Language Arts (27 page)

I mean, really, sweetheart: Why shouldn't you absent yourself from your family's odd holiday gatherings, which are dominated by your mother's need to include Cody in everything even though he hasn't the slightest idea why one day is different from any other, and all the seasonal hoopla can be downright upsetting. And as far as that goes, Hanukkah will be even worse—instead of one out-of-the-ordinary day, there will be eight! Has your mother even considered this? Dreidel spinning, hora dancing . . . It will be a disaster.

I hardly need remind you that your brother values routine above all, and any variation from the external norms—visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, whatever—can send him wildly out of orbit, and we all know I'm not speaking metaphorically.

At best, holidays chez Marlow are characterized by an overarching trepidation.

There certainly isn't any yodeling.

Charles took another swig of wine, swiveled around in his desk chair, and surveyed the rampart of low-stacked cardboard boxes that were arrayed around him in a semicircle; it struck him that he'd essentially marooned himself in his office.

When Alison had asked about the boxes a while back and he'd improvised about having a yard sale, there were only four or five of them up here; now there were probably . . . what? Twenty? Thirty?

He had yet to locate Emmy's artifacts.

But there was still a lot more down there to bring up and examine.

So here he was, stranded on the desert isle of his office. There were worse places to be shipwrecked, he supposed.

Flense
was an old word, ancient. The notes on its origin were lengthier than the definition itself, which was “to strip an animal of blubber or skin.”

Charles was always loath to suspect his students of wrongdoing; however, this in-triplicate appearance of
flense
was not, he believed, the kind of coincidence that arose when nimble, receptive minds dove into the vast pool of human subconsciousness and emerged waving a common banner emblazoned with the expression of a potent, shared eureka.

Charles's guess was that the authors involved met over Red Bulls and breakfast burritos at the 7-Eleven, realized they hadn't done their homework, and convened in the library for a last-minute collaboration. These weren't stupid boys, just lazy, although Charles had to wonder: Did they think he wouldn't notice? Or that he wouldn't care? Either assumption saddened him.

“Eek!” screamed the girl when she saw the cat flensing the mouse.

There is debate about whether Native American tribes have the right to flense whales.

Downtown at the Lusty Lady, the low-lifes applauded as the strippers flensed.

The assignment was part of a unit called First, Middle, Last. Students were asked to scour the dictionary for three juicy, unfamiliar words, one for each of their initials, and write them into sentences.

It was essentially a vocabulary assignment, but Charles always hoped that the kids would take it seriously, make the effort to find words they were genuinely drawn to, whether because of their look or sound or definition, he really didn't care; he just wanted the students to find words they were head over heels crazy about and eager to put to use, the way kids did when they were little and graduated from the small box of primary-color Crayolas to the big one containing crayons with names like Cerulean Blue.

Charles wondered if there were people whose job it was to seek out and follow the progress of emerging words, to study aspects of usage, monitor frequency, track movements, chart evolution—above all, recognize when a word had reached its linguistic tipping point, completed its mission, and infiltrated the general population to become
one of them.
It was sad in a way, when you thought about it, this acceptance, this legitimacy, because at that moment, a word's life as a covert, rogue element in the language came to an end.

There was a kind of death—at least that's how Charles saw it—when a word permeated the lexicon to a degree that warranted its inclusion in the dictionary; instead of this renegade entity darting around, furtive but unbound, it became just another gray-flannel suit trudging through the book of common usage.

Charles's habit was to read student assignments in ascending-grade order. The fact that it was nearly happy hour and he hadn't yet started on the sophomores said something about the quality of his attention.

A Norwegian variation on
flense,
flans,
meant “horse's pizzle,” and the Icelandic riff,
flanni,
meant “penis”—leading Charles to wonder if these boys had more of a sense of humor than he'd thought.

He was tempted to let it go this time.

He loved the way each of the authors—Finn Gregory Evans, Thanh Fenton Kerrigan, and Alexander Terrell Epstein (who'd apparently been so carried away that he'd forgotten his own monogram was
F
-less)—revealed an authentic voice, a stylistic confidence.

And
flense
was a remarkable word, one whose sound belied its meaning: the soft sustaining consonants—
f, l, n,
and
s
—standing in sharp contrast to the savagery of the definition.

What the hell?
Charles asked himself, wielding Alison's Montegrappa Italia with a flourish as he marked the boys' papers.

“A's for everyone! On to the sophomores!”

It occurred to him that perhaps Cody could be said to be flensed of speech.

But no, that would be inaccurate.

One cannot be stripped of something one never really had.

•♦•

“You're awfully quiet, Charles. Is everything all right?”

It turned out that Charles had misunderstood the sequence of planned events; they'd looked at perfect-Pine-hurst-four-bedroom-rambler-on-quiet-corner first; now they were driving to the group home.

Post–daylight saving time; five o'clock and it was already dark. Charles was reminded that suicide rates in Seattle and Stockholm were roughly the same.

“I know it's a lot for one day,” Alison continued, “a lot to take in.”

“It's fine,” Charles said. The rain had stopped and started several times in the past hour, sudden downpours followed by sudden cessations, as if there were a poorly sutured incision in the sky that kept opening up, being restitched by the same incompetent surgeon, and then tearing open again, a perpetual malpractice suit. “I'm fine.”

They'd spent almost an hour rambling through the midcentury rambler. The sound of the rain's dramatic stop-start was amplified by a large blue tarp spread out in the backyard, covering a swimming pool. The pool was a feature Charles had missed when he looked the property up on the Internet. Its presence left him doubting—atypically—Alison's judgment.

