Mum comes home twice a week by Toni Castillo Girona (books for 8th graders .txt) 📕

what he was told that last night, avoiding explicitly to miss some important and conclusive stuff. Then, he started talking: “There are three rules I have to know, and obey.”, he caressed his empty cup of coffee with his forefinger's tip, “The first one applies to the house by itself: I am not allowed to be in another room but the drawing room, that restriction not including the obvious fact I have to pass through some others in order to reach it. Her mother calls those rooms as the inner ones

.” His friend looked at him amused. “Now, what a foolish rule to make up!”, he commented, smiling. “The second one, “, he continued, “ is about sex. It is not I cannot have sex with her daughter, that is not the point. This second rule accepts sex as a whole, but I cannot have sex with her inside

the house. Not even a hug, not to mention a kiss.” His friend grinned quite diabolically and said: “Chap, you have to put her away of that old chilly house for sure, if you don't want to be pleasuring yourself till the end of times!.” He nodded slowly. Then, the same waiter as before came back and asked them if they were fine. His friend asked for a new cup of black coffee. The waiter bowed, again, and vanished. They both waited till the black coffee, this time in a pale-white ceramic cup, was left upon the table, to go along with the last and incredible rule: “The third one is even much odder: I am not allowed, by all means, to meet her mother. Ever.” His friend applauded noisily, and barked: “Yeah! I love

this one!.” Some customers looked at them, unnapprovingly. “Stop the clapping, would you?.”, asked him. He was in two minds about that mysterious girl. When they met, some months ago, she looked as enigmatic as ever, but still he fell in love with her almost immediately. One day, they went out for a walk, during the autumn season. The woodland was gorgeous, leaves falling down their trees, in quite a different colour-tones of brown, yellow, and nuclear red. Their feet step over a smooth layer of dead but still colourful bed of leaves. It was then when she admitted she would like to own a small flat in the city, where she could go to bookshops and cafés, and where she could talk to everyone she wanted to. She started describing what kind of flat she was thinking of, and he smiled because it seemed quite apart from that enormous house she lived in. “It would be a small place, with a huge library where myriads of books telling about a pile of varying subjects would dwell; so I would arrive tired of being all day long working hard, and I would relax myself laying down in the sofa, letting my gaze to be lost amidst all those shelves and books they would contain in...” He hugged her, then it was correct to do so, he thought, and she smiled back and kissed him and started to run and played hide and seek for a while. “You would be always welcomed to my little place, and we could stare at my library together, and fall asleep and wake up in the middle of the night and make love and whisper to one another: I love you, I love you...

” Then he understood she had been alone, she had always been alone, but the real motive was far from being ascertained, and when they were pretty tired of being outdoors, they bade their goodbyes, and he left her there, getting in his car and droving off.

“She would like to own a small flat,”, said he to his friend, “ a very small flat, indeed.” He could see her sad face through the veil of darkness he was in. “Every morning, I would fix some coffee in my kitchen, listening to the latest news on the radio, and letting my imagination fly away, away, and I would pay no attention to the world I would be in, except when that would suite me, so I would be as happy as ever, and I would call you whenever I needed you, and you would touch my face with your fingertips, and I would suppress a scream of ecstasy, for I would not like to be notorious as a consequence of being in the dirty awful mouths of all those noisy neighbours.” “What's your life like?”, he asked her some other day, whilst having a coffee in that cosy drawing room, this time it was summer so they kept the window opened. “Pleasant.”, he responded mechanically. “Oh, I see, don't you want to tell me?” “It is not so, my dear.”, she said, smiling, “But I'd rather tell you all about the book I read now.” He knew she was keen on literature, so it was almost impossible not to fall in love with her: he was as passionate as she was concerning books. “I see, tell me then, what is your book about?” Her eyes glowed. “It's about an apparently weak girl trying to find her own way to be happy, in an old creepy house like this one.”, she pointed at the hearth, “It has a huge fireplace, and a lot of different rooms and weird stuff, and at least I could count three varying supernatural manifestations occurring in there.” He felt a cold breeze caressing his backbone. Back in the café, he grabbed his friend's book and looked directly at its cover. The Haunting Of Hill House

was its title. “What a curious coincidence!”, he exclaimed, tapping at the book's cover. “What is it, old chap?”, asked his friend, intrigued. “She read the same book.” “Oh, but I don't even start the reading, you know. I just carry it with me because I intent to read it soon

.” He handed the book to his friend, nodding. “It is a second hand book, is it not?, he wanted to know. “Sure. Cheaper, you know.”

