physical energy—all to no avail.
Around the time he entered middle school, Paul had simply stopped going to them for help they’d never been able to provide. While the period that elapsed between hitting the sack and dropping off still often lasted several hours, it had become less fraught, if only because the guilt he’d felt over inflicting so much grief on his parents had been removed from the list of worries that continued routinely to visit him. Contrary to what his parents had so often assured him would happen, the worries, or state of worry, had not subsided with age. Some of the worries were concrete: he’d left his French book in the cafeteria, they were starting floor hockey in gym, he was confounded by cosine and sine, there was another birthday party he hadn’t been invited to. Worse were the nameless ones. When he’d been younger, they’d all been nameless. Paul could still remember hovering, pajama-clad, on his parents’ threshold, his throat and chest tight, his nose prickling with tears, and being utterly incapable of formulating a single word in response to his mother’s exasperated query, “What is it now?”
Sometimes he suspected that his gravest worries remained nameless, that the concrete, identifiable ones that amassed in his mind were illusions, diversions in the service of a malevolent force whose sole purpose was to prevent his ever resting easy. It seemed to him that as the nameless worries were supplanted, or obscured, by more tangible ones, he was actually moving further and further from the possibility of freeing himself from their root cause. He didn’t like to think about this, but sometimes couldn’t help it, in the way that he couldn’t help picking at his hangnails, even when they bled and scabbed over. Sometimes he wondered if this all meant he would one day likely become crazy.
All his worries, named and nameless alike, shamed him. Back when he used to go in distress almost every night to his parents, they had reminded him how lucky he was, how safe and privileged to live with his whole family, in a house, in a riverside village, in America—as though that would provide him with consolation instead of another burden, proof of his deficiencies. He was old enough to know his troubles were nothing compared with other people’s, to know the world was full of people with a reason, a right, to be unable to fall asleep. His own best friend, for starters. Baptiste spoke little of his life before moving to Nyack. The name of his village, Jacmel. That he’d worn an ironed shirt every day to school.That his mother still lived there, that she worked in a hotel, that she hoped eventually to come to the U.S. The very starkness of these details—and more, the stark way his friend delivered them, as if each fact were a single dry bean—convinced Paul that if anyone had cause for insomnia, it was Baptiste. Yet Baptiste exuded calm. Not calm: peace. As though everything yet to come had already happened. Sometimes, when Paul got worked up about some future event, Baptiste would try explaining that whatever was going to be would come about si Bondye vle, if God willed it. Paul was made uncomfortable by the submissiveness implied by his friend’s belief, but he couldn’t help envying Baptiste his faith.
Paul envied Biscuit, too. His sister seemed never to worry, not even when, in his opinion, a little worrying might be in order. Today, for instance. It wasn’t so much the playing hooky as it was the biking right in front of her school, for crying out loud, and the part about going to the Hook and falling in the river, even though she’d sworn she hadn’t fallen, or wasn’t at fault, or whatever. Who else but Biscuit would manage to get herself knocked into the Hudson River by a rescue dog? And then there was the question of bringing home the strange man.
Paul’s objection to this last was not on the grounds of danger. All you had to do was glance, briefly, at the
Around the time he entered middle school, Paul had simply stopped going to them for help they’d never been able to provide. While the period that elapsed between hitting the sack and dropping off still often lasted several hours, it had become less fraught, if only because the guilt he’d felt over inflicting so much grief on his parents had been removed from the list of worries that continued routinely to visit him. Contrary to what his parents had so often assured him would happen, the worries, or state of worry, had not subsided with age. Some of the worries were concrete: he’d left his French book in the cafeteria, they were starting floor hockey in gym, he was confounded by cosine and sine, there was another birthday party he hadn’t been invited to. Worse were the nameless ones. When he’d been younger, they’d all been nameless. Paul could still remember hovering, pajama-clad, on his parents’ threshold, his throat and chest tight, his nose prickling with tears, and being utterly incapable of formulating a single word in response to his mother’s exasperated query, “What is it now?”
Sometimes he suspected that his gravest worries remained nameless, that the concrete, identifiable ones that amassed in his mind were illusions, diversions in the service of a malevolent force whose sole purpose was to prevent his ever resting easy. It seemed to him that as the nameless worries were supplanted, or obscured, by more tangible ones, he was actually moving further and further from the possibility of freeing himself from their root cause. He didn’t like to think about this, but sometimes couldn’t help it, in the way that he couldn’t help picking at his hangnails, even when they bled and scabbed over. Sometimes he wondered if this all meant he would one day likely become crazy.
All his worries, named and nameless alike, shamed him. Back when he used to go in distress almost every night to his parents, they had reminded him how lucky he was, how safe and privileged to live with his whole family, in a house, in a riverside village, in America—as though that would provide him with consolation instead of another burden, proof of his deficiencies. He was old enough to know his troubles were nothing compared with other people’s, to know the world was full of people with a reason, a right, to be unable to fall asleep. His own best friend, for starters. Baptiste spoke little of his life before moving to Nyack. The name of his village, Jacmel. That he’d worn an ironed shirt every day to school.That his mother still lived there, that she worked in a hotel, that she hoped eventually to come to the U.S. The very starkness of these details—and more, the stark way his friend delivered them, as if each fact were a single dry bean—convinced Paul that if anyone had cause for insomnia, it was Baptiste. Yet Baptiste exuded calm. Not calm: peace. As though everything yet to come had already happened. Sometimes, when Paul got worked up about some future event, Baptiste would try explaining that whatever was going to be would come about si Bondye vle, if God willed it. Paul was made uncomfortable by the submissiveness implied by his friend’s belief, but he couldn’t help envying Baptiste his faith.
Paul envied Biscuit, too. His sister seemed never to worry, not even when, in his opinion, a little worrying might be in order. Today, for instance. It wasn’t so much the playing hooky as it was the biking right in front of her school, for crying out loud, and the part about going to the Hook and falling in the river, even though she’d sworn she hadn’t fallen, or wasn’t at fault, or whatever. Who else but Biscuit would manage to get herself knocked into the Hudson River by a rescue dog? And then there was the question of bringing home the strange man.
Paul’s objection to this last was not on the grounds of danger. All you had to do was glance, briefly, at the
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