Chapter 2 2

2 I reached for my nightgown that was dangling over the bedpost.I draped my nightgown over my shoulders while answering the phone.Hugh stood, hesitating whether he should go or not.I cover the microphone with my hand. "No one died, right?" He shook his head. "Go get dressed, or go back to bed," I told him. "No, wait a minute—" he starts, but I'm already feeding into the phone, and he turns and walks into the bathroom. "Poor things, I woke you up at dawn," said a woman's voice. "But, you know, I didn't mean to. I just got up so long that I completely forgot it was too early." "I'm sorry," I said, who are you? ""Gosh, I'm such an optimist number one, I thought you could hear my voice.I'm Kate.Kate of Egret Island.Your godmother Kate.That Kate who changed your stinky diaper. "I closed my eyes involuntarily. She had always been my mother's best friend—a petite woman in her sixties with high heels and lace-up socks that people thought she was just a dainty woman. Weird old woman whose menacingness has softened along with her bones. It was a dangerous illusion. I sat down on the bed and knew that there was only one reason for her calling. It must be because of me His mother, the famously crazy Neil Dubois. Judging by Hugh's reaction, it wasn't a good thing.

My mother lived on Egret Island, which used to be our home - apart from the fact that it was next door to a Benedictine monastery, I would say we were a "normal" family.How can you say normal when you have thirty or forty monks as next-door neighbors.My father's wreck washed up on the monks' land.Several monks brought the board of the ship with the words "Jessie Sea" printed on it to the home, and handed it to the mother like a military flag.She lighted a fire in the fireplace in silence, then called for the other two members of their trio—Kate and Hepjibba.They came to the house and stood with the monks watching their mother solemnly throw the planks of the ship into the flames.I watched the letters burn to black, the planks of the ship consumed by flames.Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think about it, I even recalled it at my own wedding.No funeral, no memorial service, just a moment to remember.Since then, my mother has gone to the monastery to cook lunch for the monks. So far, she has cooked for thirty-three years.It can be said that they have become her spiritual pillar. "I really believe you don't care if our island is sunk in the sea," said Kate. How long has it been?Has it been five years, six months and a week since you last came back? ""Sounds right. "I said. The last time I went to see my mother, it was her seventieth birthday, and it was a disaster like never before or since. I took Dee, who was twelve, and we gave my mother a kit from Gorgeous red silk pajamas from Sykes's, very oriental, with a dragon embroidered on the top. Mother refuses to accept it. The reason is extremely stupid. Because of the dragon. She keeps calling it "the beast", "The devil" and "the embodiment of immorality". She said that St. Margaret of Antioch was devoured by Satan who turned into a dragon. Do I really expect her to sleep in such pajamas? When she behaved like this At that time, no one could convince her. She threw the pajamas in the trash, and we packed up and left. The last time I saw my mother was standing on the porch, shouting: "If you want to go, don't come back ! "Dee, poor Dee, all she wants is a semi-normal grandma," she cried. Kate drove us to the pier in her golf cart that day - she was the one who rammed the island's dirt roads The car that was going. She kept honking the air horn all the way to distract Dee so she wouldn't cry. Now Kate on the other end of the phone continued to berate me as a joke Not going back to the island, I'm glad I don't have to go back. I heard the sound of the shower starting in the bathroom.

The torrential rain beat violently on the panes. "How's Bain?" I asked.I was buying time, trying to ignore the impending doom. "Fine," Kate said, "still deciphering every thought in Max's head." Even though my anxiety was building, I couldn't help laughing.Kate's daughter, who may be forty this year, has, as Kate puts it, been "wrong" since birth.It should be said to be "mentally abnormal", but Bane is extremely talented, and her premonition is unusually accurate.She just knows things, she draws inspiration out of thin air with mysterious antennae that the rest of us don't have.She is said to be particularly good at deciphering the mind of Max, the dog on the island who belongs to no one but belongs to everyone. "So, what's Max been saying lately?" "Same cliché—'My ear needs scratching. My body needs licking. How do you know I'd like to pick up your shit?'" I imagined Kate Now in her own home, her house stood high on stilts like all the houses on the island.The house is lemon colored.I could see her sitting in the kitchen at the long oak table where, over the years, she, Hepjibba, and my mother had gathered around, cracking up tens of thousands of blue crabs for meat.My father called them the "Three Musketeers of Bailu Island". "Listen, I'm calling about your mother." She cleared her throat. "You have to come home and see her, Jess. No excuses." I lay back on the bed; I seemed It felt like a tent had collapsed, the center pillar was suddenly pulled out, and the tent was billowing in the wind. "My excuse," I said, was that she wouldn't let me go back.She—""Impossible.I know.But you can't pretend you don't have a mother either. "I almost laughed. If I could pretend I didn't have a mother, the sea could pretend it didn't have salt. My mother never made me forget for a moment that she was there. There were times when her voice came from the marrow of my bones, It almost made me jump. I said, "I invited her over last Christmas.Is she here?of course not.I've sent her presents for her birthday, Mother's Day--without dragons, I have to say--and I've never heard anything back. "I'm glad Hugh's still in the shower so he can't hear. I'm sure I just yelled." She doesn't need your gift and your phone—she needs you. “Me. Why does it always end up on me—on my daughter? Why doesn’t she call Mike in California and give him a pitch? The last time I spoke to Mike, he said he was Buddhists. Buddhists should be more patient with her. Both of us fell silent.

