"Will McCarthy - Bloom" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

to the agricultural district. There was someone I needed to see.




"Take those damn glasses off," she said to me by way of greeting about as friendly a reception as she'd
been able to manage lately. Seeming never to notice that I'd been gone at all, seeming always to pick up
in the middle of a conversation. But not any conversation that I remembered. A ribbon held back her
hair, white on white.

So small, this room, and so sparse, and so very painfully clean. My fault, yes; I was always thinking I
should at least bring her a plant, something dirty and alive to fill up the empty space beside the window,
but there was the expense to consider, and the troubleтАж

"Momma," I said to her, as cheerfully as I could manage, "you know they're not glasses. Nobody wears
glasses anymore."

She pinched her face up at that. "Bull crap. I see you all hiding behind these things, hiding your faces.
Always poking and stabbing at the air like there were flies buzzing around, bothering you. But they're
not." Her eyes narrowed, studying my face with sullen accusation. "You're not going to poke at me, are
you? I see these orderlies hiding behind their beards and their Coke-bottle glasses, always poking and
pointing. What are they hiding from, and who are they pointing at? It's annoying, and they look like fools.
I'll speak to somebody about it, I really will."

"Momma," I said, the bright edge still on my voice, but duller now, "I don't work here. I'm John, I'm your
son."

"I know exactly who you are," she snapped.

I wondered. My mother was almost ninety years old, physically still healthy enough, but mentally тАж
"She's simply outlived her brain's ability to cope with new pathways," as one of the nurses had put it, by
which she meant that the neurodegenerative agent had not been identified and probably would not be. As
if age made a human being any less entitled to dignity and health? I was genuinely afraid to ask for
clarification on this point, genuinely afraid to be told that Momma was just too old, that no intervention
could fix her. Or worse, that fixing her was too expensive, that nature had written her off and the
Immunity was simply standing by, waiting for the sentence to be carried out. "We simply haven't the
resourcesтАж"

We never did, never do. Christ, I couldn't even come up with a houseplant. I resolved to remedy that, to
fix what little I could in her life. It was, as we say, the least I could do.

"How are you, Momma?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Not dead yet." She grimaced, shaking her head, patting the bed beside her to invite me
to sit. "I sure outlived what I ever guessed I would. This is Jupiter, isn't it? Are we living on Jupiter?"

"On Ganymede, Momma. It's one of the moons."

"Ganymede," she said, testing the word, nodding slowly as if agreeing with the sound of it. "Yeah, okay.
One of the moons. Philusburg, that's where we live. Are we still in Philusburg?"