"M. Rickert - Anyway" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rickert Mary)

I bring the cigarette to my lips. I am just about to inhale when I realize I can hear
him breathing. I hold my own breath so I can listen to the faint but beautiful sound of
my son breathing. He sighs. "Yeah, Mom."

"All right then. Good night, Robbie."

"Good night, Mom." He shuts the door, gently, not like a boy at all, but like a man
trying not to disturb the dreams of a child.

The next day's news is particularly grim: six soldiers are killed and a school is
bombed. It's a mistake, of course, and everyone is upset about it.

Without even having to look at the note I wrote to myself on the back of the check,
I call my father and ask him if the stones are supposed to be buried when there's a
full moon. I also make sure he's certain of the correlations, bury stones, son dies
but all wars end, don't bury stones and son lives but the wars continue.

My father has a little fit about answering my questions but eventually he tells me,
yes, the stones have to be buried under a full moon (and he isn't sure if it's one
stone or all of them) and yes, I have the correlations right.

"Is there something about sucking them?"

"What's that?"
"Did mom ever say anything about sucking the stones?"

"This thing with Robbie has really knocked the squirrel out of your tree, hasn't it?"

I tell him that it is perfectly rational that I be upset about my son going off to fight in
a war.

He says, "Well, the nut sure doesn't fall far from the tree."

"The fruit," I say.

"What's that?"

"That expression. It isn't the nut doesn't fall far from the tree, it's the fruit."


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The day before Robbie is to leave, I visit my mother at the nursing home. I bring the
shoebox of stones with me.

"Listen, Mom," I hiss into the soft shell of her ear. "I really need you to do
everything you can to give me some signal. Robbie's joined the Marines. Robbie, my
son. He's going to go to war. I need to know what I should do."