“In the book, “, he recalled her elaborating, “ this girl died, but somehow she found that way to an absolute deep happiness she was in search for. It is not always right there, in some exact place you could trace, or locate, in a map, or just think of because you know it is real.”

“Who is her mum, anyway?”, asked his friend, saving the book inside a bag which was barely unfolded to allow the book to fit in. “I don't know.” His friend moved slightly on that chair. “Well, you'll better know. Or maybe you have to get her out of that house, if you really think you love her.” He was in doubt. “It is uncommon to find a mother like this one, I guess.”, he admitted. “But still, it is her daughter, and I am not sure she is going to come with me. I fear she is not.”, said he, miserably. “Don't lose your head, old chap.” “I am not sure what I am to do, it is complicated.” All around them, the café was getting empty for the customers were leaving the place. Her smile was present in his mind, and her fragrance and her pose. It was an impressive pose, indeed, and the mere thought of her pretty sad face holding his gaze, late that night, whilst explaining those rules, feeling she was somehow devastated doing so, almost perceiving a tear not wanting to roll down her cheek, made him be depressed, hopeless, terrified. He could go, kidnap her, put her away from that old creepy household and her enigmatic mother, and then, what? Was she going to hate him for what he could possibly do, or maybe was she going to love him deeply because of that? “Look there, my sweet stranger,”, she said on one such occasion, in that manor of hers, pointing at what looked like an old small graveyard, “there all my family lay down.” He thought that

was scary, and he asked politely why she was revealing to him that small empty place where surely only the dead would dwell for ages even when they both were purely dust and memories of the past. “Why, because it is what is left of my family.” And she gazed at it, as if contemplating the brightest stars in a black cloudless sky at night.

“I guess tomorrow night her mother is going to come over.”, he said. “Yeah, mum comes home twice a week

, I got it.”, said his friend, amused. “So, I guess I'm going.” “Excuse me?” “I said I guess I am

going.”, repeated he. “Yes, “, said after a while, more convinced, “I made up my mind, I'm truly determined to go and talk to her mother. That's it.” His friend moved again on that chair, showing him he was starting to get tired of being seated there. “But she said... the third rule...” He cut him off quickly: “Stop that, mate. She is just a mother, and I can even understand her and those odd rules she told me about. See...”, he paused for a bit, trying to find the words which could suite that explanation the best, “She told me once she would like to own a small flat and to be there on her own. She would be happy. At that time I thought she was exaggerating, but now I know I do understand her.” He looked resolute enough to his friend's eyes. “I am going to get her out of that old house, but I am due to do things properly.” “Okay, then, tell me: what are you up to?”

For the best part of a minute, he said nothing. The café was, by now, deserted. They were the only customers. In some place inside that café, they could hear noises coming from crockery, cutlery and chinas being carried. Finally, he said evilly: “Didn't you figure it out yet? I'm going to break those sick rules, all of them, one after another, systematically

.”

5

It was hot in there

. The logs were still crackling in the hearth, and she was seated on that wooden stool. There was no one accompanying her lonely solitude, otherwise that odd gaze she was holding would have been widely commented for years to come; but she was alone

, and therefore she could drift her gaze elsewhere: not at the cosy drawing room where she prefered to spend all day long; not at the fireplace, where a beam of light coming out from the hearth was illuminating briefly her pale pretty sad face; not even at the frozen orchard out there, right behind that sole huge window, now almost imperceptible because of the darkness and the mist; not here or there, but beyond

. “Don't cry, sweetheart,”, she could hear her mum saying, back in time, in that weird beyond belonging to that happy past, “here's your mum.” She cuddled her, put some kisses on her forehead, and embraced her tight, and whispered some sweet words and she calmed down, and she opened her eyes and looked at her mum and smiled, and her mum looked down at her and smiled back, and kept hugging her for a while, until she could stop that awful crying and wiped her eyes and stoped shivering. “He is not worthy of you, my dear.” And she was pretty sure of that that instant, just because it was something coming out from her mum

. Outside, somewhere amidst that dark moor, far from reach, she could discern some sort of a lament, probably human. The old huge and chilly household was located in the outskirts of that not quite big city, standing over its own walls, emerging from the soil like a summoned creature. There they lived in peace, in spite of that sick atmosphere and cold air,