"Blackwater - 03 - The House" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDowell Michael)

BLACKWATER: III THE HOUSE is an original publication of Avon Books. This work has never before appeared in book form.
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Copyright © 1983 by Michael McDowell Cover illustration by Wayne D. Barlowe Published by arrangement with the author Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 82-90547 ISBN: 0-380-82594-5
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First Avon Printing, March, 1983
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Our story 'til now...
Following her mysterious appearance during the flood of 1919 in Perdido, Alabama, Elinor Dammert marries into the town's leading family, the Caskeys. After surrendering her first child, Miriam, to her possessive mother-in-law, Mary-Love, Elinor settles down to a contented married life with Oscar, her happiness marred only by the town's plans to build a levee for protection against future flooding. Although Elinor insists that no flood will ever again come to Perdido while she is alive, an engineer named Early Haskew is brought in to supervise the project.
To spite Elinor, Mary-Love invites Early to stay with her and her spinster daughter, Sister, who promptly begins scheming behind her mother's back to marry the engineer. Sister is aided in her efforts by the occult conniving of Ivey, the family cook.
Elinor, still unhappy about the levee but tolerant of Early and Sister's marriage if only because it makes Mary-Love so upset, gives birth to a second child, Frances. Frances will be her child as Miriam never could, for it is apparent from the very beginning that Frances shares Elinor's mysterious otherworldly heritage.
James Caskey, Oscar's widowed uncle, is paid a visit by his penniless sister-in-law, Queenie, and her two children, Malcolm and Lucille. Queenie claims to be escaping from her husband, Carl, and clearly wishes to take refuge with the Caskeys. Although she at first appears to be a conniving opportunist, when her husband shows up and rapes her, she is accepted, with various degrees of sympathy, into the Caskey family, with Elinor as her prime sponsor.
By the end of THE LEVEE, Volume II of the BLACKWATER saga, Elinor has reconciled herself to the damming up of her beloved Perdido's waters by dint of a private and terrible sacrifice.

Perdido, Alabama
pop. 1,200 SITE OF LEVEE W\
1. OSCAR & ELINOR CASKEY'S HOME
2. MARY-LOVE CASKEY'S HOME
3. JAMES CASKEY'S HOME
4 DeBORDENAVES HOME
5 TURKS HOME
TO GULF OF MEXICO

