The Story of the Night
Chapter One
During her last year my mother grew obsessive about the emblems
of empire: the Union Jack, the Tower of London, the Queen, and
Mrs. Thatcher. As the light in her eyes began to fade, she
plastered the apartment with tourist posters of Buckingham Palace
and the changing of the guard and magazine photographs of the
royal family; her accent became posher and her face took on the
guise of an elderly duchess who had suffered a long exile. She
was lonely and sad and distant as the end came close.
I am living once more in her apartment. I am sleeping in her
bed, and I am using, with particular relish, the heavy cotton sheets
that she was saving for some special occasion. In all the years
since she died I have never opened the curtains in this room. The
window, which must be very dirty now, looks on to Lavalle, and if
I open it I imagine there is a strong possibility that some residual
part of my mother that flits around in the shadows of this room will
fly out over the city, and I do not want that. I am not ready for it.
She died the year before the war an ... read full excerpt from: The Story of the Night: A Novel ebook
