Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

I must have lapsed into some kind of fugue, because the next thing I knew Abby was dressed and back at the top of my stairs. She wore jeans and a black sleeveless top and knee-high boots which raised her above my height. The boots still needed to be laced through their elaborate upper eyelets. She stood rubbing moisturizer into her palms and elbows and regarding me with steely fury.

“I don’t talk about the hardest parts of my life only to have you throw them back at me,” she said. “If I’ve ever been depressed at least I’ve had the nerve to admit it. I don’t want you to ever use that word with me again, do you understand?”

“Sure you’ve got a nerve. Apparently I touched it. That’s called letting someone know you intimately, Abby.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s it called when you don’t know yourself intimately?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t you tell me your father was coming, Dylan? How could you let me twist like that?”

I stared.

“ You’re depressed, Dylan. That’s your secret from yourself. You don’t let it inside. Your surround yourself with it instead, so you don’t have to admit you’re the source. Take a look.”

“It’s an interesting theory,” I mumbled.

“Fuck you, Dylan, it’s not interesting , it’s not a theory . You’re so busy feeling sorry for me and whoever , Sam Cooke, you conveniently ignore yourself.”

“What exactly do you want, Abby?”

“To be let inside, Dylan. You hide from me, in plain sight.”

“I suppose that’s another way of describing one person sparing another their violent shifts of mood.”

“Is that what we’re talking about here? Moods ?”

“One minute you’re jerking off on the carpet, now this outburst. I can’t take it, Abby.”

“You think you’ve spared me your moods ? What do you think it’s like for me, living under your cockpit of misery, here?” She gestured at the wall I’d been contemplating, covered with fourteen hundred compact discs: two units each holding seven hundred apiece. “This is a wall of moods, a wall of depression , Mr. Objective Correlative.” She slapped the shelves. They rattled.

“Wow, you’ve really drawn up an indictment.” I was fumbling for breathing room, nothing more.

“That’s what you call it when I won’t play depressed for you? You switch to your little Kafka fantasies? I don’t have the power of indictment , Dylan. I’m just the official mascot for all the shit you won’t allow yourself to feel. A featured exhibit in the Ebdus collection of sad black folks .”

“That’s unfair.”

“Let’s see, Curtis Mayfield, “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue”-sounds like depression to me.” She chucked the CD to the floor. “Gladys Knight, misery, depression. Johnny Adams, depression. Van Morrison, total fucking depression. Lucinda Williams, give her Prozac. Marvin Gaye, dead. Johnny Ace, dead, tragic.” As she dismissed the titles she jerked them from the shelf, the jewel cases splitting as they clattered down. “Little Willie John, dead. Little Esther and Little Jimmy Scott, sad-all the Littles are sad. What’s this, Dump ? You actually listen to something called Dump? Is that real? Syl Johnson, Is It Because I’m Black? Maybe you’re just a loser , Syl. Gillian Welch, please, momma. The Go-Betweens? Five Blind Boys of Alabama, no comment. Al Green, I used to think Al Green was happy music until you explained to me how fucking tragic it all was, how he got burned with a pot of hot grits and then his woman shot herself because she was so very depressed . Brian Wilson, crazy. Tom Verlaine, very depressed. Even you don’t play that record. Ann Peebles, I Can’t Stand the Rain . Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, blecch. “Drowning in the Sea of Love,” is that a good thing or a bad thing? David Ruffin, I know he’s a drug addict. Donny Hathaway-dead?”

“Dead,” I said.

“The Bar-Kays, it sounds happy, but I get a bad feeling, I get a bad vibe from this disc. What’s going on with the Bar-Kays?”

“Uh, they were on Otis Redding’s plane.”

“ The Death-Kays! ” She overhanded it to shatter against the far wall and rain onto the pillow.

“Okay, Abby.” I held out my palms, pleading. “Peace. Uncle.” My spinning brain added, Sprite! Mr. Pibb! Clitoris!

She stopped, and we both stared at the crystalline junk around her feet.

“I have some happy music,” I said, dumbly adopting her terms.

“Like what?”

“‘You Sexy Thing’ is probably my favorite single song. There’s a lot of disco-era music I like.”

“Terrible example.”

“Why?”

“A million whining moaning singers, ten million depressed songs, and five or six happy songs-which remind you of being beaten up when you were thirteen years old. You live in the past, Dylan. I’m sick of your secrets. Did your father even ask if I was coming down with you?”

My face was hot and no speech emerged.

“And all this shit. What is this shit, anyway?” Alongside the box sets on the shelf above the CD cases were arrayed a scattering of objects I’d never shown off or named: Aaron X. Doily’s ring, Mingus’s pick, a pair of Rachel’s earrings, and a tiny, handmade, hand-sewn book of black-and-white photographs titled “For D. from E.” Abby’s unlaced boots crackled in the broken plastic cases as she walked. “Whose little shrine is this? Emily? Elizabeth? Come on, Dylan, you put it there so I could see it, you owe me an explanation already.”

“Don’t.”

“Were you once married? I wouldn’t even know.”

I took the ring from the shelf and put it in my pocket. “This is all stuff from when I was a kid.” It was a slight oversimplification: E. was the wife of a friend from college, the gift of the book commemoration of an almost which was really a just-as-well-not .

Mingus’s comic books were in a box in my closet, mingled with mine.

She grabbed the Afro pick. “You were already taking souvenirs from black girls when you were a kid? I don’t think so, Dylan.”

“That’s not a girl’s.”

“Not a girl’s.” She tossed the pick onto the bed. “Is that your way of telling me something I don’t even want to know? Or did you buy this off eBay? Is this Otis Redding’s pick, stolen from the wreckage? Maybe it belonged to one of the Bar-Kays. I guess the truly haunting thing is you’ll never know for sure.”

I lashed out. “I guess I have to listen to this shit because you don’t feel black enough, Abby. Because you grew up riding ponies in the suburbs.”

“No, you have to listen to it because you think this is all about where you grew up and where I grew up. Listen to yourself for a minute, Dylan. What happened to you? Your childhood is some privileged sanctuary you live in all the time, instead of here with me. You think I don’t know that?”

“Nothing happened to me.”

“Right,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “So why are you so obsessed with your childhood?”

“Because-” I truly wanted to answer, not only to appease her. I wanted to know it myself.

“Because?”

“My childhood-” I spoke carefully, finding each word. “My childhood is the only part of my life that wasn’t, uh, overwhelmed by my childhood.”

Overwhelmed-or did I mean ruined ?

“Right,” she said. And we stared at one another for a long moment. “Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you?”

“You just told me where I stand, Dylan.” She spoke sadly, no longer concerned to prove anything. “You know, when I first spent a night in this house, you don’t think I didn’t walk up here and check out your shit? You think I didn’t see that pick on your shelf?”