Page 209 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Thalia put an end to that. Now the dovecote. I picture Mamá with her sleeves

rolled high, hammer in hand, sweat staining her back, pounding nails and
sanding planks of wood. Racing against her own failing neurons. Wringing
every last drop of use from them while there is still time.
“When are you coming home?” Mamá says.
“Soon,” I say. Soon was what I said the year before too when she asked the
same question. It has been two years since my last visit to Tinos.
A brief pause. “Don’t wait too long. I want to see you before they strap me in
the iron lung.” She laughs. This is an old habit, this joke making and clowning in
the face of bad luck, this disdain of hers for the slightest show of self-pity. It has

the paradoxical—and I know calculated—effect of both shrinking and
augmenting the misfortune.
“Come for Christmas if you can,” she says. “Before the fourth of January, at
any rate. Thalia says there is going to be a solar eclipse over Greece that day.
She read it on the Internet. We could watch it together.”
“I’ll try, Mamá,” I say.

It was like waking up one morning and finding that a wild animal has
wandered into your house. No place felt safe to me. She was there at every
corner and turn, prowling, stalking, forever dabbing at her cheek with a
handkerchief to dry the dribble that constantly flowed from her mouth. The
small dimensions of our house rendered escape from her impossible. I especially
dreaded mealtime when I had to endure the spectacle of Thalia lifting the bottom
of the mask to deliver spoonfuls of food to her mouth. My stomach turned at the

sight and at the sound. She ate noisily, bits of half-chewed food always falling
with a wet splat onto her plate, or the table, or even the floor. She was forced to
take all liquids, even soup, through a straw, of which her mother kept a stash in
her purse. She slurped and gurgled when she sucked broth up the straw, and it
always stained the mask and dripped down the side of her jaw onto her neck.
The first time, I asked to be excused from the table, and Mamá shot me a hard
look. And so I trained myself to avert my gaze and not hear, but it wasn’t easy. I
would walk into the kitchen and there she would be, sitting still while Madaline
rubbed ointment onto her cheek to prevent chafing. I began keeping a calendar, a
mental countdown, of the four weeks Mamá had said Madaline and Thalia were
staying.