Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons

Author:Anne Rivers Siddons [Siddons, Anne Rivers]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Martha's Vineyard, Martha's Vineyard (Mass.), Contemporary Women, Contemporary, General, Romance, Massachusetts, Fiction, Domestic fiction, Identity, Women
ISBN: 9780061715716
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-05-07T23:00:00+00:00

UP ISLAND / 237

“Only one,” I said. “And he’s as mean as a snake and one-legged besides.”

Forgive me, Dennis, I said to myself. But right now you’re more use to me as fodder to amuse my son than anything else. And besides, you owe me.

“Just your speed,” Teddy said, and we laughed together.

Even over the telephone, even with the disappointment and the missing, it felt good.

I meant to call my father next, but instead I stretched out on the sofa, and slid instantly into a long and vivid dream about my mother. It was not the usual dream about the grated subterranean window, or at least not just that. It began in the same way, but it went farther into the country of nightmare and panic than I had ever been in my dreams before, and I know that I will remember the precise, sweating texture of that dream until the day that I die.

It started out the same: with me on the city street looking down to see the barred subterranean window where my mother always sat in the black hat, waiting. But this time the window was empty, and I turned to my father, who stood beside me in the crowd, and said, “She’s not there.”

“Maybe she’s found what she was waiting for,” my father said, looking around. I looked around, too, and saw my mother standing ahead of us on the sidewalk, facing backward in the crowd so that she looked at us. She wore the hat, and she was smiling with pleasure and sweetness. In my dream my heart gave a great fish leap of joy. I knew that she was dead, but nevertheless, there she was, smiling her approval at me. I did not point her out to my father, who was still looking about eagerly, or any of the crowd going past, lest they become aware of her suddenly, and somehow 238 / Anne Rivers Siddons

frighten her away. It seemed, with the senseless sense of dreams, entirely possible for my dead mother to be with me as long as I did not call attention to her. I did not understand why my father could not see her, though.

I went close to her and whispered, “I’m so glad to see you.

You look so pretty in that hat.”

I did not point out to her that I knew she was dead. It was as if she herself did not know, that for her to know would be to lose her.

“I’ve always liked this hat,” she said. It was her voice, no doubt of that, low and full and with that hint of husky theatricality that I had always so envied. “I don’t think there’s anything like a big hat to play up a woman’s eyes. I’d give it to you, but it’s meant for somebody else.”

I could not say, No, it’s not, I have it, so I just nodded and said, politely, “Oh? Who?”

“Your father,” she said. “This hat is for your father. Can you find him

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.