The Innocents. Laura Lippman

Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Innocents - Laura Lippman страница 19

The Innocents - Laura  Lippman

Скачать книгу

left at home, there were so many divorces all of a sudden, so many parents who thought their children couldn’t be happy unless they, the parents, were happy. I’m afraid that’s simply not true.”

      “You had a great marriage, Dad. It’s not fair to lecture others on marriage, when you had such a good one.”

      Her father doesn’t answer right away. “I see your point of view,” he says, forever fair and evenhanded. Later, she will parse these words. Not: you’re right. But: I see your point of view. Was he trying to suggest that his marriage, like hers, might have looked better to those outside it than those in it? But, no, that’s impossible. Everyone knows that the Robisons loved each other madly.

       Autumn 1978–Winter 1979

      CHAPTER TEN

      We would have quickly grown tired of Chicken George except for one thing: he turned out to be mysterious. At least, that’s the way we saw it: He cultivated mystery, excited our curiosity. He was vague in the face of all questions, no matter how benign. How he had come to live in this house, when he had learned the guitar. How old he was. (Go-Go asked the last one. The rest of us knew better than to ask a grown-up’s age.) He avoided all questions and had few of his own, other than: “What did you bring me?” Still, it would have been better, harsh as it sounds, if we had stopped visiting him. It’s nice to think so, at any rate, because if we had tired of him, then things might have gone differently. And this is a story about things we wished had gone differently. Aren’t all stories?

      Anyway, Chicken George had a way of disappearing. The first time, it was November, and we assumed it was weather-related. The wind had started to kick up, the pleasant tang of October had given way to a steady dank cold. Weather was more reliable then. This is not memory, but hard scientific fact. The weather of our childhood was part of an unusually temperate time on our planet, with fewer extreme variations. The things we have seen in recent years—the events of just the past year, with almost a hundred inches of snow in Baltimore and floods, not to mention volcanoes and earthquakes, birds falling from the skies—might well be connected to climate change, the wear and tear that humans wreak on a planet. We are not here to argue science. But weather was more predictable then, and when it turned cold, it stayed cold, so cold the pond froze for days, even weeks of ice-skating. It made sense that Chicken George would disappear during such weather. Not that one could tell, by the look of the cabin, that anything had changed. It was as we had first found it, complete with the chickens in the yard and clothing on the line. Go-Go was the one who thought to look for his guitar. That was missing, too.

      “What about the chickens?” Gwen asked.

      “What about them?” countered Tim.

      “They’ll die out here. Animals will eat them.”

      “So what? Chicken George was going to eat them, too. What’s the difference?”

      “But Chicken George would have been more humane.”

      Tim laughed. “You think so, Gwen? You think that snapping an animal’s neck is that much more humane than being snatched up in the jaws of a dog or a fox? Dead is dead.”

      Go-Go liked that. “Dead is dead,” he raved. “Dead is dead!” He began throwing rocks at the chickens, then running among them, scattering them. But those chickens were tough. They spread out, giving Go-Go room, but they didn’t disperse.

