"Lamott, Anne - Blue Shoe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lamott Anne)

elitism. He liked to discuss books and politics; he had no patience
for stories of real people trying to get through the day. Angela and
Mattie started getting together several times a

week, to hike or cook or help each other around the house. Nicky
accused Mattie of being in love, of going gay. At the same time, he
had dropped hints that he didn't think Angela was a real lesbian: she
just hadn't met the right man yet, it was a phase, and would pass. And
a few years ago, Angela noticed that Nicky had taken off after classes
with one of his students, a beautiful twenty-two year-old black woman.
Mattie was six months pregnant with Ella at the time. Several years
before, he had had an affair that nearly ended the marriage, although
he had never given Mattie further cause to doubt his fidelity. But one
day after she and Mattie had become inseparable friends, Angela
followed Nicky and the young woman to the Tamal pais Motel, and then
she told Mattie. Mattie confronted Nicky, and he broke off the affair,
and while Mattie eventually forgave him, without forgetting, Nicky
never forgave Angela, and Angela never forgave Nicky.

Angela sometimes wore her short honey-colored hair in two vertical
tufts, like velvet giraffe horns. Her wide eyes were steel-blue. She
was Jewish, expansive and yeasty and un contained as if she had a
birthright for outrageousness. She knew things. Mattie couldn't live
without her.

The smell of wet soil, blossoms, and grass wafted through the kitchen
window as Mattie heard Angela's news. "But you're not going to have to
live without me," Angela said, crying. "We'll talk every day, and I'll
come up every chance I can."

Mattie went back into therapy to deal with the devastation of losing
Angela. The therapist pointed out gently that some of her grief must
be related to her deteriorating marriage. In some ways, losing Angela
was harder. It was like the death some years before of Mattie's old
cat, who had loved her the way her parents were supposed to have loved
her: purely, without conditions. In any case, for a few months Mattie
didn't have the strength to bear both her friend's departure and the
end of her marriage. And then one day, she did.

When the leaves began to blaze and the days grew shorter, she brought
her children and their things to the house she had grown up in. She
brought some furniture, their dog, two cats, a couple of porno movies
stolen from Nicky, and his bottle of Valium. He did not ask her about
them. It was assumed that the children would live with her, and visit
him on the weekends. He adored them but would not have been willing or
able to share custody, even if Mattie had been willing. As it was, he
took them most weekends, often late Saturday morning, then dropped them
off Sunday nights with an air of weary heroism, like a Hrerighter
returning the engine to the Are house after a particularly difficult
outing. The children were grief stricken that he did not live with