I heard the water being turned off and the pipes slamming. "Jessie," she said, "the reason I'm calling is...your mother cut off a finger with a meat cleaver yesterday. Her right index finger." When bad news arrives, I'm always late. Comprehend; hear the words, but do not understand their meaning.The words hovered in the corner for a moment, floating to the ceiling, while my body made the necessary preparations.I said: Is she okay? ""She will be fine, but, they operated on her hand in the hospital in Leshan.Of course, she made a big fuss as usual and refused to spend the night in the hospital, so I took her back to my house last night.Right now, she was sleeping on Bane's bed, and the painkillers were running out of strength.However, as soon as she woke up, she would definitely go home immediately. "Hugh opened the bathroom door and a puff of steam poured into the bedroom." Are you all right? "He asked me silently, and I nodded. He closed the door again, and I heard him tap his razor on the sink. Three times, forever." The problem was—" Kate paused, sucking Take a breath, "Okay, let me just say it.This is not an accident.Your mother cut off her own finger in the Abbey kitchen.She did it on purpose. "The truth finally fell on me - with all the weight and horror. I realized that somewhere in the back of my mind, I'd been waiting for years for her to do some kind of crazy thing. But, I never did This comes to mind.” But why?Why is she doing this? "I have a nauseous feeling." It's complicated, I thought.However, the doctor who operated on her said it might have something to do with her insomnia.Nell hadn't slept much for days, maybe weeks. "My stomach constricted violently. I threw the phone on the bed and ran past Hugh who was standing by the sink with a towel around his waist. Sweat dripped from my chest. I threw off the bathrobe and lay down. On the toilet. I threw up what little I had in my stomach and continued to retch.

Hugh handed me a cold towel. "I'm sorry," he said, "I wanted to tell you myself, but she insisted. I shouldn't have let her." I pointed to the bed outside the door. "I'll be fine in a while. She hasn't hung up the phone yet." He walked over to pick up the phone, and I lightly applied the towel on the back of my neck.I sat down on the wicker chair in the bedroom and waited for the churning in my stomach to subside. "It was hard on her," I heard him say.Mother, who was always the kind of person we would consider passionate, had Mike and me drop change into empty milk bottles to donate to "non-believers' babies"; Then, she knelt on the floor of her bedroom and recited all five rosaries, kissing the cross of Jesus while she said it.However, people do.That doesn't mean they're crazy.Mother became Joan of Arc after the ship caught fire—but, no armies, no wars, just grotesque fanaticism.Even then, however, I thought she was normal madness, just a little too enthusiastic.When she pinned too many saints on her bodice and jingled as she moved, when she started cooking in the convent and acted as if she owned the place, I said to myself : She is nothing more than an overzealous Catholic obsessed with saving her own soul.I went over and held out my hand for the phone, and Hugh handed it to me. "It's not some serious insomnia problem at all," I said to Kate, interrupting what she was saying to Hugh, "she's gone mad at last." "Don't you say that!" snapped Kate. .She was in pain. It was different. Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear - do you think he was crazy?" "Yes, actually, I did think he was crazy."

"However, many people in the know believe that he is suffering internally," she said.Hugh was still standing there.I waved him away and I couldn't concentrate with him dangling above my head like that.He shook his head and walked away, into the cloakroom across the room. "So why is Mother suffering?" I asked bluntly. "Please, don't tell me it's because of my father's death. That was thirty-three years ago." I always felt that Kate's There are some secrets about my mother hidden in her heart that she doesn't want me to know. She is like a wall with a secret room hidden behind it.Kate didn't answer my question right away, and I wonder if she'll tell me the truth this time. "You're trying to find a reason," she said, "but it won't help, it won't change the situation." I sighed, and just then Hugh came out of the cloakroom, wearing a long-sleeved A blue Oxford shirt with buttons all the way to the neckline, a pair of white boxer shorts, and dark blue socks on the feet.He stood there, putting the watch on his wrist, and making that sound—a popping sound from his mouth.This scene is almost a diurnal law for me--orderly, day-to-day, unchanging--I have witnessed it a thousand times without feeling any repulsion, and yet at this moment, in this most unexpected Moments, when the motherly crisis was lowered into my lap like a howling baby, I felt again the dissatisfaction that had been swelling inside me since winter.It felt so strong, like someone had literally punched me. "Anyway," said Kate, are you coming or not? ""Come.Of course I will. "As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt a burst of relief. Not because I was going back to Egret Island to deal with this mess - I didn't feel any relief about it, only great fear. Not because of this. This unusual sense of relief, I Realization, comes from the fact that I'm leaving the house. That's all.

I sat on the bed with the phone in my hand, surprised and ashamed of myself.Because my mother was in such a bad situation, I was almost thankful for it.This provided me with an opportunity I didn't know I desperately needed until now: a reason to leave home.A decent, proper, even noble reason for leaving my beautiful pasture.