Sleeping Beauties by Susanna Moore

Author:Susanna Moore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780679755395
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1993-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Although Clio knew that Burta could no longer harm her, the very sight of her in her plaid shorts and her red shoes, her bowlegs pale and scabbed, conjured up such memories that Clio caught her breath. She had always thought, perhaps unwisely, that it was in a practical and even in an abstract way very difficult to hate someone in person. But as she watched her stepmother standing there, she was suddenly full of doubt.

“Did the old kamani die?” Clio asked, coming across the lawn. The kamani was one of the few plants brought to Hawai‘i by the mysterious Polynesians and it was thought to be very good luck to have one. She realized too late that it was an awkward greeting. It would be useless to start anew; Burta did not allow amends.

“It was fifty feet tall and filthy dirty,” Burta said. “I keep cutting it and it keeps growing back.”

“It would, wouldn’t it,” Clio said vaguely.

“Your father’s not home yet. He’s working on some case where two Hawaiian men got in some lighthouse and wouldn’t come out. Hawaiian activists, they call themselves. As if there’s anything to activate. They claim it is on sacred burial ground or something. So what? So stupid.”

“Father? Or the boys?”

Burta squinted at Clio over the top of her glass. The ice slid noisily to the bottom of the glass as she slowly lowered her hand. Pre-Burta, as Dix used to say, dividing their lives into two shogunates, Clio had believed that the Japanese race was in possession of all the refinement and elegance in the world. As a girl, she had read The Tale of Genji as a primer of aesthetics. Clio would have learned sooner or later that there were all kinds of Japanese, but Burta had hastened her loss of innocence.

“Where are you staying?” Burta asked, taking something from under a fingernail.

“With my grandmother.”

“You can stay here with us,” Burta said smoothly, full of conventional propriety.

For a moment, Clio rashly considered jumping the chasm of falsehood that separated them, that had always separated them, but she stopped herself. She wished to remain separate from Burta, but she was infuriated by the vast distance between what she understood and what she could say.

“Where’s Tommy?” Burta was an admirer of Clio’s husband.

“I don’t know,” Clio said.

“You don’t know? Ha! I wouldn’t let that guy out of my sight.”

Burta had been surprised, as she constantly said to everyone, that a movie star as famous as Tommy Haywood would be interested in her stepdaughter.

“I think he is in Morocco.”

“I read about it in Parade. You think he’s in Morocco?”

“Yes. I think he’s in Morocco.”

People who did not know Burta well, people she and Lynott met in the Peninsula bar in Hong Kong or the Athens Hilton, thought that Burta was wonderful. She was so boisterous, especially for a Japanese. She could go on all night and start again at lunch the next day, they said in admiration. Clio knew that it was only bullying—whether

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.