Lori Ostlund - The Bigness of the World

He nodded, presenting a wolfish smile.

“I am being asked to reward them for their sluggishness? No,” I said, and then even more vehemently, “No, I cannot do it. I will not take part in this emperor’s-new-clothes approach to education.”

“I am afraid the decision has been made.”

“By the vice principal and yourself ?” I replied peevishly, making a jab that went unnoticed and thus afforded me no pleasure. A moment later, I turned desperate. “Can we not compromise?” I asked and, inspired by his smile, said, “How about the Jackals? I believe that they are also known for their speed.”

He showed me the wolfish smile yet again, though I think that he considered it wistful, even worldly. As I rose to leave, he said, “One catches more flies with honey than with nectar, Dr. Daneau.”

* * *

The Provinces, we called places such as this when I was a lad growing up in New York City, meaning it to sound sophisticated I suppose. Such are the foibles of youth. I have been living here, in the Provinces, almost twenty years. How I came to be here would be of little interest to most; suffice it to say that it involved love of an unrequited nature and that I brought myself here as a means of penance, penance for having allowed myself the folly of unrequited love. Here, to be more specific, is Minnesota, a stultifyingly cold place offset by good manners. I have been able to get by with a series of houseboys, young men who value age and education. Do not misunderstand me, though: houseboys must be paid.

Marcos, my current houseboy, is studying to become a teacher himself. I flatter myself to think that my influence has led to this career choice, though on more lucid days I understand that he has made this choice despite me, despite my constant complaining, despite the late-night phone calls, sometimes two or three in a week, filled with snickers and threats and commentary of a flatulent nature. At night, after he has served our meal and we have eaten it while speaking of our days, after he has washed the dishes and I have attended to my paperwork, we return to the table, where we spend an hour preparing him for the state teachers’ exam. He will be leaving me soon, and though I do everything within my power to help him, I do so with the knowledge that I am working against myself.

The other night, he opened the exam book to a math question and looked up at me expectantly, as he always does. “Start with the extremes,” I reminded him. Only then did I glance down at the question: “Which measurement would be most appropriate to use when discussing the weight of a pencil? A. ounce B. quart C. pound D. ton.”

“But surely this is not a real question?” I said, pointing to the words pencil and then ton to make my point. In doing so, I brushed his hand where it rested on the page, a brief and largely accidental touch but deeply sustaining. He smiled at me gently because that is his nature. He is sweet and kind, more so than any other houseboy whose services I have enlisted, and so he did not begrudge me this fleeting touch of skin, this small morsel of pleasure. I worry about Marcos, worry about what kind of teacher he will be if he can so easily be convinced to give himself over in this way.

Marcos arrived from Brazil five years ago, and when I employed him two years later, he was still pronouncing his past tense verbs as though the — ed were an extra syllable to be emphasized emphatically as he spoke: “Yesterday, I talk -id to my friend and then I walk -id to the school.” We spent the first months of his employment undoing this habit, but others have been harder to break, particularly his tendency to translate from Portuguese with no thought as to whether it will make sense in English.

“Doctor, truly I do not know whether to get married or to buy a bicycle,” he will say when faced with a dilemma. He knows the English equivalent, which places one between a rock and a hard place, but does not care for it. “Why a hard place, Doctor?” he asks. “It is not very poetic, I think, to say ‘a hard place.’ ” His tone, as always, is delightfully unsure.

Somewhere along the way, he has developed a penchant for the expression “Close, but no cigar,” which he finds numerous opportunities to use. “Are we having lamb this evening, Marcos?” I will ask, and he will reply, “Close, but no cigar, Doctor,” even when I am not at all close, when it is not lamb but fish that he has prepared. I do not have the heart to correct him, to tell him that this expression has gone the way of carnivals, from whence it derives, and cigars themselves.

Each evening when I arrive home, I sit in my armchair and flip through the paper, acquainting myself with the day’s events while Marcos bustles about, making the final preparations for dinner and fixing my cocktail. Tonight, he appears promptly with my martini, carrying it on a tray as he has been taught.

“Doctor,” he greets me, setting the drink down.

I nod. “Thank you, Marcos. What are you preparing for this evening’s meal?”

“I am roasting a chicken,” he says happily, and when I nod again, he sweeps back into the kitchen.

Certainly Marcos is not the most talented houseboy that I have ever employed. The chicken will be tough, the breasts, in particular, so dry that they will become edible only after being diced and tossed with mayonnaise and mustard. Jung was my most capable cook, though he favored garlic a bit too strongly. I do not like the smell of food on my body, and the garlic was always there, each time I opened my mouth or lifted an arm.

My martini is fine but not exceptional, for Marcos lacks consistency. I drink it anyway while passing through the first several pages of the paper, which I do quickly, as much of the news is devoted to the upcoming elections. I will vote, of course, for I am a firm believer in civic duty, but I do not wish to have these people intrude upon my daily life.

In the back section, which contains the local news, my eye is caught by a photograph of a young man standing beside an airplane, his hand resting on the wing in a proprietary manner. The headline attached to the article reads, “Pilot Plummets to Death,” but I notice this only later, so struck am I first by the photograph and then by the text beneath it, which, incredibly, gives the young man’s name as Thomas Jefferson.

One of my colleagues recently told me that his unusual first name, Gifford, was chosen by his grandparents, fanatical campers wishing to pay homage to Gifford Pinchot, the man largely responsible for establishing park conservation under Theodore Roosevelt. It strikes me that living up to a name such as Gifford is possible and, more important, that not living up to it can at least remain a private defeat, for most people have never heard of Gifford Pinchot — which is not the case with a name like Thomas Jefferson, a name that would have always left this young man feeling hopelessly inadequate.

I skim the article, wanting to know what minor accomplishment this young Mr. Jefferson has achieved, and thus learn that the young man staring back at me, a twenty-four-year-old pilot from White Bear Lake, attempted his third solo flight yesterday. I say attempted because shortly after takeoff, a bird flew directly into Mr. Jefferson’s cockpit windshield, shattering the glass and blinding Mr. Jefferson, ending his career as well as his life. I sip from my martini, but my hand is shaking, and I end up spilling far more than I consume. I try to imagine his final moments, how he felt as he went to his death in this way, sitting in his beloved cockpit contemplating the ineluctability of gravity, robbed of the one sense that could save him while the other four endeavored to offer assistance, all of them, even taste, focused single-mindedly on the moment of impact, his life reduced to that one certainty.