"Phyllis_A._Whitney_-_Feather_On_The_Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Whitney Phyllis A)

So it was like that-a butler, money?
In a moment or two Corinthea Aries came on the phone, and I heard her firm, rather aristocratic tones for the first time. Her voice carried a no-nonsense authority that was reassuring, and it was not a young voice. The words were carefully, precisely spoken.
"I told the people at the Center that this was only a slight chance," she informed me. "But I insisted that I must talk with you as soon as possible. I came upon an article in an American magazine a few days ago, and the photograph of your daughter seemed to resemble a little girl of ten who is staying in my home at present. Of course the years from three to ten make for a great many changes, yet I had a curious flash of recognition when I first saw the picture. It was so strong an impression that I felt I must get in touch with you. I am sorry you live so far away."
I made up my mind instantly-something Larry, had always cautioned me against. "I'll come out there," I said. "I don't want to miss the slightest chance. I've always thought that I'd know Debbie immediately if I saw her again-no matter how many years have passed, or how much she may have changed."
"Wait a moment, Mrs. Blake." Corinthea Aries's voice was
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dry, faintly disapproving. "Don't decide too quickly. You know nothing about me. I will have my attorney send you information, and it will be mailed at once if you'll give me your address. Then you can take time to consider what you want to do. If you wish to come, you can let me know."
Her sensible approach was reassuring and made me all the more anxious to see this child. I suspected that Mrs. Aries wouldn't move impulsively into anything, and I agreed to wait. "Can you tell me more about the little girl?" I asked. "Why do you have doubts about her?"
"I'm afraid that's impossible to explain on the telephone," Mrs. Aries told me. "The situation is too complex, and you will have to meet the persons involved before you can even begin to figure this out."
That sounded mysterious, but before I could say anything more she went on.
"I must warn you that I hope this child will not prove to be yours. It is to my interest. Mrs. Blake, that she not be. But I must be sure, if that's at all possible. Should you decide to fly out here, I will be grateful if you can stay for a few days' N isit in my home. I will say nothing about your purpose in coming -at least not at first. You will simply be the daughter of an old friend. I don't want to get the wind up, as my grandson used to say. We must pla> it by ear. I hope everything may be decided quickly, but I'm not sure that your coming will make any difference. Could you get away conveniently?"
The private school where I taught would give me leave, I was sure. I had an excellent rapport with the director, and she had always been understanding and sympathetic. At least the chance to take some decisive action had stopped my shaking. I gave Mrs. Aries my address, said good-bye, and hung up. Her words about "getting the wind up" had an ominous ring, but I could only put them aside until I reached Victoria.
In the top drawer of my desk was a photograph-the last one taken of Debbie at her third birthday party. This was
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the picture that had been used in the magazine and that had caught Mrs. Aries's attention. At first I used to look at Debbie's smiling face every day, trying to bring her close to me, trying to project her safety, wherever she was. Praying a lot. Sometimes I talked to the photo, telling her about me, and willing her not to forget me. The plaid ribbon was in the drawer too, frayed from much handling, and I held it as I'd avoided doing in the last few years, not wanting to torment myself. Now the pain was there again, the wound open and aching.
In the photograph Debbie wore a pony tail on each side, and bangs across her forehead. Unfortunately, she had no particularly distinctive characteristics, no identifiable marks. She resembled too many other small girls her age, and she didn't look much like me, or anyone else in the family. Nevertheless, Mrs. Aries had experienced that "flash"-which might mean anything.
When I returned to the living room my father held out a hand to me, and I went to sit beside him, aware of how solid and dependable he was. My mother seemed in contrast slight and delicate, though always filled with light and hope, no matter what happened. I'd been told that I looked like her, but if I'd ever had her radiance I'd lost it years ago. Each of my parents was strong in a different way.
I watched their faces as I signed what had happened. When they understood they sat quietly for a time. My mother reached over to take my father's hand, cupping it around hers as her fingers spoke to him, spelling out private words I couldn't watch. I remembered that she'd told me once how she could lie beside my father in the dark and they could "whisper" to each other, with no need to see or hear.
I sat waiting, checking my impatience, my need for action, thinking about them both and of the marvel of how they came to be together.
When Martin Thorne was twenty-two, he'd gone to work as gardener for my mother's parents. Betty, at nineteen, was
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struggling with her own recent loss of hearing, and she found comfort in the presence of this strong, handsome young man who seemed so assured in the outdoors and so uncertain inside a house. She was learning to speechreadwhich was easier for her than for those born deaf, because she knew the form spoken words took. But she was also learning to sign, since she was eager for all forms of communication.
Though Martin had been born deaf, as an orphan he'd gone very young to a children's home, where his disability hadn't been recognized at once. There had been a year of primitive communication, during which he was thought retarded. Finally, after a perceptive aide realized that he couldn't hear, he was sent to a state school for the deaf. There he had been taught to sign. My mother persuaded him to help her learn Ameslan, and for the first time he had something he could give to another human being.
