Michael Malone - Weebly

Ought to have let her run that factory where your
grandfather worked until my uncle made such a mess of
the business they had to lay everybody off."
"My dad says his mother worked very hard."
"Didn't have an easy life, I shouldn't imagine, but
she fought back. Every match point. One time she said
to me, 'Suffering, we pick and choose. Could be this,
could be that in our lives we let break our hearts. A
thousand kinds of misery, and only one word for happy.
Happiness you don't choose. It chooses you, like luck.
You look down, there's a quarter or a rose. You listen,
somebody's singing.'
Oh, something had upset me, can't remember what
now, and she was trying to perk me up. She always had
her radio on."
Polly's grin had contracted to a sad and tender
smile for her grandmother's life, for the woman seated in
a frayed armchair by a standing lamp, the radio next to
her, for the woman repairing other women's clothes. In
Polly's hand the warm chocolate was sticky.
Then suddenly Miss Dingley raced her chair to the
other side of the room, where she flipped a light switch