"Mary Rosenblum - California Dreaming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

CALIFORNIA DREAMER
By Mary Rosenblum
****

THE RELIEF BOAT CAME ONCE a week. This morning it had been a sturdy
salmon fisher, hired down from Oregon. The crew had unloaded the usual relief
supplies; canned milk and shrink-wrapped cheese, cans of peanut butter and stuff
like that. It had unloaded mail.

Mail. Letters. Junk mail, for GodтАЩs sake. No power yet, no telephones, but the
US Postal Service had come through. Neither rain nor snow nor earthquake . . . Ellen
struggled to swallow the hurting lump in her throat as she walked slowly homeward.
Back on the beach тАФ the new, Wave-scoured beach тАФ people were sorting through
envelopes and catalogues and cards. Crying and laughing. Britty Harris had gone
into hysterics over a postcard from her vacationing brother. Wish you were here, he
had scrawled on the back of a glossy picture of FishermanтАЩs Wharf.

Wish you were here. Neither FishermanтАЩs Wharf nor her brother were there
anymore.

There had been no ghost mail from Rebecca. The lump swelled, threatening to
turn into more tears. Ellen ducked her head and walked faster. Her shadow stretched
seaward; a tall, thin caricature of herself. Perhaps she was becoming a caricature;
turned hollow and surreal by the rome of the Quake. Changed.

Beanpole, Rebecca had called her, and said, Why canтАЩt I be thin like you? at
least once a week. Then Ellen would tell her to quit eating so much junk food and
Rebecca would call her a Jewish mother and they would both laugh, because
Scandinavian-blonde Ellen had grown up Catholic, and Rebecca was Jewish. It had
been a ritual between them тАФ a lightly spoken touchstone of love. As she turned up
the walkway to the house, the unshed tears settled into EllenтАЩs stomach, hard as
beach pebbles.

It was a cottage, more than a house. Weathered gray shingles, weathered gray
roof. RebeccaтАЩs house, because sheтАЩd always wanted to live near the sea, even
though she had called it ours. Scraggly geraniums bloomed in a pot on the tiny front
porch. The potтАФgeneric red earthenwareтАФwas cracked. Ellen had watched it crack,
clinging to this very railing as the earth shuddered and the house groaned in a choir
of terrifying voices.

Earthquake, Ellen had thought in surprise. ThatтАЩs not supposed to happen
here.

TheyтАЩd heard it was the Big One on JackтАЩs generator-run radio. But it was
only after the relief boats started coming that they got to see the news photos of San
Francisco and L.A. Ellen stomped sand from her shoes on the three wooden steps,
went inside. A long worktable filled half of the single main room. Boxes of beads,
feathers, and assorted junk cluttered the floor, and unfinished collages leaned against
the wall. RebeccaтАЩs workspace. RebeccaтАЩs life. The room looked . . . unfamiliar.
The Quake had changed everything, had charged the air with something like