What We Are Capable Of

WHEN Sarah phones, Em has just torn every letter into fourths, then eighths, sixteenths, and, finally, fragments so tiny it would take years to put the m’s back together, or to match the dots with the i’s. No one will ever see these letters, though she can call any one of them into view at any time. Each word is stored in the memory part of her brain. She saw a map once, of the brain, its sections delineated like rivers: knee, hip, abdomen, thorax, and neck, face, lips, tongue. One rippled area was marked emotions. Another – more than one, now that she thinks of it – was labelled memory. This is where Michael is stored: emotions; multiple caches called memory.

Perhaps, instead of tearing, she should have spent days and weeks dismantling the letters, character by character, with her sharp-as-a-knife sewing scissors. She could have created a spectacular alphabet of possibilities. She could have thrown the lot into her deep Scandinavian bowl, the one that sits on a low table beside her desk. She could have picked out fragments and put them together again like particles of an Icelandic saga that rearrange themselves with each telling. Recently, she’d opened a book about Isak Dinesen and read that all sorrows could be borne if they were put into a story, or if a story were told about them. She wondered if for Dinesen this had been true. Or if after the telling Dinesen had ended up with both story and sorrows. The weaving of words: to bear in mind, to bear tidings, to bear down, to be born.

“Mom,” says Sarah, “are you there?”

Em hears the fullness in her daughter’s voice, the portent, and thinks, No, Sarah, I’m not. Not now. But another part of her, a slumbering part, has been roused. She has been the parent of her child for twenty-two years – the last six without Owen – and, though Sarah can surprise her, Em sometimes knows as much about the direction of Sarah’s choices as she does about her own.

She imagines Sarah’s face at this moment and matches expression to voice. Tentative. But there is something more; she senses and then sees the word wound. Open to attack. She cannot keep her mind from inventing this way – it is her peculiar relationship with words. If she knows uncountable truths about Sarah, then Sarah understands and puts up with this about her.

“I want to come home,” says Sarah. “For the summer. I’ll get a job waitressing until I go back to school. There’s a flight to the island in the morning. I’m already packed.”

“Fine. Wonderful. It’s your home, too.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“Garry walked away,” she says. She’s crying softly. “He was seeing someone else for weeks while he was still living with me. You can say ‘I told you so,’ go ahead.”