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Corley, Elizabeth Inspector F Nachruf auf eine Rose
Arnold, Elizabeth Joy Auf ewig und einen Tag
Bailey Elizabeth Przyjaciolki Dziedziczka z nieprawego loza i
Chata wuja Toma Elizabeth Harriet Stowe
Committed A Sceptic Makes Peace Elizabeth Gilbert
Corley, Elizabeth Inspector F Sine Culpa
APE18.5. L'Or maudit de Pharaon Elizabeth Peters
Czyny Paksenarrion Tom 2 Elizabeth Moon
Cranford Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Dom otwarty Elizabeth Berg

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.His greatest illusion was convincing Bingo and me that he was some sort of special being endowed with extraordinary powers.We made an exception for him.To us, the drunkenness was a form of penicillin, his way of coping with the burden of an ordinary existence.“Ah, boys, I wasn’t meant for this world,” he used to tell us as we helped him up the stairs and into bed, me under one shoulder, Bingo holding up his half.“Charlie Flanagan sentenced to life on earth without parole.It’s a cruel fate for a man such as I.”Then I’d catch him pissing in the driveway after a night on the town, and I’d wonder.Uncle Tom used to tell me, “The thing of it is, Noodle, they’re all dense as bottled shite, even Charlie.Thank God every day that you and Bingo have got me, or Lord knows what would become of you.”Tom lived with us, took care of us, cooked and cleaned and fought with Pop on a daily basis—Pop referring to him as our “maiden uncle.” To witness one of their foaming encounters was to contemplate a small boat on a collision course with Niagara Falls—every brawl a kind of helpless plunge.So many fights, and Bingo and I were like turkeys in the rain, standing around helpless, tail feathers drooping, watching in wonder as they crashed through the railing of the upper-story balcony, Pop’s hands around Tom’s neck, Tom’s arms flailing, fury seeming to suspend them in midair.The whole murderous time they’d keep arguing, talking, always talking, a wall of sound and temper, how many times I just wanted to scream at them, “Shut up! For Christ’s sake! Shut the hell up!”The end would arrive with a big thump, them landing in a mangled heap at our feet, Bingo grabbing my arm in excitement, thrilled by all that mayhem, while my circulation was grinding to a shuddering standstill.Brawling came naturally to the Flanagan brothers.“Your grandfather never backed away from a disagreement,” Pop told us.His father’s penchant for fighting was one of Pop’s favorite topics when we were growing up.Pop had a fairly narrow measure of manhood and used broken noses to chart masculinity the way scientists recruit tree rings to chronicle age.“He got into a terrible flap with the parish priest back home one Sunday after Mass.”“What were they fighting about, Pop?” I asked him, already familiar with the answer by the time I could tie my shoes.“The fighting skills of the American army, of course—how he loved to hold forth on that subject.I well recall your grandfather talking to me about the glories of the American fighting man in my high chair.‘The Americans couldn’t lick their own lips,’ says Father Duffy to your grandfather the moment he sees him—this is before the Yanks entered the war.Well, you might just as well pour gasoline into hell.the eruption could be heard from miles around.Let me tell you a little something about your grandfather, God bless him, you wouldn’t want to stand next to him and light a match.”Whenever Pop talked about his old man, I could smell something burning.Hugh Flanagan was a firestorm, according to Pop.“He left grass fires where he walked.He burned down barns with the ferocity of his judgment.”He sure as hell knew how to piss off a priest.“May your sons never have any luck,” Father Duffy shouted, slamming the door behind him.Soon after, Hugh and Loretta Flanagan left Ireland with their family, three boys, Tom, William, and Charlie, and two girls, Brigid and Rosalie, and immigrated to Boston.It was 1940.When it came time for the United States to enter the war, Hugh wanted his two older sons, Tom and William, in American uniform.Pop was too young to enlist.“Your grandfather never recovered from the disgrace of your uncle Tom trying to join up wearing ladies’ underclothes,” Pop told me.I was eight, standing across from him in the living room, where he sat parked in his favorite morris chair, voice booming as I flinched.“That’s a goddamn lie, Charlie Flanagan, and you know it.I wanted to serve.My flat feet kept me out of the action.Name one veteran, dead or alive, that’s suffered as much as I have,” Tom hollered from the kitchen, where he was chopping onions for stew.“Oh, so that’s what they’re calling cowardice these days, a matter for the podiatrist, is it? Next you’ll be telling me had you only been born with balls, you’d be the boys’ uncle instead of their aunt.” Pop, never happier than when he was producing friction, approached me playfully, shoulders hunched, assuming a classic boxer’s stance, punching the air, one-two-three, narrowly missing my chin.“Your uncle Tom single-handedly put the personality in disorder,” he said.Uncle Tom was my mother’s sworn enemy.He referred to her as the Female B—his obtuse way of calling her a bitch.He was always doing funny things with language, mangling words, making up crazy expressions, being deliberately provocative, saying schedule as if it were pronounced “shek-a-dool” and then daring you to correct him.Tom never outgrew the desire for negative attention, a trait he shared in common with Ma.Ironically, considering their mutual hatred, there wasn’t much to give or take between their views.Tom and Ma were against just about everything everyone else was for, yet year in and year out, they circled each other, glaring like rival warlords.“And thank God for it,” Pop proclaimed.“Jesus, Collie, can you imagine what might happen if they joined forces?”“Move over, Abbott and Costello,” I said.I suspect that my mother underwrote every postwar revolution undertaken by Marxist insurrectionists from one end of the globe to the other.Anais Lowell Flanagan was writing checks for her pet causes all through the 1970s when we were growing up.Nothing Ma enjoyed more than the incendiary overthrow of established order.Uncle Tom lived for the pleasure of infiltrating and disrupting her political gatherings.He used to call everyone on the guest list and tell each one there had been an outbreak of impetigo at the house, leaving my mother to fume when no one showed up.“Some revolutionary he turned out to be.scared of a little fungus,” he’d report to Bingo and me, receiver to ear, as he knocked them off the list one by one.He raced for the phone whenever it rang, and if he didn’t approve of the caller—he never acceded to anyone—he’d shout into the receiver, “Gotta go.There’s a squirrel in the house!”Once in a while, someone would call back.“Hello, this is Denny the Red.May I speak with Anais?”“I’m sorry, there’s no Denny the Red here.You’ve got the wrong number.”“No, you don’t understand.I’m Denny the Red—”“Are you deaf as well as dumb? I told you there’s no Denny the Red at this number.”He used to put Bingo and me through the same crazy routine.Dialing home was like trying to get God’s private line.When I was in grade six I broke my arm at school, and the hospital called, trying to get permission to operate [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]