Henry's Sisters. Cathy Lamb
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Название: Henry's Sisters
Автор: Cathy Lamb
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780758244802
isbn:
“What marriage?” I shrieked. “You can’t get married unless you date, and dating takes being able to say hello to a person of the male species from this planet.”
She flew at me like a little torpedo and landed on top of me, my face smashed down.
“Do you think it’s healthy to stay home all day thinking up ways to kill people?” I huffed out, rain running down my neck.
“Do you think it’s healthy,” she huffed back, “to put a wall between yourself and everybody else?”
I whipped her over to her back. “Do you think it’s healthy to count how many steps you take to the bathroom and tap toilet paper?”
She gasped in outrage. “Do you think it’s healthy to keep a huge secret from your sisters, Isabelle? We know what happened to you, but you shut us out and you hide behind your camera like it’s…like it’s an eighteenth-century shield!” (I’ve mentioned her love of the classics?)
“You hide behind your front door, Embroidery Queen!”
She got me with an elbow to my neck for that one.
You might think we would be embarrassed by our behavior: Two grown women rolling around fighting on a deck.
Here’s the truth: We are long past being embarrassed.
We kicked away from each other—kick, kick, kick—then Janie dove on top of me and we were face-to-face. She yelled, “Sometimes I think I hate you, Isabelle!”
“Sometimes I think I hate you, too, Janie!”
We both grunted.
“Well, I know I hate you both,” another voice cut through, sharp and low. “What’s that got to do with anything? Now get the hell up, your neighbors are all spying out their windows wondering why two grown women are wrestling on a damn deck.”
With that, our sister, Cecilia, who has swinging long blond hair, the voice of a logger, and weighs 280 pounds, at least, stepped over us.
Before she entered the houseboat, she smiled at Janie. As soon as she crossed the threshold she turned and scowled at both of us as if we were slimy algae. “Get the hell in here. We got big problems. We gotta get this figured out friggin’ quick. And don’t you two think you can say no. Your answer is yes, let’s start with that, damn it. Yes. ”
She slammed the door.
“We’re together on this, right?” I panted. Janie was still laying on top of me, rain streaking down our faces. “We’re not going.”
“Absolutely, positively not. No way.”
“Our answer is no.”
“No, no, no.” Janie shook her head. “No.”
We hugged on it.
Within an hour I was contemplating a quick escape by cannon-balling into the river. Janie was curled up, rocking back and forth, chanting, “I am worthy of praise, not abuse. I am worthy of praise, not abuse.”
Cecilia shoved a chocolate doughnut into her mouth. “Momma wants you home to help.”
Janie wrung her hands, four wrings on one side, four on the other. “My therapist said going home was an antispiritual, regressive idea for me. It could set me back years on my personal development and social-psycho-ecstasy scale.”
“Years from what?” Cecilia demanded. “You sit alone in this pink and white houseboat, indulging all your weird habits and number counting and rituals and you write books about torture and murder. Honey.” She did not say the word honey nice and polite. “There’s nowhere for you to go but up.”
“I can’t go. I’m working.”
“You can kill people in Trillium River, Janie.”
Cecilia shook her head at Janie, then fixed me with those blue eyes. “You’re coming, Isabelle.”
I snorted. Leave my loft with the view of the river? Live somewhere else when I’m still fighting all the blackness lurking around the edges of my life? Live with her again? “I don’t think so. Nope. Can’t come. Won’t come.”
“You can keep the lingerie companies in business in Trillium River.” Tiny doughnut pieces flew from her mouth in her fury. “I need you there.”
“I’m working,” I lied.
“Give me a break, Isabelle. You’re not working. You’re too screwed up. You two mice are leaving the city and coming to the country. Hey, maybe you’ll learn there’s more to life than yourselves.”
“That is unfair,” Janie sputtered.
“That’s so like you, isn’t it?” I stood up and faced her. “You attack when you don’t get your way. You use fury to control anyone who pisses you off. You get mean and nasty and believe that your victim deserved your attack and you sit back and hate them, never considering for one second that you might be wrong, never considering that, gee, you might do things that tick people off—”
“ I attack?” Cecilia pointed at her chest. “ I attack?” She turned red, and I could tell her Mrs. Vesuvius–like temper had triggered.
“Yes, you attack. You hold grudges, you remember each tiny thing people did to offend you, you exaggerate to the point of lying—”
“Listen up, you braided mental case and you wacko, tea-slurping crime writer, I have spent years, years , handling her and Henry and Grandma while you two indulged your weirdness and forced me to handle everything.”
“That is not true.” I wanted to smash that mouth of hers shut. “When the house needed a new roof, I paid for it. Janie paid for a remodeled kitchen. I paid for Momma and Grandma and Henry to stay at a beach house last summer. Janie sent them to the mountains because she knows that Henry loves the snow—”
“You’ve sent money. Big deal. You’re both swimming in it. Janie, you’ve got so much money you could buy France. Neither one of you has hardly been home since you left for college and you live only an hour away. You know Momma reopened the bakery and you’ve done nothing to help!”
“Cecilia,” I snapped. “Janie and I paid for a live-in caregiver for Grandma and Henry. In fact, we interviewed a bunch of them, hired one, and sent her over.”
“It didn’t work, did it?” she shrieked, stomping her feet. “I told you it wouldn’t. I told you! Grandma thought she was an ancient tribesman she met on an island during her final trip around the world as Amelia Earhart.”
“Why did Grandma think the caregiver was a tribesman?” Janie asked. She tapped the tips of her fingers together. “There were no feather hats, no tribal war paint…”
“How the hell should СКАЧАТЬ