Where Reasons End

by Yiyun Li

  I’ve begun to understand, I said, why people hold on to things.

  I’ve begun to understand the opposite, he said. All things tangible, like all nouns, are dispensable.

  What’s indispensable then?

  Adjectives.

  That’s questionable, I said. What’s indispensable, really? I get confused with that question.

  Nouns for most people, he said, because living in a world defined by nouns is obligatory.

  I thought about his reply. Who can be free of nouns? Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends, lovers, housing, food, career, retirement. We are brave children of braver parents, born into a web of nouns, and we are all like Charlotte, weaving a web for ourselves.

  Except Charlotte chooses adjectives, Nikolai said, and she does it to save someone else.

  Ah, I said.

  You can’t answer the question What’s indispensable if you don’t understand what’s dispensable.

  So the dispensable serve the indispensable, like the foundation of a pyramid and the pyramid itself?

  That’s a very bad analogy, he said.

  Puissant, eupeptic, liminal, without nouns these adjectives of yours have little concrete meaning, I said.

  The world would be a wilder place for imagination if you let adjectives go free without having to modify something, he said.

  Imagination is a rubber ball, a dime apiece, I said.

  What?

  Oh, only a line I put in a recent story.

  Rather facetious, isn’t it?

  What can be imagined, I wanted to say, is like what can be put into words. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions—it doesn’t matter how many of them come together, they fall short together. I could imagine Nikolai arriving five minutes earlier than his brother, recounting the day while popping a cashew into his mouth now and then. I could imagine the confusion of our dog when I was unpacking and he was sniffing boxes with Nikolai’s board games and books and a set of tools for making oboe reeds. Do you remember him, I had wanted to ask the dog, you, who have known him all your life? I could imagine rewinding life so I would again be making Nikolai’s favorite dishes and watching him eat, or I would be listening to the conversation between him and his brother. I could imagine rewriting life so I would be buying tablecloths and cake pans and curtains and flowers with Nikolai. These imaginations made it easier for me to feel sad, to weep even, but the tears were a veneer over the unspeakable. It was what I could not imagine that made the veneer dispensable: the bad dreams he had not told me over the years, the steps he had walked and the thoughts he had gone through on his last day, the adjectives he would have taught me, the days and the years ahead—with or without him. The unspeakable is a wound that stays open always, always, and forever.

  Oh gosh, he said. A wound open—that makes you sound like a mediocre self-help book.

  Wouldn’t a self-help book rather be talking about healing? I said. No self-help book would sell if it told you that the wound would stay open.

  True, he said. Still, an open wound, what bad language you use now.

  There is no good language when it comes to the unspeakable, I thought. There is no precision, no originality, no perfection.

  Oh fine, he said, if you insist.

  Fear not, I said. I would be the last person to write a self-help book.

  Wouldn’t a non-self-help book be more interesting?

  A book about not helping oneself? I asked. A self-sabotaging book?

  A book helping non-selves, he said. Like me.

  It’s not funny, I said.

  It’s only sensible, he said. If you’re willing to read, you can find any number of books that claim to help you with grief or mourning or dealing with losses and traumas. There’s no book helping me.

  Helping you with what? I asked.

  What’s new to you is new to me too. How do I know what’s a right way, or a good way, or a healthy way, or a mindful way to be now?

  He had a point. Neither of us had any propensity toward religion or metaphysics. We had agreed to a conversation, sustained by my willfulness and his willingness. My willfulness, seen by the world as lunacy, might be pitied and forgiven, but my willfulness was also to believe in those who would not take this as insanity. His willingness was harder to read. Why stay present and sharp as though death had not left a smudge….What if, I said, any way you are is a good way?

  Sounds self-helpy, he said.

  To think about it, perhaps there’s nothing wrong with self-help. All selves need some help, I said.

  Say, Nikolai said, if a self is seeking help, is it because it wants to be better at being itself, or being like others?

  Oh, I said. I’m not an expert on that.

  Imagine a self-help book wearing this blurb on the jacket: the secret to happiness—to be just like a million others.

  Then a self-help book is to help a self to be better at being itself, I said.

  Mathematically it doesn’t make sense. How can a book help a million selves when each self is different? So everyone has to have his or her own version. Each version bears a dedication: to my most precious self, which is unlike any other self.

  Please don’t be flippant, I said.

  I’m trying to understand this as assiduously as you are.

  I suppose it’s like planting new trees. Each tree is unique, but to unfriendly nature and careless people all trees must look similar. A few universal stakes can help them stand.

  I so hate it when you use analogies.

  Is it really bad? I asked.

  Unhelpful, he said. You talk about trees all the time.

