"Thomas M. Disch - The Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

for eighteen years ever since her husband Roy’s freak accident on
I-95. He’d taken the exit ramp too fast, there was ice, and the car
went over the shoulder. Roy, who never used his safety belt, was
catapulted forty feet and had his head laid open by the sign that set
the speed limit on the ramp at 30. The Buick wasn’t scratched.
Angie had never learned to drive a car, so after the accident
she was pretty much at a loss for how to do all those ordinary
things like shopping that she’d depended on Roy for. There wasn’t
a grocery or convenience store anywhere within walking distance.
Not that Angie ever did that much walking or would have. She got
the exercise she needed out in the garden—or she used to, before
the accident. The neighbors joked that she was getting to be just as
planted as the old Buick inside the garage. Mrs. Deaver, two houses
down the street, offered to teach her to drive, but Angie’s reply was
a flat no thank you. She relied on her son Tom to chauffeur her
anywhere she needed to go, or else a taxi. And the Shop-Rite
manager, who lived at the very end of Wythe Lane, delivered her
groceries to her door as a special favor, even though Shop-Rite as a
general rule didn’t do deliveries.
So that was how she’d got along for years, eating frozen
dinners and getting out of the house less and less, especially after
Tom and his family moved to Tacoma. His company was leaving
the area, and it was either that, Tom said, or food stamps. Once he
was settled, he promised to look for a city apartment for her nearby
where he lived, but that was out of the question. Angie wasn’t
going to start living in any city at this point in her life. Tom swore
Tacoma wasn’t dangerous, but how would he know? That was ten
years ago, since when Tom had managed to get back for a visit
almost every year, and twice, for Christmas, he’d brought his family
along.
She never complained. She didn’t even have complaining
thoughts. But her shadow did. Her shadow got to be one big knot
of gloom and hungers, like a pot-bound house-plant with its roots
all sickly and tangled together. Shadows are like plants. They need
sunlight simply to exist. They need to feel the air stir around them.
They need to feel something physical—a bug will do—light down
from time to time and rub against them. Plants like a nice squirt of
birdshit that’ll leach down into their dirt, and our shadows have
equivalent needs. They have hungers and daydreams and vague
longings for what they think would be freedom. Usually, those
daydreams come to nothing, like most people’s, but that doesn’t
matter, so long as there is some kind of input. They can get along
on next to nothing. TV will serve their purpose most of the time,
just like for people. Shadows may not have much of a life of their
own, but what they can see on TV supplies that basic lack. But
Angie didn’t watch much TV. Wythe Lane wasn’t wired for cable,
and the channels she could receive didn’t show anything but foul
language and violence. That would have suited her shadow fine, of
course, but it was Angie who was in control of on and off.
Shadows are usually helpless in that regard.