"Leslie What - Clinging to a Thread" - читать интересную книгу автора (What Leslie)

CLINGING TO A THREAD
By Leslie What
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I SEE THE CHILD AS CLEARLY as if she were directly before me. Clinging to a
gray stuffed dog, she looks around, lost. She is six тАФ seven at most, with fine black
hair that crops her porcelain face like a heart-shaped frame. Her pale coloring
contrasts starkly to her hair and I begin to think my dream is black and white when I
notice the piercing blue of her eyes.

The air is gray, redolent with ash. The child peers inside an abandoned
storefront, then picks a pebble off the windowsill to stuff into her mouth. She sees
me and starts forward, but stops as if a wall has blocked her way. тАЬWho are you?тАЭ I
ask. тАЬWhat is your name?тАЭ

тАЬSuch questions of a ghost,тАЭ she says. Her voice echoes off the empty street
and into the chill night air. I realize then that I exist somewhere else outside this
dream, and that if I am not careful to stay calm, I will waken. This worries me, for I
am not ready to leave the girl who stands just beyond me. She is shivering. As I
huddle inside the thick wool comforter from my bed, I wonder why the child has no
coat?

Sarah stopped by on her way to visit Mother at the hospital. тАЬIтАЩll be along
later,тАЭ I said, not yet ready to get dressed. When my sister asked if I were getting
enough sleep, I lied. I was just tired from working, I said, hating myself for pushing
away SarahтАЩs concern as if she were only offering me a second cup of coffee.

Sarah left, and I spent the next hour squinting into a mirror, where I noticed
for the first time the cold cream pallor and the deep shadows under my eyes that had
so worried my sister. I touched my face with my fingertips, to reassure myself that
the wan reflection staring back was really mine. For the first time in years, I put on
powdered rouge, smudged the color under the hollow of my cheek, then leathered it
upward until the line between artifact and reality was blurred. I did not bother to do
anything with my hair. It had tired to a limp brown that would not hold its shape, no
matter what. Though I did not feel up to going, in the end I left for the hospital to
visit my mother, Ruth.

The dreams had been keeping me on the edge of wakefulness since the night
Ruth dropped off the box filled with linens. That had been six months ago, long
before RuthтАЩs first stroke.

тАЬI want you to have these,тАЭ Ruth had said. She was not feeling well at the
time, her breathing still labored from a recent bout of pneumonia. She was starting to
look older, her hair thinned, a dull color that could no longer be considered silver.
Her back was hunched and her hands clutched the arms of the chair so she could sit
upright.
 If Ruth were older, what did that make me, I wondered? My mother still
looked on me as a child, but I was now past forty, with a childтАФ a son named
DavidтАФ of my own. Funny, that I could not remember her any younger than I was
at that very moment. In fact, I was certain she had never been a child; she could not