The Humanity Project by Jean Thompson

Author:Jean Thompson [Thompson, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

If only their father was still alive, or if only he had gone about his dying differently. Every unhappy phone conversation between Leslie Hart and her sister, Deirdre, always came around to that wish, bumped up against it, and stalled out. Certainly their father had done everything he considered right and necessary. There was a will, there was money in trust for each sister. There were the formidable investments, in stocks, bonds, Treasuries, currencies, commodity futures, real estate, and other funds so complex and fine-tuned that they were in perpetual vigilant motion, turning fractions of pennies into larger fractions, and eventually into measurable wealth. And this largest portion of the estate was under their mother’s direct control, which their father might have reconsidered in time, if he had been given more time, since she seemed determined to throw it all away with both hands.

Leslie hadn’t seen any of it coming. No one had. Oh, she could scream. She wasn’t a bad, greedy person. She wanted people to be happy, to have enough to eat, and good dental care, and their educational opportunities. But even if you gathered up all the money in the world and sprinkled it over everyone on earth, it wouldn’t make any big difference. What was giving away her father’s money meant to accomplish? It would be gobbled up like flakes of fish food.

Her mother certainly seemed to be enjoying herself. And while it was a relief that she’d pulled herself out of her period of decline, there was something alarming and unnatural about her new enthusiasm. Honestly? Leslie and Deirdre had grown used to their mother’s fretful ill health, had accepted the prospect of a long (or short) period of semi-invalid life. It sounded cold, but you readied yourself, you made adjustments for all the sad, necessary, and messy parts of life’s final act. And you knew how you were supposed to feel about all that: the ways in which you would grieve, the ways in which you had grieved.

But you didn’t know how you were meant to regard your seventy-nine-year-old mother’s setting herself up as some kind of public philanthropist, even if the seventy-nine-year-old was perfectly happy about it, and that made you feel like a bad person when you really were not.

“Mom,” Leslie had asked on her last visit, “why don’t you just make some charitable contributions, like you always have? Why do you have to go to all this trouble?” By trouble, Leslie supposed she meant, trouble for everyone else involved.

Her mother had been distracted by one of the horrible cats, who had managed to climb halfway up the living room drapes and get stuck there like a burr. “That’s Mr. Darcy. He keeps doing that. I’m going to have some play structures built for them. The kind where they can hide and climb and pretend they’re in a jungle.” Her mother rose from the couch and tugged at the drape, which slid off its rod and landed on the floor in a heap of fabric and snarling cat.

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