"Tuttle, Lisa - A Cold Dish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuttle Lisa)

A Cold Dish
by Lisa Tuttle


Throughout my pregnancy I was haunted by an ancient story.

Not so much a story, really, as a scene: the horrific climax to a dark drama of betrayal and revenge. There are only two people in the scene, a man and a woman. They are, or have been, married, and the woman has had two sons by him. Once she loved the man, but now her love has turned to hate. He knows, but is indifferent to her feelings, because he is a powerful and important figure, a force in the land, and she is a mere woman, powerless.

The setting is her house, in her kitchen. Although he has left her, abandoned her for another woman, he has returned to reclaim his sons. They are his heirs, after all; this was in the olden days when children were the property of their father, and women merely conveniences for their begetting.

With typical male vanity, he's not surprised that she is prepared to entertain him, has even cooked a meal for the man who, having ruined her life, has now come to take her children away. Accepting it all as his due, he sits and allows her to serve him. He eats heartily, never wondering why she doesn't join him in the feast.

Finally, replete, he asks for his sons.

She, laughing horribly, tells him he's just had them.

What is this story? Who is she? Who is he? Without names, I couldn't research it, I had no idea where to begin. I looked through books of ancient myths, and Greek tragedies, but could never find it. But I must have read it somewhere, or seen it staged.Е

"People don't do such things." That's from a more modern playЧIbsen, is it, or Strindberg? Anyway, that's how I feel. Yet even if it never really happened, someone wrote it, someone thought it up and found it plausible. Women have killed their own children, I know, but Е men are the ones who made parenthood all about ownership, inheritance, and staking a claim, giving a name or not, as if love were dependent on genes, or law. It's men, not women, who have always had the option of denying their bastards. It's women who adopt, or even steal babies, just to have someone to love. And it's men who want to believe that they're more important than the children they sire, that a woman spurned would butcher her own children just to spite the man who left her.

Yet what do I know, really, about what people will do in extremis?

And what if the story I think I remember is something I made up myself?




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Carmen was reassuring. Strange dreams, violent fantasies, are not so unusual. They don't mean I'm an awful person. I certainly don't have to act on my fantasies. That I fear I might Е well, it's not surprising if I seem a stranger to myself, if my mind works differently these days: pregnancy is an altered state.
Carmen started out as my guilt counselor but she's become my friend. She was supposed to help me come to terms with my own accountability, to break down the "criminal mind-set" which had put me on the wrong path, and help me with "reintegration" into society. Over the months she's become more of a general advisor, and a good friend. Maybe the only friend I've got, after all that happened.




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I did feel guilty when we first got caught; so did Josh. Actually, we felt guilty even before that, fearful of being caughtЧoffice affairs are always a bad idea, but sometimes they're irresistible.
I should have resisted, I know that. We both knew about the legislation specifically outlawing sexual activity on federal property between federal employees. To make matters worse, we weren't equals: I was his boss.

But it wasn't sexual harrassment! It wasn't like that between us. I didn't force him into anything. Everything he said in court was a ruse designed by his lawyer to get him a lighter sentence. It worked, too. He was so convincing even I wondered: was I really a heartless, predatory she-devil who had intimidated poor young Josh into providing sexual gratification?

I know lawyers will say anything. My own lawyer wanted to accuse Josh of rape, but I kept her reined in. I wasn't prepared to do that to himЧand, anyway, she admitted that if we weren't believed, it could backfire really badly. I thought I had less to lose than Josh: no partner, money in the bank.Е I'd lost my job, of courseЧwe both hadЧbut I figured I'd move into the private sector once the uproar died down.

I knew I'd done wrong, and I accepted that I would be punished. I thought losing my job was punishment enough. When I admitted my guilt, I didn't realize it would go to court.

Legal bills ate up my savings in no time. I didn't know how I'd manage to pay the fine. I didn't know the judge had worse than a fine up his sleeve.