Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

Yes, goddamn you, I’m crying tonight, what are you doing? Are you cooking steaks on your patio, are you having friends in for Bloody Marys, are you kissing your neighbor’s husband in the kitchen? Well, I’m crying tonight.

Success is not an acceptance of universal love. Success is a roundhouse slap in the teeth of the world.

She lay on the bed and wept into her pillow and thought, In June, I’ll leave for Rome, and wondered what it was like to be seventeen.

It began as a day of confusion for Kate, confusion upon confusion, confusion compounded until it built to terror, she would remember it always as the most terrifying day of her life.

It began with hot June sunlight sifting through Venetian blinds, stripes of black and gold, and weird discordant music far away, stripes like a prison, stripes like the bars of a cell covering her bed, and somewhere in the distance a strange music, the same music struck over and over again, the ticking of a clock in the silent gold-and-black-striped prison of her bed.

Ten o’clock.

The house still except for the music drifting up the steps and into her room, the sunshine streaking her bed in parallel bars. Mother, she thought.

She touched her hair reassuringly, and drifted back to sleep.

Thunder.

The echoing roll of thunder in a room gone suddenly black, streaks of lightning in a summer sky, what had happened to the sun? Thunder rolling ominously and downstairs she could hear her mother at the piano, the chords rolling like the thunder itself, but where had the sunshine gone, hadn’t there been sunshine? The ticking of the clock again, she looked, she opened one eye and looked as a streak of lightning struck close nearby, and she saw the time, eleven-thirty, and she wondered where the sun had gone, wondered what had become of the Saturday sun.

Confusion.

Voices in the house, the piano stopped now, only the voices coming up the stair well, shaking her from sleep, rain lashing the trees and the lawn outside, she rolled over and pulled the blanket to her throat.

“Amanda, look at what I’ve got. Road maps! Dozens of them! The whole damn country is open to us! We can go anywhere!”

“Excuse me, Matthew, I’m working. Can’t you see that?”

“What? Oh, sure, sure. I’m sorry, Amanda.”

The music again. Discordant, cacophonous, the same chord struck over and over again, resounding up the stair well, a sudden crash of thunder, Kate sat up suddenly and stared into the room.

“Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? We could go there, Amanda.”

“I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, no. Matthew, I’m trying to figure out this passage.”

“Honey, can’t that wait a few minutes? I want you to look at—”

“No, it can’t wait a few minutes!”

Her voice was sharp, a chord punctuated her words. Kate got out of bed in her nightgown and walked into the hallway, and came down the steps quietly. She sat on the third step from the bottom like a little girl, sleep in her eyes. There was a rained-in feeling to the house. She wondered why Parsie wasn’t making any noise in the kitchen, and then remembered Parsie’s little boy was sick, and her mother had sent her home last night for the weekend. She looked into the living room. Her father was stretched on the floor. The floor was covered with opened road maps. Lightning streaked outside again. She huddled in her own arms, suddenly frightened.

“Is something wrong, Amanda?” Matthew asked.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why the hell can’t we—?”

“Matthew, I don’t like swearing in the house!”

“Who the hell is—” He cut himself short and stared at her. “All right, Amanda, what is it?” he asked patiently.

“Nothing. I don’t want to look at road maps right now. I want to work. If you had any respect at all for what I’m trying to do, you’d take yourself out of here and—”

“Honey, we’re leaving on the fourth. I don’t want to sound—”

“I’m not even sure we’re leaving,” she said.

He stared at her silently.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to finish this by the end of the summer.”

“I know you do, honey. But if you don’t finish it by then, you’ll finish it in the fall. What’s so urgent about—?”

“I want to finish it this summer!” she said sharply.

She was sitting at the piano with her hands in her lap, not looking at him, staring down at the keyboard.

“Amanda, we’ll only be gone through July,” he said gently. “When you come back in August—”

“I can’t spare a whole month.”

“Well, why not?”

“Because I can’t, because I told you already, I want to finish this now, this summer, and I’ll need all summer if I’m ever going to—”

“I just can’t understand the rush, that’s all. You’ve been working on that damn thing for as long as I can remember, and now—”

“I told you I don’t like swearing in the house!”

“Oh, what the hell!” Matthew said angrily. “Now listen, Amanda. You just listen to me. I managed to take a month away from the office, I thought it would please you, I thought we could be alone together, and now you... well now, you just listen. We’re going away, and that’s all there is to it. You can begin work again when we get back. August is time enough.”

“No,” she said.

“Well, that’s the way I want it.”

“Well, that’s too bad.”

“Yes, you’re damned right it’s too bad, because that’s just the way it’s going to be.”

“Then you’ll go without me .”

“All right, then I’ll go without you!” he shouted. He stared at her angrily for a moment. Then he let out his breath and walked to the piano and took her hands in his, sitting beside her on the bench, and said, “Honey, I don’t want to go without you.”

“Then don’t.”

“Honey, we’d have a whole month together, just the two of us.”

“I can’t go this summer. I have to finish my work this summer.”

“Your work, your work,” he said, exploding again, “what’s so goddamn important, all of a sudden, about—”

She slapped him, suddenly and viciously. As Kate sat on the staircase, she saw her mother slap him, saw his head rock back with the blow and saw his fists tighten automatically and thought in that moment he would kill her. And then his hands loosened, and Kate sat in confusion watching his face, and watching her mother’s face gone suddenly cold as if he had said something terrible and unforgivable to her.

“All right,” Matthew said very quietly. “All right.” He rose from the bench and walked to where the road maps were spread on the floor. He folded them very quietly and very calmly, pushed them into a neat stack and picked them up, and then walked silently out of the living room. He walked past the hall steps without seeing his daughter. The door slammed when he left the house. A thunderclap ripped open the sky. Lightning flashed, there was more thunder, and then silence. She heard a car starting outside, and then heard the shriek of tires against the driveway gravel. The house was still for a very long time. She expected the music to start in the living room again. She sat on the steps, confused, and waited for her mother to begin playing again.

But Amanda sat at the piano staring at the keyboard with her hands in her lap, her face cold and expressionless, the rain streaking the window behind her.

She did not begin playing again.

Kate watched, waiting.

She wondered if she should go into the living room and say something to her. She had never seen her mother looking that way, and the sight frightened her. Stiff and cold, she sat motionless at the piano and stared at the keys, making no move to touch them. Kate rose slowly and started up the steps. When she reached her room, she lay on the bed and looked out at the rain, and waited for the music to begin again.