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.Ask for Kerry.’ She began to laugh.Pushed her hands into her thighs and laughed forever.‘“Oh, Kerry,” I tell them.“She’s gone to Disneyland!” Every time.Disneyland.They don’t even have the fucking decency to get her name right.They ask when’s a better time to call, when she’ll be back.I tell them she fell off Space Mountain, and they’re still looking for her.Or, if the guy’s a real dick about it, I tell him she only meant to go for a week, but then she met Peter Pan, and now they’re getting married.“That Kerry’s a flighty one,” I say.Hey, there’s a ghost for you, Barbie – Visa.You wanna be fucking haunted, talk to them.’ She breathed hard for a moment, then looked at me sharply like she’d just remembered something.‘Why don’t you come back for this little chat when you’ve had to answer for your dead mother’s debts?’I don’t often cry.I have this reflex – like a gag reflex, I suppose.It started back when the boys were outgrowing me, shooting up above me so quickly, like scrawny, pimple-faced Incredible Hulks.And I’d take this really hard hit and be down there on the ice, and there would be the boy who hit me, looking all sorry, but there’d be something else in his face at the same time – worry, like he was just waiting for the tears.I couldn’t stand that waiting.So I’d make my eyes suck the tears back up.They never existed, hanging there in the corners of my eyes, threatening to incriminate me.Or maybe this began much earlier.With Uncle Larry.Keep it off the ice.Regardless, I knew how to take it like a man.But with Hal, it happened too quickly.‘You’re right,’ I said.‘You’re right.’ I pushed down hard on the corners of my eyes, frustrated, digging sharp pain into the bridge of my nose, as though I might stop the flow of tears with my fingers, the way you stop blood spilling from a cut.Hal watched me cry, her unsurprised face deformed through the tears.‘I haven’t lost a mom,’ I said, and then I began to laugh – I could, because she had – the sheer ridiculousness of it all hitting me, nonsense words jangling around in my mouth like loose change.‘I have a lost mom, but I didn’t lose her myself, I guess.’ Out – the ridiculous, unsolvable riddle.My nose had begun to run; I wiped it recklessly with a sleeve, inhibitions gone, drunk on pathetic tears and on the words out there in the room now, already wilting like Hal’s sympathy bouquets, grown smaller with the plucking, with the offering.Exotic in my mind, but unremarkable in that room full of girls and petrified flowers.Hal watched me with guarded wonder and disgust.She reached slowly to the table beside the couch, then held out a Kleenex box, carefully, as though offering food to a wild animal.‘So you know – ’ I snorted into a Kleenex.‘Maybe she’s in Never-Never Land with Kerry.’ I hiccupped another laugh, sobering.‘But how did we start talking about – I was talking about Kristjan.’Hal laid the box in her lap.She balanced fingertips on two corners, and then began to press down, skin blanching around the cardboard.She pressed until the box began to cave in, watching it carefully, chin down at her chest.‘Toad was telling me the other day some bullshit story about her great-aunt Gertrude dying a couple of years ago or something.’ Monotone voice.‘And I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, and didn’t really care, to be honest.But I think what she was trying to do was kind of join in.Like, get in on the action, the death action – everyone who knows someone who’s died join hands, and we’ll all do a square dance or something, and it’ll be okay.We’ll all live happily ever after.’ She began to push in the remaining two corners of the box, her hands slow, methodical.I had to lean in to hear her, Kleenex tourniquet pressed to my eyes.‘But what you all don’t seem to understand is that I’m so tired.I’m tired of people talking to me.I’m tired of the phone ringing.I’m tired of the stupid dance.So, I’m thinking, Why don’t you guys leave me out of this.Go throw a pity party for each other, instead.A hugely tragic pity party, with all of your unbelievably heartbreaking, imaginary grief.’The box began to cave in again, and Hal’s shoulders sagged, as though lamenting this feat.She inhaled through her nose, deep, fingers frozen into the collapsed caverns.Then, in one smooth swoop, she launched the box from her lap [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]