Where There's Smoke by Black Inc. Page B

it comes from the true heart too.
    â€˜Then tell me what to say next,’ she says.
    â€˜Embrace her,’ says Helen. ‘In front of the whole family let him take the girl in his arms and embrace her. No matter how odd it looks. “Forgive me for what I put you through,” let him say. Have him go down on his knees before her. “In you let me worship again the beauty of the world.” Or words to that effect.’
    â€˜Very Irish Twilight,’ she murmurs. ‘Very Dostoevskian. I am not sure I have it in my repertoire.’
    *
    It is John’s last day in Nice. Early next morning he will set off for Dubrovnik for his conference, where they will be discussing, it seems, time before the beginning of time, time after the end of time.
    â€˜Once upon a time I was just a child who liked peering through a telescope,’ he says to her. ‘Now I have to refashion myself as a philosopher. As a theologian even. Quite a life-change.’
    â€˜And what do you hope to see,’ she says, ‘when you look through your telescope into time before time?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he says. ‘God perhaps, who has no dimensions. Hiding.’
    â€˜Well, I wish I could see him too. But I do not seem to be able to. Say hello to him from me. Say I will be along one of these days.’
    â€˜Mother!’
    â€˜I’m sorry. I am sure you know Helen has suggested that I buy an apartment here in Nice. An interesting idea, but I do not think I will take it up. She says you have a proposal of your own to make. Quite heady, all these proposals. Like being courted again. What is it you are proposing?’
    â€˜That you come and stay with us in Baltimore. It is a big house, there is plenty of space, we are having another bathroom fitted. The children will love it. It will be good for them to have their grandmother around.’
    â€˜They may love it while they are nine and six. They will not love it so much when they are fifteen and twelve and bring friends home and Grandma is shuffling around the kitchen in her slippers, mumbling to herself and clacking her dentures and perhaps not smelling too good. Thank you, John, but no.’
    â€˜You do not have to make a decision now. The offer stands. It will always stand.’
    â€˜John, I am in no position to preach, coming from an Australia that positively slavers to do its American master’s bidding. Nevertheless, bear it in mind that you are inviting me to leave the country where I was born to take up residence in the belly of the Great Satan, and that I might have reservations about doing so.’
    He stops, this son of hers, and she stops beside him on the promenade. He seems to be pondering her words, applying to them the amalgam of pudding and jelly in his cranium that was passed on to him as a birth gift forty years ago, whose cells are not tired, not yet, are still vigorous enough to grapple with ideas both big and small, time before time, time after time, and what to do with an ageing parent.
    â€˜Come anyway,’ he says, ‘despite your reservations. Agreed, these are not the best of times, but come anyway. In the spirit of paradox. And, if you will accept the smallest, the gentlest word of admonishment, be wary of grand pronouncements. America is not the Great Satan. Those crazy men in the White House are just a blip in history. They will be thrown out and all will return to normal.’
    â€˜So I may deplore but I must not denounce?’
    â€˜Righteousness, Mother, that is what I am referring to, the tone and spirit of righteousness. I know it must be tempting, after a lifetime of weighing every word before you write it down, to just let go, be swept up by the spirit; but it leaves a bad taste behind. You must be aware of that.’
    â€˜The spirit of righteousness. I will bear in mind what you call it. I will give the matter some thought. You call those men crazy. To me they do not seem crazy at