Читать книгу Madam - Jenny Angell - Страница 9

The door opened slowly, too slowly. The faces were grave.

I was pressed up against the wall in the corridor, scarcely daring to breathe. There was a very expensive vase on the table next to me, from some Chinese dynasty that’s remembered in the Western world only for its porcelain. I had been told to never touch the vase.

The voices inside the room had gone on for far too long, a steady murmur, the murmur of death.

Now the door was opening, and they were all coming out. My mother, her face red and blotchy from crying. Dr. Copeland. Two of my father’s business associates.

Dr. Copeland saw me first and, ignoring the other people – which was very unlike a grown-up – came over and squatted in the hallway next to me. “Abby,” he said, gently, “how long have you been here?”

I stifled a sob. “Forever,” I said. I felt that if I said anything more than that, I’d start crying, and it had been made clear to me that I was not to cry.

He didn’t go away, as I expected him to. He put a hand on my shoulder, instead. “You’re going to need to be a brave girl, Abby.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

He frowned, as though that was the wrong answer. “But you can be brave and feel sad at the same time,” he said.

I glanced at my mother. She was standing with the light from the window behind her, and all I could see was her thin elegant outline. Her arms were crossed.

I didn’t have to see her face; I already knew what the expression was.

I looked back into the doctor’s kindly eyes with a quick indrawn breath and a little bit of panic. “I’ll be brave,” I assured him. Maybe if I said what he wanted me to say, he’d go away and not say things that made me want to cry.

He didn’t go away.

Instead, he scrunched down and sat on the floor next to me. I clearly heard my mother’s disapproving intake of breath, and stiffened, but she didn’t say anything. “Abby,” said Dr. Copeland, “you know that your daddy is very sick.”

No one had ever called him Daddy before, except me. My mother always prefaced references to him with “Your father.” I nodded.

He nodded, too, as though we had just shared a very deep secret. “Abby, I’m afraid that he’s going to die.”

My heart thudded, and I thought suddenly that I might throw up. I shouldn’t, I knew that I shouldn’t, but I wondered how I could keep it from happening. What can you do? Swallow it all back? I didn’t say anything and swallowed hard, and the feeling receded. Dr. Copeland squeezed my shoulders. “We’re all going to miss your daddy,” he said, “but do you know what, Abby? I think that you’re going to miss him most of all.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t say anything.

The doctor gave me one last firm pat on the back and stood up, with some difficulty. One of my father’s business associates gave him a hand. My mother never moved.

Their voices faded away down the hallway and the big sweeping staircase that led downstairs. I stayed where I was, looking longingly at the closed door.

“Abby!” my mother called, her voice sharp. “Come downstairs now!”

I suppose that I went. I was good that way. Obedient.

I never saw my daddy again.