「故事·听力」I Am Sure My Mother Is Guilty Of My Father's Death

I Am Sure My Mother Is Guilty Of My Father's Death

Hello! My name is Anthony I am thirteen and I am about to tell you the story of how I ran away from home because I thought that my mother had killed my father.

What should I have thought when my mother and father crossed the world together and then my mother returned, looking pretty good… with my father’s remains. But let me tell you the story from the start.

My father always liked adventure and was constantly in search of some action. He loved alpine skiing, he's been paragliding and done all the things that are associated with risk and adrenaline.

My mother, on the contrary, was very down to earth. She was constantly forbidding my father to do all the exciting things that he enjoyed so much… and I could never understand why. I have to admit that my father did not really pay attention to my mother’s restrictions and went on doing whatever he wanted.

We lived all together, my father, my mother, and my two younger sisters. And I was always very close to my father. I loved his active lifestyle, full of adrenaline and excitement. But it seemed to me that she, my mother, simply hated him for having such an insatiable appetite for life.

So I was not really surprised when I started to hear the word “divorce” more and more often.

But that also meant talking about the house, which in fact, belonged to my father. My mother would often say that she did not want to see him anymore and that she wished that he would leave. But it seemed that he was not just going to leave the house that he grew up in and where his son and two daughters were growing up too.

From what I saw, he was trying to save their marriage, at least for the sake of the children. You may think that children do not understand what is really going on between their parents, but I did. And I understood that my father insisted that they take things to a family psychologist and see if he could get them to save the good things between them, y'know, if they were still there.

So it was not surprising that one day my father told me that he and Mom were going on vacation together, and that he was inviting his sister Helen to look after us during the two weeks that they were going to spend on the other side of the Earth.

I was so happy for them! I thought that this would probably solve all of their problems and that my mother would get to take a break from her house-keeping routine and... who knows, maybe during this vacation she would change her mind and start taking pleasure in this active way of life that my father enjoyed so much. And that they would come back happier than they were.

But in reality everything turned out the other way around.

Mother, indeed, came back. But she came alone, she did not answer any questions, she only repeated that there was an accident, and sometimes she'd say, “I warned him.”

 And she seemed strangely calm and kept to herself, making all the necessary preparations for the funeral.

 ‘Cos something happened over there and my father returned home in an urn - my mother managed to fix all the formalities and bring his ashes along with her.

That was the end of their story and their problems that they wanted to solve… And... it almost seemed to me that my mother looked… relieved?

I was stricken with grief and was sitting in the corner under the stairs, rocking back and forth, trying to come to grips with the fact that my father was gone forever. And my mother... planned a party! She was going to invite as many people as she could, and it was really very strange – if they both knew so many people – from her work, from my father’s work, from the neighborhood... Why didn’t she invite them over when my father was with us?!

 He loved to throw a big party, but he would always get very noisy and loud and would suggest doing something, as my mother would put it, stupid. Whether it was diving into our pool, or potato sack racing, or just playing soccer on my mother’s beloved lawn – all of that would be frowned upon and later on, after the guests left, and he would be reminded of his “unacceptable behavior.”

So why was she doing it all now? And why was she counting the knives and forks, the cups in the cupboard, and the sheets in the closet? And she was so calm, just going through the motions, doing the things that she used to do all her life: cleaning, laundering, gardening… Did it matter that all she was interested in was this house and the things in it?

And what exactly did she “warn him” about? That if he didn’t leave her this house… she would kill him?!..

And the more I watched my mother on the day of the funeral, the more I thought that I was right in my suspicions.

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