Bomb Cyclone and its Effects on Harvard - 14
A Novella
2
It should be in the novel: it was at my high school, and in a white with gray speckled room where I was talking to the principal. But the problem is it has been said, and it was easily summarized. The only part that sticks in the memory is in stirring at me twisting a pencil in his mouth, and thinking how he was going to spin this to the school board, which is all you really cared about. That after that, there was no reason to detain the narrative with such trivia.
Emerge yourself in the fog of Boston, and the oak trees that are the Esplanade - transport yourself into night blessed night, and focus on two young people, who are debating what they must do next. We stopped along the pseudo-bois path – with grass between the melting ice river and the parkway – and we stood. Bonne chance!
Coracle beyond the side – though I wish it made more sense than it did - I turned upon my metatarsal bones. Then an enormous weight cast itself on my frame - because something needed to be said, and it tore away my esophagus until it came blurting out at Lily.
“Are you trying to be my girlfriend?”
It was a strange question, but it seemed to fit all of the facts as they were laid out. Or at least, in the hazy world of what could be pictured at that age.
She stopped herself and then began a retro-location.
“I did not know at 1st, but no, I just want to be the closest of friends. If friends forever mean anything, that is what I want.”
The weight lifted.
I started: “I definitely want a boyfriend, and then I want to marry - like you - a true man. If there is any such thing in the world. But I had suspicions, though they turned out to be wrong, that I might be attracted to both men and women. The problem is that I had no friends at all. And I was desperate to get to a good university so that I could have my 1st boyfriend.”
“Strange isn't it? We do not like boys, but are desperate to have one anyway.” She raised her head and it glistened in the artificial light from above. “Biology yields strange results. Maybe I will study hormones to find out how this happens.”
I stretched out: “I will stick with my novel thesis.”
“And I will make bets on its progress, but do not think it is the only square that you will lay chips on.”
“That leads me to the next question.”
“Which is?”
“It is time to think how many voices are in what I call 'The Nebraska Papers' – it being my private obsession.”
“To say the least, but everyone should have one.”
“Do you?”
“Until today I did.” Point taken, Lily. “I wanted Lukacs. I did not go well.”
I did not ask. The engines that drove the XY version of the species were strange indeed. “So what do you think, you are more objective than I.”
“Of course, it is your private obsession.”
“So tell me.”
“There is one who drops out early, there is one who is the main narrator, and there is one who is the main commentator. There are a few voices that elide as if they were offering helpful suggestions, or rather they thought they were helpful suggestions.”
“You are so good at picking out voices.”
“Whereas you are so good at enumerating voices out of thin air.”
We stood there in mutual admiration, but then it was too serious that we conveyed our attention – The Nebraska Papers in the naked trees.
They stood there - that is the trees - with an almost uprising form of consciousness, as if they were sentient. The pallet of the scene was gray and white, with pathways of black. Though we were cold, nothing seemed important but solving a mystery. But that is what obsession means. The mystery was “Who were the people who wrote The Nebraska Papers?” but who was calling us.
There was an ice cream shop if we crossed a bridge over the Parkway. Which is what we decided to do, though no words were spoken. We talked but had not decided anything until we were seated in a long dining room, which served ice cream, coffee, a few tasty desserts, and frozen yogurt. We stuck to coffee and yogurt - we were both watching our weight - the physical rather than metaphysical kind.
We sat down, but she got up grabbed a few napkins, and tried to strip clean the last customer's round of desserts. This was not unusual, because cleaning the tables was only an erstwhile haphazard routine. Heavy on the erst.
Everything was Neo-hippie in décor- chairs, benches, tables, and all the accouterments. Though there were better-decorated shops a bit further on, we were ravenously hungry by the time he got to the door. I was looking out on Charles Street - an old street at the base of Beacon Hill, of the way of the solar system in Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I do not remember whether it was Senior or Junior - and she was clearing at me against the black wall with paintings for sale - though frankly I would not buy any of them at these prices.
Then I started: “So we agree that the commentator is different from the narrator, and to people write the actual prose?”
“I do not think there is any question about this, why are you going over the same ground?”
“Just making sure, because I have an idea.”
“Which is?”
“My mother openly said that the man who was the owner of the house was not my father.”
“And?”
“But there are 3 voices. At least, I think there are 3.”
“And?”
“That means that she has not told me all that she knows.”
“Are you intimating that you need to speak with her again?”
“In a word, yes.”
“And can you talk to her?”
“She said, yes.” My jaw muscles tensed as a prefiguration rolled out before my eyes.
Mother – my mother, to whom she had given me the most rancid prize – the ability to become maternal in turn. And complete the florid cycle in servomechanisms turbine polysemous.
Servus! And all alliteration to seroconversion for semilogarithmic sensationalized sentimentalism.