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Back The Harpy Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. The Harpy
  2. Also by Megan Hunter
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. The Harpy
  8. Part I
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. 7
  16. 8
  17. 9
  18. 10
  19. 11
  20. 12
  21. 13
  22. 14
  23. 15
  24. 16
  25. 17
  26. 18
  27. Part II
  28. 19
  29. 20
  30. 21
  31. 22
  32. 23
  33. 24
  34. 25
  35. Part III
  36. 26
  37. 27
  38. 28
  39. 29
  40. 30
  41. 31
  42. 32
  43. 33
  44. 34
  45. 35
  46. 36
  47. 37
  48. 38
  49. 39
  50. Part IV
  51. Acknowledgments
  52. Back Cover

After the chicken was cut I squeezed an entire lemon over the top, like my mother taught me to do. My mother didn’t like cooking, but she knew certain things. She knew about clamping your fist down on the thick yellow skin, digging your nails in, squeezing tight. As I did it I noticed – apart again, from a small space away – how it made me feel, as though a cool wind was blowing through my chest. I squeezed harder, the juice falling into the sizzling pan, my teeth coming together, my jaw clenched. I kept doing it, feeling my face contorting into an ugly shape. When I had finished – when there was not one drop of lemon juice left in that fruit – I turned around to throw the skin away. Ted was there in the doorway watching me, his mouth hanging half open.

~

There is a trail of anger flowing through my bloodline, from my great-­grandmother, to my grandmother, to my mother, to me. Perhaps it goes even further back too, to my great-­great-­grandmother, who had twelve children, three of whom died.

One of them, so the story goes, was left out in a pram until his face blistered over in the sun. This is a story I have known since childhood, but when I told it to my mother, she said that I had made it up. I am left with the mystery of this woman of many children; was she too busy to notice the baby in the pram? Did she forget?

~

5

5

It was the worst-­case scenario: he was back past eight o’clock, the boys asleep, me wide awake, curled in Ted’s bed, my arms around him for comfort. It is wrong to look to your children for comfort, I knew that. And yet I had so many moments like this: after a bad afternoon, a bad year, his body against mine, his sleep the most soothing rhythm I could imagine. I had sung Ted to sleep that night; he’d asked for it, even after Paddy clamped his hands over his ears and howled Shut up! Both boys, in fact, had lain down quietly in the end, and I had sung until my throat was sore and the phone message seemed abstract, only very distantly dangerous, like a firework alight in the sky.