Carolyn Parkhurst - The Dogs of Babel

The guy shrugged. “Yeah, go ahead,” he said.

The man sat down, and the boat pulled slowly into the canal.

“What’d you say, Daddy?” one of the little girls asked delightedly.

“Daddy told a lie,” the man said in a stage whisper. “Daddy was bad.”

His wife was shaking her head and laughing. “Yeah, kids,” she said. “Do as Daddy says, not as Daddy does.”

I looked at Lexy and rolled my eyes. “Great role models,” I whispered.

Lexy’s whole body had turned rigid. “I can’t stand people like that,” she said in a low, furious voice. “What makes them think the rules don’t apply to them?”

I took her hand. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Look, singing dolls. Naive but well intentioned.”

But she just sat still and stared straight ahead. Our boat sailed smoothly through the wide canals. The cool air felt good after the Florida heat. I watched the doll-children go by.

“What country is that supposed to be?” I asked, pointing toward an icy-blue landscape peopled by singing penguins. “Antarctica?”

Lexy shrugged.

The man in front of us turned to his daughters. “Come on, Ashley, Madison,” he said. “You know the words. ‘There is just one moon and one golden sun.’” The girls joined him, singing in loud, high-pitched voices.

“Shall we join in?” I said to Lexy. “Come on, Lexy, you know the words.”

But she didn’t smile. She looked down at her lap.

“‘There’s so much that we share,’” shrieked the girls in front of us, “‘that it’s time we’re aware…’”

Lexy was still seething when we reached the end of the ride.

“Come on,” I said, standing up and climbing out of the boat. “Let’s go get one of those ice creams shaped like Mickey’s head.” But she was looking the other way.

“Excuse me,” she said loudly to the ride operator. The little family group turned to hear what she was going to say. “Can we go through again? The people in front of us were so morally reprehensible that we couldn’t enjoy the ride.” She got out of the boat and started to walk, her body stiff, her arms held tightly at her sides.

“What does that mean, Daddy?” one of the girls asked.

Lexy turned back. “It means your daddy’s an asshole,” she said. And she walked quickly on ahead of me.

She was near tears when I caught up to her. I reached out to touch her arm, but she jerked away from me.

“We were having such a good day, and now I’ve ruined it,” she said.

“You haven’t ruined it,” I said. I’ll admit I had been a bit taken aback by Lexy’s outburst. I was surprised by the intensity of her emotion, the strength of her reaction to people she didn’t even know. But there had been so much that had surprised me in the last twenty-four hours, not least of all my own willingness to follow Lexy’s lead, to turn myself upside down to be with her. In my entire life, I’d never called anyone an asshole—not to their face, anyway—but it occurred to me now that maybe I should have. Maybe if I’d opened my mouth more often, let my own words come to the surface, I wouldn’t have lived my life so alone.

“You were right,” I said. “Daddy was an asshole. Let’s go find him and kick his ass.”

“I don’t know why I get this way,” she said, still not meeting my eyes. “If you want to just leave, that’s okay.”

I took her face in my hands and turned it upward until she was looking at me. I smiled. “I don’t want to leave,” I said.

“You don’t?” she said. Her eyes were bright with tears.

“No. I don’t.”

“You’re not—I don’t know, mad or freaked out or embarrassed to be seen with me? I mean, you hardly know me, and here I am causing scenes with complete strangers.”

“Well, I won’t be cutting in line in front of you, that’s for sure,” I said. Finally, she smiled. “But how could I be mad at you? Look where you’ve brought me.” I spread out my arms to include everything around us, the colors and the music, the rides, the crowds, the Florida sun. “You’ve brought me where I needed to go. Now come show me the rest of it.”

I’ve mentioned the books, haven’t I? The books Lexy rearranged on the day she died? Today I’m going to sit down and begin to make a list. As far as I can tell, Lexy’s work on that day was concentrated on one bookcase in particular; even though every bookshelf in the house has been changed to some degree, with a single book removed here and there and a new one put in its place, it’s only the bookcase in my den where everything is different. Every book that was there when I left that morning has been taken out, although a few of them have been put back in a different spot than they originally occupied. The rest of the space has been filled with books from other places in the house. I begin to type the titles into my laptop, in the order she placed them, making notes about the subject matter and their history in our lives, as well as noting which books were hers and which are mine. So far, I can find no discernible pattern.

I get as far as the top shelf, which is arranged as follows:

Mary Had a Little Lamb: Language Acquisition in Early Childhood (Mine.)

I Was George Washington (Lexy’s. A book about past-life regression. She always had a weakness for that kind of thing.)

Love in the Known World (Hers. A critically acclaimed novel that was later made into a truly awful movie.)

But That’s Not a Duck! (Mine. A book of jokes I bought for an academic paper I was writing about punch lines.)

That’s Not Where I Left It Yesterday (Hers. A coming-of-age story about a girl in 1950s Brooklyn.)

What You Need to Know to Be a Game Show Contestant (Mine. I never did get to be on a game show, but I always thought I’d be good at it.)

I Wish I May, I Wish I Might (Hers. A book of childhood folklore and customs from around the world.)

Know Your Rhodesian Ridgeback (Hers, although I’ve consulted it quite a few times lately.)

Didn’t You Used to Be Someone? Stars of Yesterday and Where They Are Today (Hers.)

I’d Rather Be Parsing: The Linguistics of Bumper Stickers, Buttons, and T-shirt Slogans (Mine.)

Have You Never Been Mellow? The World’s Worst Music (Mine. A joke gift from Lexy, who always insisted that I had terrible taste in music.)

How to Buy a Used Car Without Getting Taken for a Ride (Hers.)

As I said, this is only the top shelf. As soon as I’ve written down the last title, I begin to question my actions. What exactly do I think I’m looking for, a message from beyond the grave, arranged neatly in my study? I have a sudden memory of the eerie excitement I felt as a kid when the Beatles’ “Paul is dead” clues started to surface. I was thirteen the year that story broke, and I was thrilled by it, the goose-bumpy feeling of hearing backwards messages, the uncanny idea of secret clues hidden in plain sight. My friend Paul Muzzey, with whom I shared not only a first name but also the small excitement of being a namesake to the corpse in this conspiracy, kept a long list of all the clues published in music magazines and broadcast over the radio. He called me up one afternoon and said, “You’ve got to play ‘A Day in the Life’ right now. Go do it while I’m still on the phone.”

“Backwards?” I asked.

“No, just listen to it the right way. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

So I put the phone down and walked over to the hi-fi in the living room. I pulled Sergeant Pepper out of its sleeve and put it on the turntable. My parents weren’t home, so I turned it up as loud as it went, then picked up the phone again.