"Orson Scott Card - Vessel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

"Till one of them drops dead of a heart attack on the tennis court and the widow
sues Deckie for making him play."

The whole table fell silent except for one person, who was laughing uproariously
because after all, he made the joke. Mubbie, naturally. Paulie wanted to die.

After the dead silence, punctuated only by the laughter of one social corpse,
Mother turned the conversation back to the achievements of the other children.
It was a cruel thing for her to do, since naturally the others asked her about
what Paulie was doing, and naturally she answered with offhand good humor, "Oh,
you know, he gets along well enough. No psychiatrists' bills yet, and no bail
money, so we're content." The others laughed at this, except Paulie. He wondered
if maybe some of the older cousins had been to shrinks or had to be bailed out
of jail, so that maybe Mom's little joke had a barb to it just like Father's
did, only she knew how to do it subtly, so that even the victims had to laugh.
But most likely nobody in this scrupulously correct family had ever been in a
position where either a shrink or a bail bondsman was required.

Paulie ate as quickly as possible and excused himself and went to the room that
had Deckie's stuff in it too, piled on the other twin bed, but mercifully Deckie
himself was off somewhere else being perfect and Paulie had some peace. His
mother made him bring some books so when he was off by himself she could tell
the others he was reading, and Paulie was smart enough to have packed books he
already read at school so that when the adults asked him what he was reading he
could tell them what the story was about, as if they cared. But the truth was
that Paulie didn't like to read, it all seemed pretty thin to him, he could
think up better stuff just lying around with his eyes closed.

They must have thought he was asleep, must have peered in the door and decided
he was dead to the world, or they probably wouldn't have held their little
confab out in the hall, Mother and her brothers and sister. The subject was
Nana. "She's already got all her money in a trust that we administer," Mother
was saying, "and she can afford a round-the-clock nurse, so what's the problem?"

But the others had all kinds of other arguments; which in Paulie's mind all
boiled down to one: Nana was an embarrassment and as long as she remained in the
Bride mansion in Richmond their family could never return to their rightful
place among the finest families of Virginia. Paulie wanted to speak up and ask
them why they didn't just put her in a bag, weight it down with rocks, and drop
it into the James River, but he didn't. He just listened as every one of Nana's
grandchildren except Mother made it plain that they had less filial affection
than the average housecat. And even Mother, Paulie suspected, was opposing them
because whoever ended up in that mansion would be established for all time as
the leading branch of the family, and Mother couldn't stomach that, even though
by marrying Mubbie she had removed herself from all possibility of occupying
that position herself. At home she talked all the time about how her brothers
and sisters put on airs as if they were all real Brides but the spunk was gone
from the family after Mother and Father died when they went out sailing on the
Chesapeake and got caught in the fringes of a spent hurricane. "Nana is the only