explain because there isn’t a specific word for it. If you knew all the languages in the world, you could express yourself perfectly and all experiences would be understandable to you because you would have a word, a perfect word, to attach to any possible occasion. See what I mean?”
August wiped his greasy hands on his jeans. He was fairly certain his mother was naked under her quilt. He wondered if there was a word for that in another language. A word to classify the feeling you get sitting across from your mother, eating a pork chop, with your mother naked under a quilt.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just because you have a word to put on something doesn’t mean you understand it any better. Does it?”
“Oh, I think so. Definitely. I don’t think things really exist until we can name them. Without names for every living thing, the world is populated by spooks and monsters.”
“Just because you give something a name doesn’t mean you change what it is. It’s still the same thing.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong, Augie dear. How about death?”
“What about it?”
“What if instead of death everyone called it being born and looked forward to it as the great reward at the end of seventy or so years of slow rot on earth?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone look forward to death?”
“Maybe you’re too young for this conversation,” she said, coughing into the back of her hand. “That’s an interesting thought. I bet in some language there is a word for the state you exist in now—the state of being incapable of formulating concepts of, or discussing abstractly, death in all its various forms, due to a lack of experience. You need to have someone you love die, and then you get it. All the understanding of the world comes rushing in on you like a vacuum seal was broken somewhere. I’m not saying you’ll ever understand why the world works the way it does, but you’ll surely come to the conclusion that it does work, and that, as a result, it will absolutely someday come to a grinding halt, as nothing can work forever. See what I mean?”
“No.”
“Huh. Well, in time you will. I’m sure.”
She picked up her solitaire game and shuffled the cards, splitting the deck, riffling the ends together with a brisk splat, and then condensing the deck back together by making the cards bow and bridge and shush into one. August sat listening, enjoying the sound of her shuffling, thinking, knowing she was wrong. He
had
loved someone who had died.
“How’s the job coming?”
“Not great.”
“Motivational issues?”
“No. They’re just fast. I’ve been thinking about a change of tactics.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I don’t know if it will work. Can I borrow some bowls?”
—
Lisa stayed for dinner again. August sensed that his life was now split in two distinct pieces. There was the part when Skyler was alive, when his father and mother and he had all lived in the new house, and now, this new part, where things were foggy and indistinct. August twirled Lisa’s spaghetti around on his fork and realized, for the very first time, that the whole of his life up until this very point existed in the past, which meant it didn’t exist at all, not really. It might as well have been buried right there in the pasture next to Skyler.
—
It was dark and cool in the barn and he switched on the radio for company. August hadn’t been able to sleep, and he’d risen early—before Lisa, even—and he hadn’t had breakfast and his stomach rumbled as he climbed the wooden ladder up to the haymow. In the darkness he could see the faint pinpricks of stars through the knotholes and chinks of the barn planks, and then his groping fingers found the pull chain and the haymow was flooded with fluorescent light.
The floor was carpeted with twisted feline forms, tabbies, calicos, some night black, some pure white, intermingled and lumpy and irrevocably dead. They lay like pieces of dirty
August wiped his greasy hands on his jeans. He was fairly certain his mother was naked under her quilt. He wondered if there was a word for that in another language. A word to classify the feeling you get sitting across from your mother, eating a pork chop, with your mother naked under a quilt.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just because you have a word to put on something doesn’t mean you understand it any better. Does it?”
“Oh, I think so. Definitely. I don’t think things really exist until we can name them. Without names for every living thing, the world is populated by spooks and monsters.”
“Just because you give something a name doesn’t mean you change what it is. It’s still the same thing.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong, Augie dear. How about death?”
“What about it?”
“What if instead of death everyone called it being born and looked forward to it as the great reward at the end of seventy or so years of slow rot on earth?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone look forward to death?”
“Maybe you’re too young for this conversation,” she said, coughing into the back of her hand. “That’s an interesting thought. I bet in some language there is a word for the state you exist in now—the state of being incapable of formulating concepts of, or discussing abstractly, death in all its various forms, due to a lack of experience. You need to have someone you love die, and then you get it. All the understanding of the world comes rushing in on you like a vacuum seal was broken somewhere. I’m not saying you’ll ever understand why the world works the way it does, but you’ll surely come to the conclusion that it does work, and that, as a result, it will absolutely someday come to a grinding halt, as nothing can work forever. See what I mean?”
“No.”
“Huh. Well, in time you will. I’m sure.”
She picked up her solitaire game and shuffled the cards, splitting the deck, riffling the ends together with a brisk splat, and then condensing the deck back together by making the cards bow and bridge and shush into one. August sat listening, enjoying the sound of her shuffling, thinking, knowing she was wrong. He
had
loved someone who had died.
“How’s the job coming?”
“Not great.”
“Motivational issues?”
“No. They’re just fast. I’ve been thinking about a change of tactics.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I don’t know if it will work. Can I borrow some bowls?”
—
Lisa stayed for dinner again. August sensed that his life was now split in two distinct pieces. There was the part when Skyler was alive, when his father and mother and he had all lived in the new house, and now, this new part, where things were foggy and indistinct. August twirled Lisa’s spaghetti around on his fork and realized, for the very first time, that the whole of his life up until this very point existed in the past, which meant it didn’t exist at all, not really. It might as well have been buried right there in the pasture next to Skyler.
—
It was dark and cool in the barn and he switched on the radio for company. August hadn’t been able to sleep, and he’d risen early—before Lisa, even—and he hadn’t had breakfast and his stomach rumbled as he climbed the wooden ladder up to the haymow. In the darkness he could see the faint pinpricks of stars through the knotholes and chinks of the barn planks, and then his groping fingers found the pull chain and the haymow was flooded with fluorescent light.
The floor was carpeted with twisted feline forms, tabbies, calicos, some night black, some pure white, intermingled and lumpy and irrevocably dead. They lay like pieces of dirty
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