Page 242 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

there too with her adopted daughter, Roshi. All the children are smiling.

“Markos.”
I flip the mobile closed and make my way downstairs.
Thalia puts before me a glass of milk and a steaming plate of eggs on a bed of
tomatoes. “Don’t worry, I already sugared the milk.”
“You remember.”

She takes a seat, not bothering to remove the apron. She rests her elbows on
the table and watches me eat, dabbing now and then at her left cheek with a
handkerchief.
I remember all the times I tried to convince her to let me work on her face. I
told her that surgical techniques had come a long way since the 1960s, and that I
was certain I could, if not fix, then at least significantly improve her
disfigurement. Thalia refused, to enormous bewilderment on my part. This is
who I am, she said to me. An insipid, unsatisfactory answer, I thought at the
time. What did that even mean? I didn’t understand it. I had uncharitable

thoughts of prison inmates, lifers, afraid to get out, terrified of being paroled,
terrified of change, terrified of facing a new life outside barbed wire and guard
towers.
My offer to Thalia still stands to this day. I know she won’t take it. But I
understand now. Because she was right—this is who she is. I cannot pretend to
know what it must have been like to gaze at that face in the mirror each day, to
take stock of its ghastly ruin, and to summon the will to accept it. The
mountainous strain of it, the effort, the patience. Her acceptance taking shape
slowly, over years, like rocks of a beachside cliff sculpted by the pounding tides.
It took the dog minutes to give Thalia her face, and a lifetime for her to mold it
into an identity. She would not let me undo it all with my scalpel. It would be
like inflicting a fresh wound over the old one.

I dig into the eggs, knowing it will please her, even though I am not really
hungry. “This is good, Thalia.”
“So, are you excited?”
“What do you mean?”

She reaches behind her and pulls open a kitchen-counter drawer. She retrieves
a pair of sunglasses with rectangular lenses. It takes me a moment. Then I
remember. The eclipse.
“Ah, of course.”
“At first,” she says, “I thought we’d just watch it through a pinhole. But then
Odie said you were coming. And I said, ‘Well, then, let’s do it in style.’ ”