Of course, it wasn't just
her
judgment at work, and Charles had to assume that she and her potential partners had discussed the wisdom of buying a house with a swimming pool in the backyard for three soon-to-be-technically-adult autistics.

Another rain-letting began; Alison turned the windshield wipers up to full speed.

“So, what do you think?” she asked. “About the house.”

“It seems to meet most of your criteria.”

“I know you think my mind is made up, Charles, but your opinion matters . . .”

Charles found himself incapable of responding.
Do I have an opinion?
he wondered.
Surely I do.

“. . . especially as someone who knows about the inner workings of things.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know . . . plumbing, wiring, structural issues, things like that. Like your father.”

“My father managed a warehouse, Alison. He sold acoustical ceiling tiles.”

“Yes, but you always described him as
handy.
He could
fix
things. You know what I mean.”

“I have no idea what you mean. My father and I weren't exactly close, if you remember, and as far as I know, there's no gene for pipe-wrench proficiency.”

“You're being purposely obtuse—and disingenuous. You talked a lot about those kinds of things with Daddy when we remodeled the house.”

“I was faking it. I felt a strong need to impress him.”

Alison sighed, but trudged on. “Well, in any case, we
are
going to have to make a decision fairly soon . . .”

Why is it possible,
Charles wondered,
to recognize certain doomed conversational choreographies—especially the kind that occurs between spouses—and yet remain incapable of changing the steps?
He'd pondered this for years.

“In one sense”—Alison was dancing now in quickening circles; Charles was amazed that the car didn't start listing to the right, given her accelerating buoyancy, his accumulating weight—“we've been really lucky, with the economy the way it is, I mean. It
is
sad to think that, if we do end up buying this property, we'll be capitalizing on the financial misfortunes of others—I told you it's a short sale, right? But we felt as though the timing couldn't be better. It's a lot of house for the money.”

“The pool was a surprise.”

Alison groaned. “God, that pool! Obviously, we're talking about what to do about that if we end up going through with this. In every other way, though, it's pretty close to perfect, don't you think?”

In using the word
we,
Alison was referring to two sets of still-married couples she'd grown close to over the years, fellow PLAY participants, parents of low-functioning autistic sons who'd been in the group home almost as long as Cody.

“The fact that the Youngs and the Gurnees are willing to do this now, even though Robbie and Myles don't age out for another year, is a huge blessing. I mean, there's the financial piece, of course, but more than that, there would be the whole process of looking for prospective parents, doing interviews, vetting the kids, et cetera. The fact that our boys know each other will make this transition so much easier on them—and on us.”

Do they?
Charles wondered.
Do our boys actually
know
each other? Autism,
auto,
from the Greek for “self.”

The rain stopped. Alison turned off the wipers and sighed heavily.

“This weather is really something, isn't it?” Charles offered.

Like Alison, the Youngs and the Gurnees were frequent visitors to the group home. Charles had met them only a couple of times, over coffee at the Lake City Starbucks. He tried to remember their first names. He tried to remember their kids' names. Alison had just mentioned them, for Christ's sake.

He realized that Ali had asked him something.

“Sorry, what?”

“You've been drinking, haven't you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm not accusing you of anything, Charles, there's no need to bristle.”

“I'm not bristling. But yes, in point of fact, I drank a glass or two of Gunderloch Riesling this afternoon while I was grading papers.”

They drove on for a while. Cross-town traffic was murder—probably every bit as bad in Seattle as in Manhattan. Charles wondered if Emmy had told Alison about her young man, the Vermonter.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know . . .

“How's school?” Alison said. “What are you working on?”

. . .
where the treetops glisten, and children listen . . .
“Sorry. What?”

“With your students. What are your students doing?”

Strangely, the effects of the wine were only now starting to kick in; he could feel himself inching toward drunken maudlinity, maudlinness,
wallowing,
whatever, and so he made a concerted effort to enunciate. “First. Middle. Last.”

“Oh, I love that one! Any especially good words this year? Any cheaters?”

Charles felt suddenly protective of his
flense
boys and chose not to share their transgression. “No.”

“I still remember when you came up with that assignment, how we made lists of everyone's first, middle, and last names: friends, family, celebrities . . .”

“Adjective, adjective, noun, my name, go.”

“Okay.” Alison squinted. In the flash of passing headlights, Charles noted etched dashes at the corners of her eye: a bulleted list that hadn't been made yet. “Cruciferous Sartorial Manatee.”

“Very nice. Now yours . . . Amaranthine Nautical Macaroon.”

“Oooh . . . Cogitating Laparoscopic Marzipan!”

“Echopraxic Fulminating Mezuzah!”

Why did I do that?
Charles thought. Alison fell silent, bit her lip. She didn't deserve his unintentional cruelty. She missed Emmy just as much as he did.

“You win,” she said. They drove the rest of the way in silence.

Why is it,
he asked himself,
that family misfortunes tend to arrive in a pileup? Is it really simple cause and effect, or do catastrophes establish a new normal of sorrow to which all subsequent events must conform, a base to which only some things may be added? Once certain ingredients are in the pan, one's choices are limited; you can't make rice pudding once you've started sautéing a head of garlic.

Charles noticed that the car had stopped.

They were in the group-home parking lot; Alison was yanking her keys out of the ignition. Looming over them was a giant Douglas fir, boughs saturated with rain, nodding like a giant narcoleptic.

“We're here,” Alison said, but it sounded like
Wake up!
“Are you ready?” she asked, priest to prisoner in the moments before an imminent execution.