When she discovered his wizardry with plants, she encouraged him to develop the magic his hands knew so well. He possessed the talent of a sculptor when it came to hedges and topiary, and my mother must have been a mind-expanding and totally loving experience for him. Perhaps the first he'd ever known.
They had run off to be married, escaping the disapproval and shock of her parents, and it was my mother who had helped to turn Dad into the well-paid landscape artist he became. Words had little to do with those marvels he created. Plants and flowers seemed to thrive at his touch, and all the frustrations of being deaf disappeared while he worked in a garden. She had made herself a partner in the business end, able to speak for him, and by this time well able to read lips-which was a skill not every deaf person is able to achieve.
My grandparents, after their first distress, had the heart and courage to learn understanding, and they came to love Martin as a son. We didn't see them often now but kept in
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touch through letters and the telephone, on which / could reach them.
My parents had no other children, and I was thankful over and over again that my mother had lived in the world of speech and books and writing, so that she could understand the subtleties that words could convey. Ameslan isn't really English in its form. It is a beautiful, graceful, visual language, as difficult to learn as any other foreign language, and graphically expressive in its own right. I learned from both my parents and became a better teacher with the children in my charge as a result.
Nevertheless, by the time I was eighteen I'd wanted to be more a part of the outside world where all my friends lived. My parents had never held me back, remembering their own escape, and I rushed headlong into love.
What a chance I'd taken in marrying a man to whom mountain climbing was the most powerful passion in his life. Heights terrified me. Yet we'd had those few good years together, and Larry had loved me in his own way, and he'd adored Debbie. Until he fell down a mountain in Vermont that wasn't all that high! The thought wasn't as flip as it sounded. For a long time there was a deep anger in me because Larry had thrown his life away so senselessly. His was an obsession I'd never understood, and perhaps it was anger itself that helped to keep me going until the pain of his loss faded to some extent.
Debbie had been the great reward of my marriage, and by this time it was as though Larry belonged to a more remote past than she did. She might be alive somewhere, and one of the hardest things for me to control had been my imaginings of a child molested, tortured, hurt psychologically and physically. Such thoughts were terrible to live with, and I'd needed counseling for a time to get by.
With Larry dead, and Debbie gone, I'd moved into my parents' home. They needed me and I needed them as I tried to pick up the pieces of my life. I joined groups of other
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parents like me-it seemed terrible that there were enough of us to form "groups." Part of our work was to educate parents who still had their children-to teach others to guard and protect, yet without instilling destructive fear.
In the living room we'd all been still for a while. Silence was normal in this house, when it came to a lack of speech, though my father could sometimes be noisy without realizing it. My mother had the memory of sound that she would never lose, and she was careful of pot-banging in the kitchen, careful not to turn up the television, lest it be too loud without her knowing it.
In the silence my father had been thinking. Now he signed, asking a question: "Where place you go?"
I got out the atlas and we looked for Canada's British Columbia-for Vancouver Island, which is separate from the city of Vancouver across the water. Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, clings to the lower tip of the island, close to the United States, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca between. Vancouver Island is the largest island on the Pacific coast, stretching north for two hundred and eighty-five miles along the coast of mainland Canada.
Mother had read about Victoria. "Very beautiful. British influence. Many flowers and gardens," she told me, interpreting for my father.
Dad flung signs at me in warning. "Planes. Dangerous. Go train."
I smiled at him and nodded. It was better to agree and not upset him. Mother would bring him around. All I wanted was for the days to pass until mail came from that far island and I could be on my way.
I didn't tell them the strange thing Mrs. Corinthea Aries had said-that she didn't want the little girl in Victoria to be mine. That was something I could only deal with when circumstances had been explained to me and I had seen the child.
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In my anxious state of mind, the flight from Kennedy Airport seemed endless. All I could do while the plane ate up the miles was read and nap a little, and try not to think of what might lie ahead.
I'd had an exchange of letters and phone calls with Mrs. Aries and was now familiar with her expensive stationery that bore the name RADBURN HOUSE at the top. Her "references" were of course superior. I'd learned that she was a widow, and that her husband's family had once owned an important printing house in Vancouver. Radburn was her maiden name, so the house where she lived belonged to her side of the family.
There was no question about her background of wealth and respectability. All this reassured me, in spite of her continued warning that the child in question was unlikely to be mine. So far, I knew no more about the little girl than I had in the beginning-not even the name by which she was called. Mrs. Aries would discuss nothing until she could talk with me face to face, though she'd made one troubling request.
"It's best if you don't use your own name when you come, Mrs. Blake. Perhaps your maiden name would serve?"
I was Jennifer Blake, but my friends called me Jenny, so I told her I would be Jenny Thorne.