"Lippman, Laura - Every Secret Thing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lippman Laura)

Fourteen presents, thirteen girls. Hers was one of the prettiest on
the outside Alice's mother had wrapped it in blue paper that shimmered
but the shape gave it away. The present was a book, just a book, and
Maddy was not the kind of girl who would be happy to get a book. Maddy
wanted one of those new T-shirts, the kind that leave your belly
showing, and rubber bracelets, and the nail polish you could peel right
off. Maddy was the youngest girl in the class, but she knew the most
about makeup. She was always sneaking gloss, and green mascara, until
the nuns caught her and sent her to the bathroom to wash it off.

Alice had expected Maddy's mother to be pretty, too, just so. Yet
Maddy's mother was sort of plain slender enough to wear a two-piece,
but tired-looking, as if being so thin and tanned had worn her out.
Even her hair looked tired, like the "before" picture in a conditioner
ad. There were mainly two kinds of mothers at St. William of York,
mothers who worked and mothers who didn't. But Maddy's mom was the
Mother Who Used to Work. That's how she had introduced herself to
Alice's mom, when she called the other day to ask a few questions about
Ronnie. Alice knew what was said because she listened in on the
extension. Just sometimes.

"I'm Maddy's mother. I used to work at Piper, Marbury?" Alice's
mother made an "ah" sound, as if this were a good thing. She approved
of Anything Creative, as she was always telling Alice. But Alice was
surprised to find out that Maddy's mom was a piper. She thought she
had been a lawyer. She imagined Maddy's mother in a green hat with a
feather, leading the children out of Hamlin, along with the rats. No,
the rats came first, the piper took the children later. Besides,
Maddy's mother must have been a piper in an orchestra to draw such an
"ah" sound from Helen, not someone who just played on the street or in
circuses. A mother who made music must be fun.

But Maddy's Mother Who Used to Work had looked as if she had a headache
from the moment the party started. Her forehead had four creases, like
two equals signs, and there was a tiny set of parentheses at the bridge
of her nose. These seemed to get deeper and deeper as the day wore on,
and by the time it was time to open the presents, her face looked like
a very hard math problem, maybe even algebra. St. William of York
didn't have a gifted program, but Sister Elizabeth had started giving
Alice extra-credit homework in math. This was a secret. Alice wasn't
sure why. She thought it might be because she didn't have a lot of
secrets from her mother, who always seemed to know exactly what she was
thinking. Other times, she thought her mom would be disappointed in
her for liking math, which wasn't creative and led to making money,
which Helen Manning always said really was the root of all evil not
making money, but caring about it, counting it. When she first heard
about the Root of All Evil, Alice had asked: "Is that near Route 40?"
And her mother had laughed until she cried, then hugged her and said:
"It's not far, I'll grant you that." Later, Alice had tried to make
her mother laugh that same way again, telling the same joke over and