Table upside down in the rain

The son retired to his room, began to call someone. He went to the bathroom – under the cool streams, the blood drained from his face, pulled him into a slumber. Overcame, forced himself to start up. The body ached, sucked in the stomach, the heart stumbled. Diabetes, damned diabetes took away the barely glimmering crumbs of strength.

The wife scurried between the kitchen and the dining room, laying dinner. Tablecloth, plates, forks. On a compact, neatly sized table that smells of fresh varnish. It sweetened the restless guilt that stirred in my chest:

– Nice work, relax. lie down

Waddling past his son’s room, he heard a snippet of conversation: “I can’t leave him. Touchy to the point of absurdity.”

Getting sick of going to bed, he approached the window.

The age-old remains were soaked in the rain. When they were carried to the dump, it was dripping, now the downpour fell in whitish, like gauze streams.

For a long time they tried to start an execution. The mastodon table occupied an exorbitant amount of space. Clumsy, sharp-angled, almost square, with thick cracked legs, it was, one might say, a living (that is, woody) memory, a symbiosis of family, hereditary heritage and a curse: when moving into a small apartment, an antediluvian freak was dragged through the balcony, a non-standard monster did not fit into the elevator , on the narrow stairs to the fifth is also impossible to raise, I had to call a crane. Hook hooked and piled up. Even then the thought got stronger: get rid of it. However, the execution was postponed, a merry housewarming was celebrated at that table.

Father personally and single-handedly built a monster – at a time when store furniture was too expensive. It also went on sale to a limited extent, there were no familiar blattmeisters, but they collected plenty of ownerless boards and stumps. My father was sweating, he changed three T-shirts while he designed his condo work. Ah, father, magician! He also built a buffet. Terrifying, Shanghai look. I made a chandelier out of worthless pieces of iron. He, an inept offspring, was entrusted with hanging an aluminum fringe. Cleverly, quickly, dad twisted. The table, the father’s main favorite, surpassed all previous undertakings. Under that tinkling chandelier, at that magnificently ridiculous table, those who soon disappeared were gathering. They celebrated, had breakfast, twilight, grieved. Grandfather and grandmother, dressed for the last journey, lay on this table in front of their last journey.

From the turmoil of my own memories, the diamond-shaped legs claimed the first role (the corners were chipped in some places and splintered), evoking fear for nylon women’s stockings and warm children’s woolen leggings: more than one pair was spoiled by catchy prickly chipped off burrs!

At the dacha, as a boy, he played “Cossack robbers” with his neighbors, ran to a birch, construction debris was stored near it, stumbled over a thick rusty wire coiled like a snake ball, it scratched with a sharp sting. There was a white mark left on his tanned knee – a similar whitish trail stretches behind the aircraft maneuvering in the blue sky, a drop of blood came out. The wound swelled up.

Mom took her son to the city.

That evening, grandparents received guests, drank tea, an apple pie was blushing in the middle of the table. And the grandson, solemnly dressed, trembled shiveringly: as soon as he began to spin, he touched the sores with a crust on his rough leg – he clenched his teeth, dug his fingers into the edges of the chair, unbearable pain flared up. Dislike for the obnoxious bullying table rose up.

The evening dragged on, for some reason they did not send him to sleep, but for the better: alone, perhaps, he would have loosened up. Finally my mother took me away. He was feigned for the sake of it.

Mom made the bed. In the yellow light of the table lamp, I dreamed: my mother was not the one I used to imagine her. Hungry, preoccupied.

– What happened to you? – he asked.

— What is it? She stopped with a pillow in her hands.

“You are old,” he said.

“I didn’t say anything stupid,” my mother said.

Obscuring the stupidity that suddenly escaped his tongue, he announced: he wants to eat. Mom brought a ham sandwich.

The books were sleeping in the closet, the fish were sleeping in the dark aquarium, he tossed and turned.

“You know,” he confessed to his mother, “I was in a lot of pain all evening, but I didn’t complain.

In the morning we went to the doctor. The doctor stared at the sore for a long time and suddenly pressed sharply – with two fingers -, a greenish slurry of suppuration crawled into an enameled, chipped, bean-shaped vessel.

