Sarah opened the refrigerator, which lit her up again. “The whole thing fills me with terrible thoughts. I suppose I should manage a better philosophical stance. Certainly the French would! They would have the proper comedic perspective.” And here she paused. “Of course, they also have jokes that end ‘And then the baby fell down the stairs.’ ” She had sealed her rooty puree into a Rubbermaid bowl, the puree I’d seen her chopping many days ago already. She was no longer thinking it should be stashed here.
“Please,” she said, handing it to me. “Don’t eat this. Just keep it in the back of your refrigerator at home. I’ll ask for it again, but I don’t want it lingering around here right now. Not with the kids coming Wednesdays.”
“What is it?” I asked. There would be no more Wednesdays. I already felt that.
“It’s, um, a kind of poisonous paste that, well, gets stains out. Just don’t get it confused with parsnip tapenade.”
“What’s it made of?”
“It’s … nothing. But don’t mix it up with food.”
Then I realized it was that paperwhite puree I had just seen her mincing, mashing the bulbs with a cheese slicer and a pestle.
“Does it work? In the laundry?” I asked. Meekness returned to cover me and blur my sight like a veil.
“Supposedly,” she said, with mystery and evasion. “Perhaps someday I’ll have Liza try it on some stains. If you keep it cool and moist and scrub it in with a brush it’s supposed to work. Take it home with you, please, just for now. I’ll ask for it back later. But here, take it.” And she thrust the sealed plastic container at me. I took it. Put it in my backpack. It reminded me of tales I’d read of people carrying yeasts in damp handkerchiefs from Europe — a break with one world and a beginning in another, where one would culture and grow things from the old. Or perhaps one could kill someone instantly with this. Or cure a wart. I didn’t know its uses, really, but obligingly took it anyway, back to my house, where perhaps I would grow a whole new life with it, or clean a rug, or do nothing.
Tragedies, I was coming to realize through my daily studies in the humanities both in and out of the classroom, were a luxury. They were constructions of an affluent society, full of sorrow and truth but without moral function. Stories of the vanquishing of the spirit expressed and underscored a certain societal spirit to spare. The weakening of the soul, the story of downfall and failed overcoming — trains missed, letters not received, pride flaring, the demolition of one’s own offspring, who were then served up in stews — this was awe-inspiring, wounding entertainment told uselessly and in comfort at tables full of love and money. Where life was meagerer, where the tables were only half full, the comic triumph of the poor was the useful demi-lie. Jokes were needed. And then the baby fell down the stairs. This could be funny! Especially in a place and time where worse things happened. It wasn’t that suffering was a sweepstakes, but it certainly was relative. For understanding and for perspective, suffering required a butcher’s weighing. And to ease the suffering of the listener, things had better be funny. Though they weren’t always. And this is how, sometimes, stories failed us: Not that funny. Or worse, not funny in the least.
I forgot about the container in the fridge. As with the wasabi at Christmas, I was careless with takeout. Things mounted in the refrigerator and the sink as Murph and I let a life of spring rains, warming air, romantic dissolution, and pointless essay writing make further mincemeat of domesticity. I got panicked and tried to combine the work of several classes: “Sufic Perspectives of Brontë’s Exfoliating Narrative” or “Meeting at Shiraz: Sufic Perspectives on Pinot Noir.” I was having a lot of ostensibly Sufic perspectives. “The Sufic Hymn of The Dirty Dozen.” “The Sufic Quiet of the Western Front.” “Sufic Mrs. Miniver.” I had memorized the whistling theme from The Bridge on the River Kwai, but this did me no good, as I was never asked to whistle it. Crusty dishes accumulated in the sink, as did a low level of dingy water that would not drain. Half-finished cups of coffee sat on bookcase shelves, with flies floating on top. When my papers were returned, question marks appeared in all my margins.
When not working, Murph was going on the Internet, slowly becoming obsessed with astrology. Wanting to see herself outlined in twinkling stars or hoping to bring the heavens at last into fruitful play here on earth, or so it sounded to me, she would say that sun signs were people alone on a mountaintop. They were warm and attracted money and should surround themselves in the colors of wood. The planets whooshed in and out of her conversation. The stars were fire or water or earth or air and contained advice and secrets that would put a box of fortune cookies to shame. When I said, “But how could the positions of the stars and planets have anything to do with our lives down here?” she would just look at me, wounded but portentous. “How could they not?” she replied.
Murph and I both had a lot of schoolwork, and our music sessions dwindled as I took to racing off to the library on my Suzuki. I got a phone message from my advisor and I was forced to drop Wine Tasting, as they had at long last discovered I was underage. The computer had made this mistake with twenty students. My parents would get a partial tuition refund. Across the street in the stadium, football teams were holding spring scrimmages and fans in green and yellow crowded in to cheer them on, even if the games didn’t count. Life was spent in all sorts of ways. I watched The Thin Red Line. I watched Apocalypse Now.
The real problems, as far as I could see, which was not that far, remained back at the Thornwood-Brinks’, and the temporary removal from their home of the pulverized narcissus bulb tapenade had not solved them.
“I dropped a course, so now I have some extra hours,” I told Sarah as I was leaving one afternoon, thinking she might like more help. When I looked at her, I no longer really knew what I saw.
I felt she could see this, as she said, “Well, we’ll see what happens. I realize I’m not being fair to you, in terms of your schedule and budget. But I’ll try to make it up to you.” A bonus. I had heard of these. They were always fraught. I recalled that promising hand squeeze she had given me those long months ago in January, waiting in the hospital parking lot. And then, recalling more, something she’d said became clear to me: it wasn’t sleighs together; it was slays together.
A remark like that served what purpose? If only I’d been able to use it in my Macbeth paper last term!
Mordancy: there was something that could not really be taught. But it could be borrowed. It could be rubbed up against. It could scrape you like bark.
Once, when I was there alone with Mary-Emma, the phone rang, and when I answered it there was just silence. “Bonnie!” I said sternly. “Is this you?” There were things I would tell her. Things she should know! Things she should know and know now! “Bonnie?” And then a familiar voice began to speak. I knew somehow it was the voice of the woman with the beautiful dreads. It was the voice of the woman who did all the deafness jokes. She said, “I’m sorry. I think I dialed the wrong number.”