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

brushing away a fly. "She was nuts, what can I say? Take those things out of here.
Take the box of them. I never want to see them again."

When I get home the kitchen is, well, not gleaming, but devoid of pot roast. Robbie
left a note scrawled in black marker on the magnetic board on the refrigerator. "Out.
Back later." I stare at it while I convince myself that he is fine. He will be back, unlike
Tony who died or Robbie's father who left me when I was six months' pregnant
because, he said, he realized he had to pursue his first love, figure skating.

I light the birch candle to help get rid of the cooked meat smell, which still lingers in
the air, sweep the floor, wipe the counters and the table. Then I make myself a cup
of decaf tea. While it steeps, I change into my pajamas. Finally, I sit on the couch in
front of the TV, the shoebox of stones on the coffee table in front of me. I sip my
tea and watch the news, right from the start so I see all the gruesome stuff, the
latest suicide bombing, people with ravaged-grief faces carrying bloody bodies, a
weeping mother in robes, and then, a special report, an interview with the mother of
a suicide bomber, clutching the picture of her dead son and saying, "He is saving the
world."

I turn off the TV, put the cup of tea down, and pick up the shoebox of stones. They
rattle in there, like bones, I think, remembering the box that held Tony's ashes after
he was cremated. I tuck the shoebox under my arm, blow out the candle in the
kitchen, check that the doors are locked, and go to bed. But it is the oddest thing:
the whole time I am doing these tasks, I am thinking about taking one of those
stones and putting it into my mouth, sucking it like a lozenge. It makes no sense, a
strange impulse, I think, a weird synapse in my brain, a reaction to today's stress. I
shove the shoebox under my bed, lick my lips and move my mouth as though
sucking on something sour. Then, just as my head hits the pillow, I sit straight up,
remembering.

It was after Tony's memorial, after everyone had left our house. There was an odd
smell in the air, the scent of strange perfumes and flowers (I remember a bouquet
of white flowers already dropping petals in the heat) mingled with the odor of
unusual foods, casseroles and cakes, which had begun arriving within hours after we
learned of Tony's death. There was also a new silence, a different kind of silence
than any I had ever experienced before in my eleven years. It was a heavy silence
and oddly, it had an odor all its own, sweaty and sour. I felt achingly alone as I
walked through the rooms, looking for my parents, wondering if they, too, had died.
Finally, I found my father sitting on the front porch, weeping. It was too terrible to
watch. Following the faint noises I heard coming from there, I next went to the
kitchen. And that's when I saw my mother sitting at the table, picking stones out of
a shoebox and shoving them into her mouth. My brother was dead. My father was
weeping on the porch and my mother was sitting in the kitchen, sucking on stones. I
couldn't think of what to do about any of it. Without saying anything, I turned
around and went to bed.

It is so strange, what we remember, what we forget. I try to remember everything I
can about Tony. It is not very much, and some of it is suspect. For instance, I think I
remember us standing next to the Volkswagen while my dad took that photograph,
but I'm not even sure that I really remember it because when I picture it in my mind,