  These days my mind often wandered to trees. Is parenting not staking? We turn our torsos into determined wooden sticks, our arms into durable straps, and our hearts into gentle wraps around the young bark. We hold on to the saplings, vowing not to hurt them, hoping for their growth, but children are not trees. Sometimes they want to go their own ways—walking, running, flying—without feeling tethered. Children don’t always put down their roots.

  So much at stake, isn’t it? Nikolai said.

  Please don’t make fun of me, I said. The question—what’s at stake—was a perennial one in the classroom when my students discussed fiction. I had told Nikolai once that I had developed some allergic reaction to it.

  All the same it would be much easier for parents to only raise trees, no? he said.

  Even trees die, I said. I told him about a visit to a museum years ago, where I followed an arborist and the museum director around the garden. These trees here will die in about a hundred years, the arborist said in front of a grove, and explained that the museum should start thinking of replacements sooner rather than later.

  A hundred years is a long time, Nikolai said. You wouldn’t complain about not having enough time.

  Losing a child, I said, has nothing to do with how much time a parent has already had.

  Perhaps, Nikolai said. I feel bad for you. You really didn’t think through everything before you had children.

  There might not be any baby born if a parent were able to think ahead about everything, I said. Yet I wondered if that was true. Had I not for years been preparing myself for losing him, pre-living the pain, even?

  Why did you have children, he asked, if you knew this might happen?

  Even the least optimistic person wants to have some hope.

  Wouldn’t that be wishful thinking, the hope you talk about?

  Possibly.

  If you understand it as wishful thinking, why are you still sad then?

  Why, I said. Because preparing is not experiencing. Pre-living is not living. I will be sad today and tomorrow, a week from now, a year from now. I will be sad forever.

  I thought you said you took forever out of your dictionary.

/>   Once upon a time, I said. You put it back for me.

  A dictionary is not complete without the word forever, is it? Nikolai said.

  All words are indispensable, don’t you agree?

  10

  Waylaid by Facts

  Your friend Martha wrote, I said.

  She’s in college now, Nikolai said. How is she?

  I don’t know. She didn’t say in the letter. She talked only about you.

  Oh.

  I didn’t recognize her name, but when she wrote that she was the bassoonist I remembered her, I said.

  Poor Martha. I hope she has more time to practice now.

  The girl had been in a chamber group with Nikolai the year before, and had been warned by the music teacher several times. Yet how could she have found time, trying to be everything she could and applying to colleges? At the concert last winter, she and Nikolai and a clarinetist played a trio piece by Bach. Halfway through she had slipped off and couldn’t get back. She sat there, elegant in her long black dress and smiling at Nikolai and the clarinetist. Could you tell she missed the second part of the piece, Nikolai had asked, and when I said I couldn’t he had been pleased. She played a few notes toward the end, he said, so it all looked as though that was what it should be like.

  I had never talked with the girl but I was fond of that memory.

  I wonder who else wrote you, Nikolai said.

  Your friends, our friends, your teachers, parents of your classmates, people you don’t know, I said. Oh, Lemony Snicket.

  One thing I can’t brag about now, he said. Which of my friends wrote?

  Let me just make the turn first, I said. I was waiting for the green light, and I couldn’t see much of the road. I had thirty minutes before teaching, and I did not know how my tears had begun between one block and the next. Something had ambushed me.

  I still like waylay better, Nikolai said. Less seasonal than ambush.

  What? I said.

  Think, Mommy. It’s winter. You’re less likely to be ambushed.

  I looked at the bushes along the road, bare and unable to hide anything. Try as I might, I still couldn’t see many things seen by him.

  Waylay is more inevitable, he said, unless you can avoid roads altogether.

  The light changed and I turned into a street with old houses on both sides but no bushes. If you have a sudden possession of something you don’t understand, I said, is there a way to discard it promptly without understanding it?

  What is it?

  Words provided to me—loss, grief, sorrow, bereavement, trauma—never seemed to be able to speak precisely of what was plaguing me. One can and must live with loss and grief and sorrow and bereavement. Together they frame this life, as solid as the ceiling and the floor and the walls and the doors. But there is something else, like a bird that flies away at the first sign of one’s attention, or a cricket chirping in the dark, never settling close enough for one to tell from which corner the song comes.

  If I could say what it is, I said, wouldn’t that mean at least I have some understanding?

  Do you understand a tree and how it feels when you know its name?

  There are encyclopedias, I said. At least I can gather some general knowledge.

  General knowledge is not going to help you, he said. But look at it this way: If you possess something, whatever it is, by definition that thing is at your disposal.

  Yes, by definition.

  Then dispose it!

  How, I said, if I don’t know what it is?

  Isn’t that what we have to do all the time? he said. You, I mean. Not me anymore. If you have a thousand dollars, it’s easy to make up a plan about the money. But if you have a life, do you understand what a life is, do you know what to do with it?

