"Sheri S. Tepper - The Fresco" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

less-than-perfect Hispanic candidates for college, Carlos hyphenated his last name, charmed the
committee, like his dad at that age, he could charm anyone when he tried, and was accepted. Since he was
twenty, he chose to share a house with several other foundation beneficiaries, while Angelica, only
eighteen, lived in a dormitory.
For Benita, it was the tape at the end of her race. She had a day or two of exhilaration, then she
deflated slowly and inexorably, like a souffl├й taken out of the oven. She had never considered what she
would do when it was over, never planned for afterward when the thing was done. Mami hadn't ever
mentioned what she would do then. The worst was the unforeseen fact that with Angelica gone, not just to
college but away to college, Benita had no one to celebrate with or sympathize with or mourn with. With
both of them gone, she couldn't stay busy enough not to think, and over all those mostly solitary years at
the bookstore, she had learned to think.
It seemed to her that up until then, she had been two people, one at work, one at home. The work
Benita was decisive, crisp, intelligent, capable. She spoke to people directly, simply, without strain and
without later self-recriminations over wrong words, wrong emphases, wrong ideas. The home Benita, on
the other hand, was tentative, common, an ignorant woman who used a small vocabulary and bad
grammar, who ventured comments on nothing more complicated than the dinner menu, a sort of wife-
mother-sponge to soak up Bert's rages and Carlito's sulks.
When the kids went away, however, there was no need for a mother-sponge anymore, no reason for
that person to take up space. Perhaps it was time to let bovine Benita go. The planning that had kept her
going all these years was over, so maybe it was now time to make another plan.
She joined a women's support group. She signed up for an aerobics class at the Y. She began going to
work even earlier and, if it wasn't group night, staying even later. Half a dozen fast food places were
within a few blocks of the store. Her little office was quiet and private. She had a comfortable old recliner
chair and a little TV back there. She continued putting money away, for her own use this time, for
sometime three or four years from now, when she couldn't stick it anymore. She knew she would leave
Bert eventually, the time just hadn't come yet. She managed to encounter him only over occasional
breakfasts or sometimes very late at night when he staggered in and fell on the couch. She kept food in the
refrigerator for him. She did his laundry. Up until the house arrest, they'd managed to get along without
real damage.
And that was the story of her life, which had now taken this totally unexpected and ridiculous turn,
leaving her miles from home with a screaming cube in her hands and nobody to ask for help. Though,
sensibly, asking for help would be exactly the wrong thing to do! She turned to Mami's litany, instead.
Help yourself, Benita. You can if you will. Think for yourself, Benita. Make a life for yourself. Take a
deep breath and figure out what needs to be done.
She closed her eyes, trying to clear the fog in her head, then leaned forward, gripped by a sudden
cramp in her middle, or in her chest, or somewhere she couldn't locate, all of her at once totally occupied
by a spasm of pain that seemed to pull her apart, arms off in different directions, legs gone swimming
away, head only vaguely attached, all the world going gray and hazy. She gasped, opened her mouth to
scream, but was unable to make a sound, felt the gray go to black . . .
And then it all went away, all at once, the pain, the grayness, all of it, and she stood up, breathing
deeply, wondering what in the hell had happened to her? Was that a faint? A swoon? How remarkable.
She climbed into the car and turned on the blower to air it out. The pain had filled her entire being,
but now she could find no lingering evidence of it. Not the tiniest ache. Everything around her shone with
an almost crystal clarity. She had never seen things so clearly. So. Figure out what came next.
First thing: hide the cube and the money. Bert must not get his hands on either the cube or the money.
Just counting it had dried her mouth again. She had never had any money except what she'd earned, and
she'd always cashed her regular paycheck and paid the bills in cash so there wouldn't be anything left for
Bert to drink up. The other check, the secret check that included all her overtime and hourly wages above
minimum wage, had gone into the secret bank account.
She took the remnants of her lunch out of the pack, put the cube and money on the bottom and