An aunt, my father’s sister, was celebrating an anniversary at a defiantly bulky table. Eccentric, scandalous, married to a colonel, she almost did not communicate with her brother, but after the death of her husband, becoming useless to anyone, she often visited her relatives. She also turned up on her sixtieth birthday. She threw away the delicacies she had brought from her bag, laid out slices of smoked sausage and cheese on plates, filled vases with grapes and apples, and the treacherously vast surface of the table oppressed her with a deserted naked, cold unsaturation.

“Take an olive,” my aunt commanded. – This is useful.

That life seemed the only possible, sometimes even luxurious. My aunt thought she was rich. And then he watched her, shamefully enjoying a non-existent superiority, puny – in a tasteless dress made of synthetic material, full of lurid colors, with dyed orange hair, preoccupied with a lack of money, proud of – what? – a vulgar prudent celebration?

“Luxury banquet, right? she insisted, after the festivities she gathered up the half-eaten snack in a plastic bag and hid the half-eaten snack in her bag, layering cucumbers on cutlets. – What time did it become to me, what do you think? Three hundred and twenty-three rubles…

The father shrugged. The mother nodded.

He turned away so as not to see how the aunt, limping, set off home. She was tormented by an incurable disease.

“Out of my mind,” her mother apologized sympathetically. – I went for her to return after the war from the evacuation. Children were allowed, they were not included in the pass. Adults were not allowed in. She put it in the compartment on the bottom shelf, on top of the mattress, a blanket, and the other passengers, while the documents were being checked, were sitting on it. Helped out. And her spine cracked.

Long-standing sadness about the bitter fate of an unfortunate woman echoed with mournful regret – about her former self. And he remembered his caring mother, and his widowed grandmother – they ruthlessly, ungenerously kicked her, sent her to distant relatives, and he was also zealous, and she, not wanting to admit, to agree that no one needed and was a hindrance to everyone, put off for a long time, put off the move, did not stating the reason for the delay. It was not even despair, but a childish, timid, superstitious squinting: if I don’t see something terrible, it doesn’t exist.

The toddler son, traveling under the table on foot, stuffed a lot of bumps on the dumpy tabletop. The grandson was threatened with the same attack. And finally decided: to inflict reprisals. Together with my son, they instantly coped with the rough carving fuss, turned the stubborn giant-bogey on its back, the table, like a strange prehistoric insect, helplessly jerked its four peeled legs, and chisels were already wedged into its belly, hammers were pounding, separating the outgrowth-accordion of sliding doors from the wooden belly. fixtures – an insert strapped to the tabletop (it could be moved even wider) – from this accordion, dust and larvae of woodworm bugs poured. Then came the turn of the limbs – the legs moved away from the hull without a rumble and rattle along with the horizontal crossbars that fastened them – similar to anti-tank hedgehogs.

The dismembered, defeated colossus no longer kicked.

“Maybe a tabletop will do?” wife doubted.

But the son was categorical:

– Tired of junk.

And took out the rubbish.

While they were working, the son shouted at him. Now, in the next room, he spoke softly. In monosyllables: “I thought we’d manage before lunch … I thought it would take an hour and a half … If I had known, we wouldn’t have started. You know… A blow on him will crumble. I fucking need improvements. Such a price. Let him live as he is…”

It hurt, as if a long time ago at the evening tea with grandparents, when he touched the wound on the rough leg of the humiliated poor fellow thrown into the dump. And unbearably sorry – almost the same age sent to the scrap. It turns out that the joint feat of surviving a disabled person from the world was due to a non-reciprocal need? It turns out that the sacrifice was not required? A good son… Didn’t upset his father. But it would be better to cover the handset microphone with your palm. The voice was very clear.

In parallel with pity for the old worthless thing, he experienced a vindictive satisfaction from the thought that he himself would have a similar experience. Naturally! Deservedly! Natural ending. common fate. The object that interferes, aggravates (and causes inconvenience) must disappear. Find peace. And give peace to others. And the illusions and delights of a family idyll are nonsense, sentimental nonsense!

The rickety remains were wet under the jets. Infamous end! Why, this is his own past, left to its own devices, damp and moldy!

“And they will pull me out like that?” That’s okay!

It’s good that this will happen. It’s time… What was required has been fulfilled rigorously, the last necessity has been met, nothing is expected in the future. Only diabetes.