Bestseller. Olivia Goldsmith

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ To some people

       Love is given.

       To others

       Only heaven.

      Had anyone flung a bone from the tables of joy to Terry? Opal had given her daughter love, but is a mother’s love ever enough? Certainly it wasn’t for Terry. There had been no comfort for her. And now Opal was alone, left with only Terry’s dust to comfort her. She sat with the small metal box on her lap, and somehow it seemed as if it weighed enough so that Opal would never again be able to move from under the burden.

      Now, while the Albinoni droned on endlessly. Opal merely stared at the front of the little room.

      She jumped when she felt the hand on her shoulder and turned to look into the face of a woman slightly older than she. “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Did I startle you?”

      Opal nodded. The woman had a long, kind face, and Opal could see that tears had gathered on her reddened lower lids.

      “I’m Roberta Fine. I worked with your daughter.”

      Opal tried to gather herself together. Of course. Terry had written to her about Roberta. What was the name of her shop? The Book Stop? No. The Bookstall? Opal tried to smile and was about to say something—one of those things that people say—about how nice it was for you to come or how thoughtful you were to remember, when the woman’s face seemed to reconfigure itself, morphing into a rictus of sorrow. She burst into noisy, hysterical sobs.

      “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she cried. After that Opal couldn’t understand much of what she said except for something about letting Terry go, and how it hadn’t been Terry’s fault, and how Roberta felt so responsible. “I just had no idea,” Roberta gulped. “I didn’t know the job meant so much to her. I can’t tell you what this has done to me. But it must be so very much worse for you.” Once again the woman’s face collapsed, and she began searching in her neat black purse for a handkerchief.

      Opal handed her one of her own. She also reached out and patted Roberta Fine’s thin, black-dad shoulder. The woman did look ravaged. She had fired Terry, apparently. But for her to think that Terry had killed herself over that! Well, Opal had lived long enough to know that everyone thought that their own experience was the true reality, the center of the world. Now she took Roberta’s long, thin, damp white hand in her own ruddier one. “It’s not your fault,” Opal said. “Please, please don’t think that for a minute. Losing the job didn’t do this to Terry. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine. I shouldn’t have encouraged her. I shouldn’t have pushed her—”

      “But you inspired her! She loved you, she admired you. She talked about you all the time.” The woman paused. “Oh my God, you don’t think this is your fault, do you?” The two women looked into each other’s eyes for an endless minute. “Perhaps I’ve been very foolish,” Roberta said.

      “Perhaps I have, too,” Opal agreed. “And perhaps blaming ourselves is very self-indulgent. Disrespectful of Terry, too.”

      Roberta continued to look into Opal’s eyes. “It is easier to feel guilt than pain, isn’t it?”

      Opal nodded. “Yes.” She paused. “It’s also easier to feel responsible than to feel powerless.” Roberta looked away, then nodded.

      After a moment Opal reached into her own battered purse and took out the letters, all of Terry’s rejection letters. “If anyone is responsible, here are the culprits. But I think we have to give Terry the dignity of making a choice. She was tired of all this. They’d worn her down.”

      Roberta took the pile of letters and began to thumb through them. She pulled out her glasses, put them on, and read one letter after another, shaking her head and making small clicking noises with her tongue. “Oh, really!” she said to one letter and pushed it to the bottom of the stack. At another one she silently shook her head. After a few more, she looked back at Opal. “But I had no idea,” she said. “I mean, I knew about Terry’s work, but I had no idea … Do you know the trick Doris Lessing pulled?”

      Opal shook her head. “Doris Lessing submitted a new manuscript of her own to four or five publishers. But she used a different name. And she was rejected by all of them.” She paused. Then, gently, she asked, “Is the book any good?”

      Now Opal felt tears rising in her own eyes. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The parts I read were brilliant, but I never read the whole thing.”

      “Well, read it now,” Roberta urged.

      Then Opal’s tears overflowed, and though she kept calm and could speak, she couldn’t wipe her eyes quickly enough to hide them. She sniffed. “I can’t read it now. Terry has destroyed it. There’s nothing left but ashes in her fireplace.” Opal looked down into her lap. “There’s nothing left of her life except for ashes.”

      Roberta reached out and patted Opal’s arm, briefly and with the lightest touch imaginable. Opal could tell that-like herself—Roberta was not a huggy person. “Tragic,” was all that Roberta said for a few minutes. And then, “You must, you must bring those ashes of the manuscript back with you as well,” Roberta said. “They are as much a part of Terry as whatever is left in that box.”

      Opal looked up, and—for the first time since she had gotten the call, the phone call from the lady detective with the terrible news—she smiled. “Yes. Of course. That’s what I’ll do.” And somehow the thought of mingling her daughter’s ashes with the manuscript ashes not only made perfect sense but also gave some small comfort to Opal O’Neal.

      “Do you want any help?” Roberta asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

      “You’ve already done a lot for me,” Opal told her.

      “And you for me,” Roberta responded. Then she took out a card and handed it to Opal. “My shop is only a few blocks away,” she said. “Come by, or call, or write. And let me know if you need any help or want a ride to the airport.”

      Opal thanked her, and then, somehow, she found the Strength to stand. Together the two women walked slowly out of the graceless parlor.

      Opal had finished packing,, and her suitcases stood by the door. She had given away all of those things of Terry’s that could be of any use to the homeless, then carried out two large bags of garbage, which she left in the rubber containers at the side of the door. Last, she had swept up the ashes from the fireplace grate and carefully added them to the contents of the metal box. She had washed her face and hands, put on some lipstick, combed her gray, permed curls, and made two final telephone calls, to ConEd and Nynex to terminate service. Then she took one last look around the room and went to the door, ready to leave.

      But it seemed that, despite the few belongings of Terry’s that she’d saved, there was more luggage than Opal could handle. She tried to lift a suitcase and a bag in each hand, but that was too heavy and awkward. She couldn’t get through the door. She would have to make two trips, and she was afraid to leave anything on the New York sidewalk—even for a moment—while she went back in to get the remaining baggage. She reached into her purse for the keys and pushed all the luggage into the hall. She thought for a moment of calling Roberta Fine for help, but that was silly. She would just have to inch it all out, rather like a sheepdog moving a flock. But as Opal got to the front of the hallway, one of the bags she was pushing fell against the super’s door. And, surprisingly quickly, he flung it open.

      “Oh. СКАЧАТЬ