Читать книгу The Story I Am - Roger Rosenblatt - Страница 24

From the Unpublished Memoir Unaccompanied Minor

My mother teaches me to read. I am two and a half. We sit together at the dinette table with a book between us. I remember nothing of that book, or of any of the others we read, but I still can feel her closeness, the fresh-roses smell of her clothing, and our intense conspiracy over words. In her early seventies until her death from Alzheimer’s years later, my mother will show only the look of fear. She will appear anxious even in death. But when I am little and she is in her mid-thirties, she is the face of serene competence. There is nothing she can’t do.

We make eggnog. She teaches me to stir the eggs and to pour in the vanilla. We sew on a button. We run the vacuum cleaner. We go shopping in the neighborhood. People acknowledge her and wave. She buys a baker’s dozen of cupcakes at the Gramercy Bakery and explains that a baker’s dozen mean thirteen. She takes me with her to the milliner. The shop is dead quiet, and the proprietor snooty. How do you like this one? my mother asks me, dramatically tilting what looks like a huge gray stuffed owl over her eyes. I giggle. We’ll take a baker’s dozen, she tells the milliner, who is unamused.