Июнь Ли - Where Reasons End

A dictionary is not complete without the word forever, is it? Nikolai said.

All words are indispensable, don’t you agree?

10

Waylaid by Facts

Your friend Martha wrote, I said.

She’s in college now, Nikolai said. How is she?

I don’t know. She didn’t say in the letter. She talked only about you.

Oh.

I didn’t recognize her name, but when she wrote that she was the bassoonist I remembered her, I said.

Poor Martha. I hope she has more time to practice now.

The girl had been in a chamber group with Nikolai the year before, and had been warned by the music teacher several times. Yet how could she have found time, trying to be everything she could and applying to colleges? At the concert last winter, she and Nikolai and a clarinetist played a trio piece by Bach. Halfway through she had slipped off and couldn’t get back. She sat there, elegant in her long black dress and smiling at Nikolai and the clarinetist. Could you tell she missed the second part of the piece, Nikolai had asked, and when I said I couldn’t he had been pleased. She played a few notes toward the end, he said, so it all looked as though that was what it should be like.

I had never talked with the girl but I was fond of that memory.

I wonder who else wrote you, Nikolai said.

Your friends, our friends, your teachers, parents of your classmates, people you don’t know, I said. Oh, Lemony Snicket.

One thing I can’t brag about now, he said. Which of my friends wrote?

Let me just make the turn first, I said. I was waiting for the green light, and I couldn’t see much of the road. I had thirty minutes before teaching, and I did not know how my tears had begun between one block and the next. Something had ambushed me.

I still like waylay better, Nikolai said. Less seasonal than ambush.

What? I said.

Think, Mommy. It’s winter. You’re less likely to be ambushed.

I looked at the bushes along the road, bare and unable to hide anything. Try as I might, I still couldn’t see many things seen by him.

Waylay is more inevitable, he said, unless you can avoid roads altogether.

The light changed and I turned into a street with old houses on both sides but no bushes. If you have a sudden possession of something you don’t understand, I said, is there a way to discard it promptly without understanding it?

What is it?

Words provided to me—loss, grief, sorrow, bereavement, trauma—never seemed to be able to speak precisely of what was plaguing me. One can and must live with loss and grief and sorrow and bereavement. Together they frame this life, as solid as the ceiling and the floor and the walls and the doors. But there is something else, like a bird that flies away at the first sign of one’s attention, or a cricket chirping in the dark, never settling close enough for one to tell from which corner the song comes.

If I could say what it is, I said, wouldn’t that mean at least I have some understanding?

Do you understand a tree and how it feels when you know its name?

There are encyclopedias, I said. At least I can gather some general knowledge.

General knowledge is not going to help you, he said. But look at it this way: If you possess something, whatever it is, by definition that thing is at your disposal.

Yes, by definition.

Then dispose it!

How, I said, if I don’t know what it is?

Isn’t that what we have to do all the time? he said. You, I mean. Not me anymore. If you have a thousand dollars, it’s easy to make up a plan about the money. But if you have a life, do you understand what a life is, do you know what to do with it?

A life is not a disposable thing, I protested.

When I say dispose it, I don’t mean to get rid of it, but to settle it.

Oh.

There are better definitions for many words than the definitions you want to use, he said.

My dictionary is limited, I said.

No doubt, he said.

You know what I realized? I said. I don’t want to use the word flawed anymore. I rather like limited.

A flawed character is limited, no? he said. I’m flawed, you’re flawed, we all fault ourselves for being flawed.

A limited character, I said, may still be perfect.

You’re not talking about yourself? he said.

Oh dear no, I said. Perfection is not my pursuit.

If you’re talking about me, I can’t make do with being limited and thinking of myself as perfect, he said. It is wrong from beginning to end.

My understanding is wrong?

Remember the Caterpillar said so to Alice?

Ah, yes, I said. A few years ago we had visited Alice’s Shop in Oxford, and had brought two prints back, one with the Caterpillar telling Alice from on top of the mushroom, It is wrong from beginning to end, and the other, the Red Queen pulling Alice behind her and saying, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

I’ve always found those two statements comforting, Nikolai said.

Me too, I said. Not always though. Sometimes.

On the other hand, he said, if we’re willing, we can pick out any number of statements from any number of books and find them comforting.

Not for me, I said, not at this moment.

Why not? Don’t you need more of those soothing words now?

I’m not looking for comfort food in any book.

What’s wrong with comfort food? I like your little pancakes.

Little pancake was the name Nikolai had given to something I had improvised when he was in preschool. A simple mixture of flour, egg, sugar, and the key for them to be a genuine success was that every piece had its own shape, irregular, not representing any number, letter, or anything that could be pinned down by imagination. There were no two little pancakes alike as there were no two leaves alike. Dr. Seuss gave only twenty more letters on beyond zebra. I had cooked hundreds of them for Nikolai and his little brother. Like writing stories for only two readers.

What feeds your stomach should not be the same thing that feeds your mind, I said.

That belief is scientifically unsound, he said.

Yes, on the cellular level and on the molecular level, I’d agree with you, I said. Did I tell you about this man we visited for grief counseling? He asked us to imagine the universe as a giant cauldron of molecular soup. These molecules here make this table, those molecules there made Nikolai, I said, imitating the doctor, and began to laugh.

If he made you laugh wouldn’t you consider him effective?

Upon our entering his office the man had also said, I sense suffering coming, but that I didn’t tell Nikolai.

Some laughter does not last, I said.

Nothing does.

There are a few things that do.

Like what? Don’t say love.

Our present conversation.

I noticed that you used an adjective, he said. Not our past conversations, or future conversations?

The word future is unnecessary if this conversation lasts, I said. Don’t you think in this case futureless is not a bleak word at all?

How do you know this will last?

Indeed, I thought, how would I know?

And the past conversations? Nikolai asked.

They are memories.

And you don’t think memories last?

One wishes they did, I said.

So memories are like cells, always replaced by new ones?

I thought about it. Without replacements would his memories now remain unfaded and unfadable? Were they becoming part of his omniscience?

I’ve never thought about that, he said. They’re not my concerns, you know?

I don’t know, because I don’t know what your concerns are these days, I said.

You used to know, he said.

Yes.

Why not anymore?

It’d be preposterous to say I know anything about you now, I said. I used to say one can know a person without understanding him, but I’ve never thought the opposite can be true, too, until now.