The Beggar's Pawn by John L'Heureux

Author:John L'Heureux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

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CLAIRE HAD LONG SINCE given up her hope of playing Hedda Gabler and, having put aside the role, she also put aside her resentment of David, his failures as a father, a husband, a professor of the humanities. “Humanities, ha!” she had written Reginald in those old days, sublimated now and processed in her mind as part of her rich past history of loves and betrayals. She would have been surprised to learn that Reginald had put aside none of these things. They were still fresh in his mind and in his notes and he planned to make excellent use of them.

“Humanities, ha!” she had written, but that was months earlier and long forgotten, and so when Maggie phoned her with the news that David had had another stroke, and this one was the real thing, Claire’s first rush of feeling was compassion for her mother, who had to face this all by herself, and then a kind of sadness that so big and energetic a man as David should be brought so low. She saw her father propped up in a wheelchair, head tipped to the side, mouth twisted in an effort to make himself understood. And drooling just a little.

“I’ll come home right away,” she said.

“I’m calling the others,” Maggie said. “It isn’t clear yet how bad he is. He hasn’t had his MRI or his MRA or his CAT scan. But I wanted you to know, just in case.”

So it might be a false alarm. Claire experienced a moment of disappointment, as if she had used up all this sympathy unnecessarily.

“Well,” she said. “Shall I come home or not? We’re rehearsing a repeat performance of You Can’t Take It with You, so it’s not what you’d call totally convenient for me to come, but I could. I can.” She waited for a response, but there was none. “The lighting is all done, really.” She waited some more. “Mother?” she said. She realized then that her mother was crying and could not speak. “I’ll come home. Poor Mama. Poor Misery. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Only if you can,” Maggie said, concealing her momentary anger at Claire’s lack of concern for her father. “Only if it’s not too much trouble.”

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