"Michelle West - Under The Skin" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

gathering up the dishes that she spoke.
"Janie, I know that things have been pretty awful around here lately. I'm sorry. But
I was thinking today that maybe I've been looking at things the wrong way. I wasn't,
I wasn't always easy to live with. I'm not-"
"You don't have to say this, Mom."
"I do have to say it." Her mother drank air, a heave of chest and lung, a grasp for
more than breath. "I'm not easy to live with. I think, I think my mother must've
been like me, when I was like you. I don't think you deserve that, I don't deserve it
myself. I'm going to do better. I promise."
"I know you will, Mom," Jane said, and for just a moment she allowed herself to
believe it.
She came that night, and Janie followed her, sliding out of her room and past her
mother's door. On impulse she stopped, peered in between the crack left between
open door and frame. Her mother was sleeping on her side, curled around a pillow
as if it were her father's back.
She did hate her father, sort of, and that was good. She turned away and crept
down the stairs, like a thief or worse. Like that father, meeting the woman of his
dreams.
"You are quiet, Jane."
Jane's silver whiskers bobbed in the field of her vision as she shook her head. They
traveled the crowded walks of the still-trendy Queen West Village, avoiding the
authoritative steps of people who had places to be but no time to get there.
"Do you not find the forest night interesting? There are lights here, made by man,
and they change constantly over the years. I have always found these lights
fascinating for what they reveal and what they conceal. There is a heart to them that
is divided."
Jane Thornton said nothing.
"And here, there will be music, and it will be fine and lively; there, there will be
poverty, and around it, like broken rivers, riches will pass without stopping."
"Panhandlers," Jane said.
"They have their own stories, Jane. They have a pathos to them that can be both
revolting and compelling."
The fox wrinkled its nose.
"Do you not like the gift you've been given?"
"Yes I do. I like it."
"Do you not desire your freedom?"
"Yes."
"Was it not magic you sought?"
"Yes."
"Ah."
Her mother was up before her alarm went off. Jane knew this because it wasn't the
insistent sound of her mother's droning alarm, ignored, that finally pulled her out of
bed; it was her mother's voice.
"Janie! Breakfast!"
She went downstairs in a state of shock. "Mom?"
"You aren't dressed yet."
"I'm not even awake," Jane said, and pinched her arm theatrically.
Her mother laughed. "There's too much cholesterol here," she sad apologetically.
"But I thought, first breakfast in a while."
Pancakes. Bacon. Scrambled eggs. Butter. Way too much cholesterol.