"Michael Flynn - Melodies of the Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flynn Michael)

MELODIES OF THE
HEART
Michael F. Flynn

I have never been to visit in the gardens of my youth. They are dim and
faded memories, brittle with time: A small river town stretched across
stony bluffs and hills. Cliffside stairs switchbacking to a downtown of
marvels and magical stores. A little frame house nestled in a spot of green,
with marigolds tracing its bounds. Men wore hats. Cars gleamed with
chrome and sported tailfins enough to take flight. Grown-ups were very
tall and mysterious. Sometimes, if you were good, they gave you a nickel,
which you could rush to the corner grocery and buy red hot dollars and
jawbreakers and licorice whips.
I don't remember the music, though. I know I should, but I don't. I even
know what the tunes must have been; I've heard them often enough on
Classic Rock and Golden Oldy shows. But that is now, my memories are
silent.
I don't go back; I have never gone back. The town would all be
different— grimier and dirtier and twenty years more run down. The
house I grew up in was sold, and then sold again. Strangers live there now.
The cliffside stairs have fallen into disrepair, and half the stores are
boarded up and silent. The corner groceries are gone, and a nickel won't
buy you squat. Grown-ups are not so tall.
They are still a mystery, though. Some things never change.


The music is dreamy.
It's peaches and creamy.
Oh! don't let my feet touch the ground. . . .


I remember her as I always remember her: sitting against the wall in
the garden sunshine, eyes closed, humming to herself.
 The first time I saw Mae Holloway was my first day at Sunny Dale. On a
tour of the grounds, before being shown to my office, the director pointed
out a shrunken and bent old woman shrouded in a shapeless, pale-hued
gown. "Our Oldest Resident." I smiled and acted as if I cared. What was
she to me? Nothing, then.
The resident doctor program was new then. A conservative looking for a
penny to pinch and a liberal looking for a middle-class professional to kick
had gotten drunk together one night and come up with the notion that, if
you misunderstood the tax code, your professional services could be
extorted by the state. My sentence was to provide on-site medical care at
the Home three days a week. Dr. Khan, who kept an office five miles away,
remained the "primary care provider."
The Home had set aside a little room that I could use for a clinic. I had
a metal desk, an old battered filing cabinet, a chair with a bad caster that
caused the wheel to seize up—as if there were a Rule that the furniture
there be as old and as worn as the inhabitants. For supplies, I had the
usual medicines for aches and pains. Some digitalis. Ointments of one sort