The Almanac Branch by Bradford Morrow Read Free Book Online Page B

barking so he didn’t go through the whole cycle but he had plenty of time to cough up all over the laundry before she could turn it off and get him out of there, so that’s not accurate about my son throwing him out the window.”
    â€œDid you get her, that is to say did you replace—all that concerns us here is whether this symptom complex, because this isn’t a disease, you remember my telling you about the variant familial hemiplegic migraine, because I don’t think this stops here—”
    â€œI mean he died—”
    â€œDamsel was a she and she went to heaven, really a darling she was more darling than Bung is although Bung is a darling, too.”
    â€œRight, see?, Bung, another one of the same—”
    â€œNo, Damsel was a lasso apso.” I smoothed down my skirt over my thighs, straightening every fold in every pleat.
    â€œDr. Trudeau? Listen. I respect you, I love Grace, I have a schedule this afternoon that will not allow, what, if you’ll pardon me, do dogs have to do with anything?”
    â€œAnything, as you well must know in business, may have anything to do with anything. As Blau has suggested, as different as grand and petit mal, incidents of an epileptic nature—”
    â€œThis isn’t epilepsy.”
    â€œI never said it was, if you’ll hear me through—”
    And I interrupted, “Those horny toads died, they dried all up.”
    â€œWhat?”
    Trudeau proceeded, holding my father’s eye as best she could, “When Grace—and Grace you should be listening to what I’m saying, too, dear—when you find yourself hyperventilating, which means you’re finding it hard to slow down your breathing, the simplest way for you to regain a regular breathing pace is for you to breathe into a paper bag, all right?”
    â€œOkay,” what that again?
    â€œIn and out, and Grace you must concentrate on breathing slowly and regularly, just like counting sheep.”
    But I said, thinking of the orchard apples, “They looked like the shrunk head Desmond got from India,” and the doctor reprimanded, “Grace, listen to me,” but Faw corrected me, “Brazil, Grace, it’s Brazil,” and explaining to Trudeau, “I was down there on business, brought the children something from Brazil.”
    â€œThose shrunk heads was gross,” I concluded.
    â€œNeither of you is hearing a word I’m saying,” as she glanced at her watch.
    I looked up at the panels in the dropped ceiling. We were back to square one. Eggshell white crawling with half-paralyzed worms. They stayed in place, and they smelled like rock candy, smelled of nothing. Which was to say they didn’t carry the scent of apricot, which was the smell I most often associated with my visions. They didn’t slither much like any of the worms I’d ever seen on television, just boring worms I would step on if I could get my foot up there to the ceiling. Except no, I thought, then the bottom of my foot would be gooshed-up with boring worm juice—
    â€œSo now, let’s just to conclude: what you recommend, let me understand exactly, what you recommend as antidote to all this, her face disappearing, these flare people”—and I would have sighed here with loving exasperation, and wouldn’t have corrected him, but would feel kind of sorry for having to put him and Mother and all of them through this—“waving to her in the tree, peach smells—”
    â€œIt’s apricot,” Mother asserted from her chair, and I smiled back over my shoulder at her. She looked white as the bald white paint of the wall.
    â€œâ€”is to stick her head in a bag.” As he spoke he’d slipped on his jacket, which had lain in his lap, rather neatly folded as Dr. Trudeau had noticed. I now stared at Dr. Trudeau’s shoes, tidy matte leather pumps, delicate for work shoes, pointed and with some extra