CHAPTER 28
Miriam and Frances
Frances and Miriam Caskey were sisters born scarcely a year apart. They lived next door to each other in houses that were no more than a few dozen yards distant. Yet, so little commerce was maintained between their respective households that when they did meet—on the rare occasions of Caskey state—the sisters were shy and mistrustful.
While Miriam was the elder by only about twelve months, in maturity she seemed to outdistance her sister by years. Reared in the house with her grandmother Mary-Love Caskey and her aunt Sister Has-kew, until Sister and her husband moved away, Miriam had been fondled and coddled and pampered for every waking moment of her seven years. This indulgence had become more marked since 1926, when Sister, at last disgusted beyond endurance by her mother's interferences and meddlesomeness, persuaded her husband to move to Mississippi. Mary-Love and Miriam had been left alone in their ram-
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bling house, and were one another's company and solace. It was a common remark in Perdido that Miriam was just like Mary-Love, and not a bit like her own mother, who lived right next door and saw Miriam less often than she saw the hairdresser.
Miriam, like all the Caskeys, was slender and tall, and Mary-Love saw to it that she was always dressed in the best of childhood fashion. Miriam was a neat, fastidious child; she talked nearly constantly, but never loudly. Her conversation turned mostly on what things she had seen in the possession of others, what things she had recently acquired, what things she still coveted. Miriam had her own room, with furniture specially bought for it. She herself had picked out the miniature rolltop desk from the showroom of a furniture store in Mobile. She loved its multitude of tiny drawers. Now every one of those tiny drawers was filled with things: buttons, lace, pieces of cheap jewelry, pencils, small porcelain figurines of dogs, spangles, ribbons, scraps of colored paper, and other such pretty detritus that could be gathered up in a household rich in worldly goods. Miriam occupied herself for hours on end quietly looking through these items, rearranging them, stacking them, counting them, making records of them in a neat ledger, and scheming to get more.
The possessions, however, that afforded Miriam Caskey greatest pleasure were those she was not allowed to keep in her room. These were the diamonds and emeralds and pearls that her grandmother presented to her on Christmas, on her birthday, and on a few otherwise run-of-the-mill days in between, and then hid away in a safety-deposit box in Mobile. "You are too young to keep this jewelry yourself," Mary-Love said to her beloved granddaughter, "but you should always remember that it's yours."
Miriam had a confused view of adulthood and wasn't sure that she would ever reach that exalted
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state. While she couldn't be certain that the jewels would ever be given over to her direct possession, this didn't matter in the least to her. Thoughts of those jewels, in the distant, locked, silent safety-deposit box in Mobile always entered her mind before going to sleep every night and seemed almost to make up for the lullaby her real mother would never sing to her.
FrancesCaskey was very different. While Miriam was energetic and robust and strung together with a wiry nervous tension, Frances seemed to have a tenuous hold on her body and her health. Frances caught colds and fevers with dismaying ease; she developed allergies and brief undiagnosed illnesses with the frequency with which other children scraped their knees. She was timid in general, and would no more have thought it her prerogative to be jealous of her sister or her sister's possessions than she would have thought it her right to declare herself Queen of All the Americas.
Frances spent every day with Zaddie Sapp, shyly carrying and fetching in the kitchen, or following Zaddie about the house, sitting quietly in a corner with her feet carefully raised off the floor while Zaddie swept and dusted and polished. Frances was well behaved, never out of sorts, patient in sickness, willing—even eager—to perform any act or task delegated to her. Her self-effacement was so pronounced that her grandmother—on those rare occasions when Mary-Love saw her—would shake her by the shoulders, and cry, "Perk up, child! Where's your gumption? You act like there's somebody waiting to jump out from behind the door and grab you!"
Every weekday morning, Frances would slip out onto the front porch on the second floor of the house and surreptitiously watch for her sister to leave for school. Miriam, always in a freshly starched dress and nicely polished shoes, would come out with her books and seat herself carefully in the back of the
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Packard. Miss Mary-Love would come out onto the porch, and call out, "Bray, come drive Miriam to school!" Bray would stand up from his gardening, brush off his hands, and drive away with Miriam, who always sat as still and composed and stately as if she were on her way to be presented to the Queen of England. In the afternoon, when Frances saw Bray driving off again, Frances would station herself to witness the return of her sister, as starched and polished and unruffled as when she had departed in the morning.
Frances wasn't jealous of her sister, but she was in awe of her, and she treasured memories of the few occasions when Miriam had spoken a kind word to her. Clasped around her neck, Frances wore the thin gold chain and locket that Miriam had given her the previous Christmas. It didn't matter one bit that afterward, Miriam had whispered to her, "Grand-mama picked it out. Ivey found a box. They put my name on it, but I never even saw it. I wouldn't have spent all that money on you."
In the autumn of 1928, Frances was eager to enter the first grade. She occupied herself relentlessly with the question of whether she would be allowed to ride with Miriam and Bray to school every morning. She dared not put the question to her parents directly for fear the answer would be no. The thought of being allowed to sit beside Miriam in the back seat of the Packard made Frances quiver in expectation. She daydreamed of intimacy with Miriam.
When the first day of school finally arrived, Zad-die put Frances into her best dress. Oscar kissed his daughter, and Elinor told her to be very good and very smart. Frances went expectantly out the front door alone—it seemed for the very first time in her whole life—only to see her grandmother's Packard roll off down the street with Bray behind the wheel.
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Starched and polished Miriam sat all alone in the back.