Devotion

Оглавление

Michelle Herman. Devotion

one

two

three

Отрывок из книги

a novel

by Michelle Herman

.....

Sitting at the little table Vilmos had moved down into the basement for them, the desk lamp she’d bought at a garage sale (a spindly red Tensor lamp just like the one she’d left behind at home) making a tiny spotlight for the piece of paper and her moving hand, she’d write page after page on stationery she kept hidden in the bottom of the diaper bag, stopping only when she had run out of things to say. Then she’d hide the letter in her purse, and in the morning, when she took her first walk of the day with Alexander, she would mail it.

She knew that no one would answer. None of the letters she had written had been answered, and while she had never counted them, she guessed that by now there had been at least ten, maybe fifteen of them. As far as she knew, nobody was even reading her letters—but as they were not returned to her unopened, someone might be (she thought someone—she couldn’t, even as she wrote them, bring herself to think Daddy, Mama, Sylvia), so it was not impossible that someone, sometime, would write back. Who, though? she wondered every time she caught herself thinking this way. Her father? Not a chance. Her mother? She’d have to defy her father, and it was impossible for Esther to believe she would do that. And Sylvia was only twelve—not even twelve yet when Esther had left—and they had never really liked each other in the first place. Chances were that Sylvia would not have answered letters from her even if she’d left home in a normal way. Chances were, anyway, that her parents didn’t let Sylvia see the letters, even though they were addressed to The Savarises, and Esther headed every one of them Dear Family.

.....