  A life is not a disposable thing, I protested.

  When I say dispose it, I don’t mean to get rid of it, but to settle it.

  Oh.

  There are better definitions for many words than the definitions you want to use, he said.

  My dictionary is limited, I said.

  No doubt, he said.

  You know what I realized? I said. I don’t want to use the word flawed anymore. I rather like limited.

  A flawed character is limited, no? he said. I’m flawed, you’re flawed, we all fault ourselves for being flawed.

  A limited character, I said, may still be perfect.

  You’re not talking about yourself? he said.

  Oh dear no, I said. Perfection is not my pursuit.

  If you’re talking about me, I can’t make do with being limited and thinking of myself as perfect, he said. It is wrong from beginning to end.

  My understanding is wrong?

  Remember the Caterpillar said so to Alice?

  Ah, yes, I said. A few years ago we had visited Alice’s Shop in Oxford, and had brought two prints back, one with the Caterpillar telling Alice from on top of the mushroom, It is wrong from beginning to end, and the other, the Red Queen pulling Alice behind her and saying, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

  I’ve always found those two statements comforting, Nikolai said.

  Me too, I said. Not always though. Sometimes.

  On the other hand, he said, if we’re willing, we can pick out any number of statements from any number of books and find them comforting.

  Not for me, I said, not at this moment.

  Why not? Don’t you need more of those soothing words now?

  I’m not looking for comfort food in any book.

  What’s wrong with comfort food? I like your little pancakes.

  Little pancake was the name Nikolai had given to something I had improvised when he was in preschool. A simple mixture of flour, egg, sugar, and the key for them to be a genuine success was that every piece had its own shape, irregular, not representing any number, letter, or anything that could be pinned down by imagination. There were no two little pancakes alike as there were no two leaves alike. Dr. Seuss gave only twenty more letters on beyond zebra. I had cooked hundreds of them for Nikolai and his little brother. Like writing stories for only two readers.

  What feeds your stomach should not be the same thing that feeds your mind, I said.

  That belief is scientifically unsound, he said.

  Yes, on the cellular level and on the molecular level, I’d agree with you, I said. Did I tell you about this man we visited for grief counseling? He asked us to imagine the universe as a giant cauldron of molecular soup. These molecules here make this table, those molecules there made Nikolai, I said, imitating the doctor, and began to laugh.

  If he made you laugh wouldn’t you consider him effective?

  Upon our entering his office the man had also said, I sense suffering coming, but that I didn’t tell Nikolai.

  Some laughter does not last, I said.

  Nothing does.

  There are a few things that do.

  Like what? Don’t say love.

  Our present conversation.

  I noticed that you used an adjective, he said. Not our past conversations, or future conversations?

  The word future is unnecessary if this conversation lasts, I said. Don’t you think in this case futureless is not a bleak word at all?

  How do you know this will last?

  Indeed, I thought, how would I know?

  And the past conversations? Nikolai asked.

  They are memories.

  And you don’t think memories last?

  One wishes they did, I said.

  So memories are like cells, always replaced by new ones?

  I thought about it. Without replacements would his memories now remain unfaded and unfadable? Were they becoming part of his omniscience?

  I’ve never thought about that,
he said. They’re not my concerns, you know?

  I don’t know, because I don’t know what your concerns are these days, I said.

  You used to know, he said.

  Yes.

  Why not anymore?

  It’d be preposterous to say I know anything about you now, I said. I used to say one can know a person without understanding him, but I’ve never thought the opposite can be true, too, until now.

  You understand me without knowing me? he asked.

  Let’s face it. Death is a divide no matter how little you and I believe its power to separate.

  Is that how my friends feel too? That there is a divide between them and me?

  A few of Nikolai’s friends had written to him, remembering the time they had spent together, and asking why he had departed so abruptly. Others had written to us, remembering the time they had spent together, not asking what had made him depart so abruptly.

  In some ways, I said, they don’t feel that at all, but in other ways they feel it keenly.

  I must point out a sentence like this is meaningless, Nikolai said. You can apply it to any situation to sound so profound.

  For the record, I want you to know I’ve never used profound in my writing, I said.

  Well, that is one adjective I wouldn’t defend.

  But I’ve been thinking about your friends’ letters.

  Don’t make fun of their writing skills.

  Nikolai’s death was a difficult thing for people to talk about, but his friends, when they wrote, did not have to resort to the ready words because of helplessness, awkwardness, or politeness. They wrote from a place where Nikolai was still one of them and where they were told that he was no longer one of them.

  If there is one thing to make fun of, I said, it’s how quickly we grownups are at a loss for words in an unfamiliar or unwanted situation.

  Unfamiliar or unwanted?

  Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

  An unfamiliar situation doesn’t have to be unwanted, he said. Like love at first sight.