      Mickey and Sean had been quiet throughout, systematically looking through George’s things, trying to find clues. Mickey, although uninterested in school, had a talent for deduction. Gwen’s father, noticing how she examined facts and reached conclusions, had tried to interest her in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, but she had no patience for Sherlock Holmes. Or Nancy Drew, or Trixie Belden, or books in general. She was disdainful of people who read but not in a defensive, anti-intellectual way. She thought reading was a ruse, a completely wasteful activity. If Mickey were the kind of person who trafficked in similes or metaphors, she might have compared reading to rules such as not swimming an hour after a meal, or never going out of the house with wet hair. Instead, she just didn’t read and was baffled by those who did. She didn’t like television much, either. Mickey plain didn’t like sitting still. She wanted to make things happen. She wanted to see if she could jump from mossy stone to mossy stone without falling. She wanted to poke snapping turtles with sticks, and if one snapped, well, that was the point. She would have liked to live like Chicken George—in a cabin, accountable only to herself, although preferably with indoor plumbing.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAhAAAAMgCAIAAAD9b8zHAAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAH aWlDQ1BQaG90b3Nob3AgSUNDIHByb2ZpbGUAAHjalZVZVJMHHsX/35KVkEAIEJDlg7AbSEBkFQqE VfZVwJUkHxAJJCZhq2LpqIjiAlYsVRAVpI4riFAcl0pFK+JYgQq44AZapVgVR9SplnngzLEvnXPm Pv3OPee/PN0LQOcFh4aEoUEA+QU6TVJECJGekUnQhgEDFJhAA+csmVYNfy0EYHoIEACAQVdplERS n+958Fhz2DQvv641kcXNh/8thkyt0QFQewCgV05qZQC0agBYV6xT6wDgJQDwNClJEgAEB6Csz/kT S//EmvSMTABqJQDwcma5HgB40lluBQBeekYmMXv208+yQk3RrIeeBQAmGIM1uIAnBEIUJMNSyAUN lMFGqIF6aIFWOAOX4AbchnF4Ae8RDGEjfESAuCLeSAgSgyxCspA8pAgpRzYjtUgjchg5hZxHepFB ZBR5ikwhH1EaaohaoA6oGPVHw9AENBMlUTW6Gq1Aa9B69BDajn6P9qHD6Bj6Av2A0TFjzBYTYQuw KCwNk2Ma7AtsK7YHO4x1YZexm9g49hpHcUPcBhfjQXgCvgJX4+V4Db4fP4lfxH/GH+NvKXSKOUVI CaQkUGSUQkolZQ/lOKWbcpPylPKBakC1o/pQY6lZ1CJqFXUftYPaR31AnaaxaAKaLy2elk0ro+2k HaVdpN2hvabr0QV0f3oKPZ9eQW+kd9EH6JMMKoNg+DFSGSrGZsZBRjfjLuMdk8cUM2OZCmYFs4l5 gXmP+buemZ63XqqeTm+HXpveDb2XLA5LxIpnqVjbWa2sftaUvpH+fP00/RL93frn9O+zUbY9O4qt ZFezT7FH2B85NpxwTh6nhtPJuWuAGjgZxBsUGTQY9BhMGhoZ+hvKDbcYdhje49K47txM7nruce4t I9xIZJRptMGozWiUx+B58WS8at453oQx3zjcWGfcZDxggpiITVaYVJtcMHlpamOaZLrOtMP0Cd+M H80v47fyx8xMzRaarTVrN/vF3MI80bzC/Kz51BynOcvn1M65ZoFb+FtoLY5YjFtaWqZZbrfstcKs AqyKrU5aPbd2tpZb77MeJcyINOIrot+GYxNrU2Vz1ZZhG2lbaXtFQBdECTYJ+uxYdnF21XYD9sb2 6fZ77O87CBxyHI46vHL0clzj+IMT3SnOqdbprrOds9L5lPMHlzCXbS4jc23nKud2ChFhjLBOOOYq dl3j2utm4iZza3ObEcWJGkSTYn9xlfiuu9C9zP26B+Gh8eiZZzpv5bxznoaepOfp+ez5svldXmwv udcZb663wvuCD99nlU+vr63vGt8hP7HfZr/H/kH+9f7vFqQsaAtgB+QF9AY6BlYEPv4s9LPmIDxI HnQp2CG4MngiJCbkhIQrKZTcCg0IPRBGC8sPGwj3CW+MoEbkR9yMDIhsieJElUQ9WhizsDPaJnpL 9LsYeUx/bEDskTh+XEXcm3h5/GCCJKE9UZC4M4maVJw0kbwk+aeUkJTOVJfUxjRe2ua0mUVFiybT 5el3MpIz+jJDM88v9l7ctkS45Nultkv3LjNf9vVy3vKaFZwV27JYWVuketIqGUu2Vc6WV5Ncsjab n12fQ+Q05zrnnlB4Ks6sDF55JS8hb0SZpXyWr83/WLBRxVU1qJ3VHauCV13XLNFMaEt0NN2uQofC zqKIopFiRfGHkm2lNqUdn0d+Prpas4a2pqFsXtnVtVlr339RU+5SfvHLJV9O/61mnXDdj+tlG2BD Q4VfxcjG4krjyo5NqZvebN5V5V11a8vqrVZbu7eR2xnbj1cnV7+vadwRvuP5V7U7A3Y+qd2+y3fX 2Ndb63zrxr+p2R2we2JPXX14/ZuG5r0pjXhjx76c/fz9fQfKmtybHjd/czCuBWs5/a36kOOhe3/f dTj+CP1I99HVx7yOvTp+7ISi1aF1rG3/yeXtVu2jpxo6lnVadT747kAXedrp9K//aD2jO+t7dubc 5fNbvk+5YHFhvPvYD8UXg3tYPcOXmi6rflxwhXFluLflamFf2DXja0/++d31TT8tvuHWj/YPDRwe LP859aZwCBu6PXxypOqW/HbgHf6d13evjx6+t/G+/EHIQ+LhzKN7Y+fHGx+XP5H+EvrU8Rnz2W8T g792Te59vv63vBfJL/1f2U3pT719/fBf1950TTe/rXm39r3y34t/X/jB76PLH3Nm9GdmPuVySwlA 4h8AAJ88150AuwkAw6WfPNteAKNHAN03dGSJDgBAolKXahQ5uTrCSeJMeIjF3oS0lJColCoNkaxS FuoUqgKtkAhWKokkRU6uTkskkVpSU0TK3YgYhYws0JKEnNRlKZRaQpZVQEhJIltVWCAnVAV+RK5O p/YTiYqLi91ImcJNpckRkTKFiCwQkTJFUkS

Скачать книгу