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Read the text. 2. Complete the sentences:






2. Complete the sentences:

 

1. Cliff Meidl’s Olympic dream began the day he...

2. He was... years old.

3. The accident sent... of electricity – about... times the voltage of the... – shooting through him.

4. He was dead for about...

5. He was 15 when...

6. On November19, 1986 the day..., everything changed.

7. His doctors felt they needed to amputate...

8. Cliff went through all the...

9. Then two years after nearly dying...

10. Sometimes life can be...

The Rain Catchers
by Jean Thesman

At ten-thirty in the morning, my plane touches down in San Francisco. Mother waits at the gate, dressed in white, her hair streaked blond.

She chatters at me all the way to her house. We must leave the car in a garage she's rented two blocks away because her house isn't on a street, it's on steps called a hillclimb. In daylight, the hillclimb is beauti­ful, leading up between small, delightful front gardens. At night it terrifies me. I remember, while climbing it now, that the last time I was here I sat at my window at night watching the dancing shadows cast by the trees. If there were a place in this city where my nightmares might come true, it would be here, on these steps at night.

" I've had the second bedroom upstairs redecorated for you, " Mother says as we turn in her gate.

" It looked fine before, " I say. I don't want to be obligated to move here by new paint on the bedroom walls.

She unlocks the black iron grille that protects her porch from intruders. All of the windows in the house are covered with ornamental grilles. I remem­ber from before that when we go inside, she will touch several buttons on a keypad in the hall to turn off the burglar alarm. My mother lives in a fortress. She must. Her house is filled with beautiful things, and it suddenly occurs to me that she is filled with fear, secreted under layers of sophistication as thick as enamel.

There's nothing alive inside her house. All the plants are artificial. And she has no pets. There's nothing here that could ever need her attention.

We go up to the redecorated bedroom. It's pretty. The closet has compartments and shelves in it, with so much room that my few belongings look silly there when I put them away.

Mother is fussing with the curtains. " Do you like these? I remembered that you thought peach was a pretty color."

She really wants me to live here. " They're fine, " I say.

" I should go back to the office today, but I thought we might have lunch somewhere instead and then I'll show you the school and anything else you want to see."

I shrug. " Sure."

" Well, what would you like to see? " she asks. She sounds hurt. " I know you didn't do any sightseeing last time. Things didn't work out for us. But you're older now, and you can be on your own sometimes. Girls your age like to be independent."

In one short speech she's moved from this visit to a future time when I'll be living here. She's taking for granted that I'll want to finish high school here. Why? Why now?

I need to ask but I'm afraid to embarrass her. Maybe I can figure it out by myself.

When we leave again we don't take the car out of the garage, but instead walk a few blocks and take the trolley downtown. After lunch she shows me her office in the company my father's father started. Several people are working, even though it's lunchtime, and they rush at Mother and ask her questions while she walks through the rooms. Her voice changes when she answers. She's brisk and a little sarcastic. Boss.

She still wears her wedding ring, although my fa­ther has been dead for nearly fifteen years.

A problem arises. Someone who should have done one thing did something else. Mother asks a young woman to find me a place to sit and a magazine to read.

I look out the window at the building across the street. After an hour, I find her and tell her I want to leave.

" I can get home by myself, " I say.

" I'll call a taxi for you, " she says.

She doesn't say that she'll be with me in a minute. She doesn't say she's sorry she's tied up and can't take me sightseeing. She gives me a handful of money, the keys to the house, and tells me the numbers to punch into the alarm keypad in the hall. They are the date, month, and year of my birth.

For some reason, learning that she's used the num­bers for my birthday in her burglar alarm system makes me so grateful that I could cry.

And then my mother runs out of time and asks the young woman who gave me the magazine to call the taxi and keep me company on the street until it comes. And tell me about the city.

" Good-bye, " I say to my mother.

" Bye, darling, " she says, but she's already turned away and is pointing to a line on a page that a young man holds out to her.

As I leave the office, she calls after me, " I'll only spend a couple of hours here tomorrow. We'll have all of Sunday together."

" Thank you, " I say.

I can't go back to that house and stay there all after­noon by myself. The taxi driver stops when I tell him to, a few blocks from my mother's office. I pay him and watch him drive away.

Overhead, the sky is bright blue. The sidewalk is crowded with an assortment of people that would cause Colleen to laugh aloud. A man in leather pants strides by. His beard is braided with strands of beads. A beautiful, elderly Asian woman passes, murmuring to herself. Two girls, twins, weave through the crowd, chattering in a foreign language. A tall boy with curly red hair stares down at me and grins, showing braces. He wears an earring. An old man waves a sign announcing the end of the world, and he shouts unintelligible words mixed with bizarre curses after me.

I go inside a shop that sells postcards and buy some to send home. I get a map, too. When I step back outside, I know how to find my way to Fisherman's Wharf.

I pass a hotel and the doorman glances at me. A lady with diamond earrings bends and slips into a long, white car. Her little dog barks and snaps at someone inside.

Near the wharf an ugly man in a pirate costume struts about with large, screaming parrots clinging to his shoulders and arms. I stare. He shouts that I must pay him a dollar to look at him. He smells so bad that I wouldn't stand there if he paid me the dollar.

When I've seen enough, I try to go back the way I came, but I've lost my way. A thick fog oozes in, so swiftly that I'm alarmed. On a street of shabby houses and apartment buildings, I unfold the map.

And I hear enchanting laughter from behind me.

Glossary:

  1. to terrify – жахати, лякати;
  2. nightmare – кошмар, страхіття;
  3. obligated – зобов’язаний;
  4. a porch – веранда;
  5. an intruder – незваний гість, людина, що намагається привласнити чужі володіння;
  6. burglar – злодій;
  7. to fuss – метушитися;
  8. to shrug – знизувати плечима;
  9. to take something for granted – приймати щось на віру;
  10. brisk – моторний, жвавий;
  11. to stride – широко крокувати;
  12. braided – заплетений у косу;
  13. to grin – посміхатися;
  14. to snap – вкусити, хапати;
  15. to cling – триматися поруч, горнутися, чіплятися;
  16. to ooze – просочуватися;
  17. Swiftly – швидко;
  18. enchanting – зачаровуючий.

Tasks


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