"Lisa Goldstein - Cassandra's Photographs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldstein Lisa)

what the hell I was supposed to do with them. I put them back in
the envelope, stuffed the envelope in a drawer and forgot about
them.
There was a man in a wheelchair in front of me at my
graduation. I felt vaguely uneasy when I saw him—he reminded me
of something unpleasant, but I couldn’t remember what— but I
managed to put him out of my mind. My parents had come out from
Chicago to see me graduate—otherwise, I suppose, I wouldn’t have
gone to this graduation either— and at the reception afterward I
introduced them to Laura and my friends without thinking too
much about the ceremony. It was only when we were out to dinner
that I remembered the photograph.
“What is it?” Laura said. “Is something wrong?” Later she told
me that until she saw me that night she had never believed in the
cliché “his jaw dropped.”
“Nothing,” I said uneasily, and, I guess, closed my jaw. Amazing,
I thought. An amazing coincidence. I wondered what Cassie’s
grandmother would make of it. Cassie. I shook my head. I hadn’t
thought of her in months. “I just remembered something, that’s
all.”
When I got home that night I pulled out all my drawers looking
for the photographs. I found them at last, buried under the first few
drafts of my dissertation. My fingers were shaking when I pulled
the photographs out of the manila envelope.
The scene in the photograph matched point for point with the
scene on stage. It might almost have been a picture taken by
someone in the audience. There was Dr. Miller, who had been
hastily invited to speak when Dr. Fine became ill. There was my
friend Larry walking across the stage behind me. You could see his
sneakers under the edge of his gown; he hadn’t had time to change
his shoes. There was the guy in the wheelchair, rolling down the
ramp off stage.
I felt as though someone had opened a window and let in a blast
of cold air. I was shivering and had to sit down. How had the old
lady done it? How on earth had she known?
I looked at the other photographs more intently than I’d ever
looked at anything before. My hands were trembling badly. So
that’s what Cassie had meant. This was to be my life. Someday I’d
live in a house with a kitchen like the one in the photograph. I’d
have a job that involved carrying a briefcase. And in about ten
years I’d talk to a boy about five or six years old. Could the boy be
my son? At the thought I felt another chill wind through the room
and I shuffled that photograph to the end of the pile.
The picture I looked at the longest, though, was the one of me
and the woman embracing. Her face was just under my chin and
turned in slightly toward my chest, but from what little I saw I
thought that she was beautiful. She had blond, almost gold, hair
cut very short, and fine, delicate features. The one eye visible in the
picture was closed. I thought she looked happy.
Surprisingly my trembling had stopped. I accepted—