"Tonight," I say.
Sean looks at me with teenage desperation. His eyes are very blue. "Not tonight. I have to go out."
Jackie says, "Why should I -- "
I say, "You're staying home and cleaning the garage."
"No." He glares at me, and then breaks. He has his father's looks, but he's not really like his father. There are even tears in the corners of his eyes. "I'll do it tomorrow, Mom, I promise. Right after school. But tonight I have to go out."
"Where?"
"Just out."
Jackie says, "Why should I be scared? Scared of what? Mommy!"
Sean turns to her. "You shouldn't be scared, Jack-o-lantern. Everything's going to be all right. One way or another."
I listen to the tone of his voice and suddenly fear shoots through me, piercing as childbirth. I say, "Jackie, you can play Nintendo now. I'll clear the table."
Her face brightens. She skips into the living room and I look at my son. "What does that mean? 'One way or another'? Sean, what's going on?"
"Nothing," he says, and then despite his ashy color he looks me straight in the eyes, and smiles tenderly, and for the first time -- the very first time -- I see his resemblance to his father. He can lie to me with tenderness.
* * * *
Two days later, just after I return from the Food Mart, they contact me.
The murder was on the news for two nights, and then disappeared. Over the parking lot is scattered more TV-camera litter. There's also a wine bottle buried halfway into the hard ground, with a bouquet of yellow roses in it. Nearby is an empty basket, the kind that comes filled with expensive dried flowers at Blossoms by Bonnie, weighted down with stones. Staring at it, I remember that Bonnie Widelstein went out of business a few months ago. A drug-resistant abscess, and after she got out of Emerton Memorial, nobody on this side of the river would buy flowers from her.
At home, Sylvia James is sitting in my driveway in her black Algol. As soon as I see her, I put it together.
"Sylvia," I say tonelessly.
She climbs out of the sportscar and smiles a social smile. "Elizabeth! How good to see you!" I don't answer. She hasn't seen me in seventeen years. She's carrying a cheese kuchen, like some sort of key into my house. She's still blonde, still slim, still well dressed. Her lipstick is bright red, which is what her face should be.
I let her in anyway, my heart making slow hard thuds in my chest. _Sean. Sean._
Once inside, her hard smile fades and she has the grace to look embarrassed. "Elizabeth -- "
"Betty," I say. "I go by Betty now."
"Betty. First off, I want to apologize for not being...for not standing by you in that mess. I know it was so long ago, but even so, I -- I wasn't a very good friend." She hesitates. "I was frightened by it all."
I want to say, _You_ were frightened? But I don't.
I never think of the whole dumb story any more. Not even when I look at Sean. Especially not when I look at Sean.
Seventeen years ago, when Sylvia and I were seniors in high school, we were best friends. Neither of us had a sister, so we made each other into that, even though her family wasn't crazy about their precious daughter hanging around with someone like me. The Goddards live on the other side of the river. Sylvia ignored them, and I ignored the drunken warnings of my aunt, the closest thing I had to a family. The differences didn't matter. We were Sylvia-and-Elizabeth, the two prettiest and boldest girls in the senior class who had an academic future.
And then, suddenly, I didn't. At Elizabeth's house I met Randolf Satler, young resident in her father's unit at the hospital. And I got pregnant, and Randy dumped me, and I refused a paternity test because if he didn't want me and the baby I had too much pride to force myself on any man. That's what I told everyone, including myself. I was eighteen years old. I didn't know what a common story mine was, or what a dreary one. I thought I was the only one in the whole wide world who had ever felt this bad.
So after Sean was born at Emerton Memorial and Randy got engaged the day I moved my baby "home" to my dying aunt's, I bought a Smith & Wesson revolver in the city and shot out the windows of Randy's supposedly empty house across the river. I hit the gardener, who was helping himself to the Satler liquor cabinet in the living room. The judge gave me seven-and-a-half to ten, and I served five, and that only because my lawyer pleaded post-partum depression. The gardener recovered and retired to Miami, and Dr. Satler went on to become Chief of Medicine at Emerton Memorial and a lot of other important things in the city, and Sylvia never visited me once in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Nobody did, except Jack. Who, when Syvia-and-Elizabeth were strutting their stuff at Emerton High, had already dropped out and was bagging groceries at the Food Mart. After I got out of Bedford, the only reason the foster-care people would give me Sean back was because Jack married me.
We live in Emerton, but not of it.
Sylvia puts her kuchen on the kitchen table and sits down without being asked. I can see she's done with apologizing. She's still smart enough to know there are things you can't apologize for.
"Eliz...Betty, I'm not here about the past. I'm here about Dr. Bennett's murder."
"That doesn't have anything to do with me."
"It has to do with all of us. Dan Moore lives next door to you."
I don't say anything.