Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [65]
She was angry with him for collaborating with grammar. She would call it unconsciously installed authority. Then she would find other names for it.
“All right,” he said loudly, trying to make eye contact with someone in the room besides his mother, “let’s try some examples. Can anyone tell me what, if anything, is wrong with the following sentence? ‘I, like most people, have a unique problem.’ ”
The three sanitation workers, in the third row, began to laugh. Fenstad caught himself glowering and singled out the middle one.
“Yes, it is funny, isn’t it?”
The man in the middle smirked and looked at the floor. “I was just thinking of my unique problem.”
“Right,” Fenstad said. “But what’s wrong with saying, ‘I, like most people, have a unique problem’?”
“Solving it?” This was Mrs. Nelson, who sat by the window so that she could gaze at the tree outside, lit by a streetlight. All through class she looked at the tree as if it were a lover.
“Solving what?”
“Solving the problem you have. What is the problem?”
“That’s actually not what I’m getting at,” Fenstad said. “Although it’s a good related point. I’m asking what might be wrong logically with that sentence.”
“It depends,” Harold Ronson said. He worked in a service station and sometimes came to class wearing his work shirt with his name tag, HAROLD, stitched into it. “It depends on what your problem is. You haven’t told us your problem.”
“No,” Fenstad said, “my problem is not the problem.” He thought of Alice in Wonderland and felt, physically, as if he himself were getting small. “Let’s try this again. What might be wrong with saying that most people have a unique problem?”
“You shouldn’t be so critical,” Timothy Melville said. “You should look on the bright side, if possible.”
“What?”
“He’s right,” Mrs. Nelson said. “Most people have unique problems, but many people do their best to help themselves, such as taking night classes or working at meditation.”
“No doubt that’s true,” Fenstad said. “But why can’t most people have a unique problem?”
“Oh, I disagree,” Mrs. Nelson said, still looking at her tree. Fenstad glanced at it and saw that it was crested with snow. It was beautiful. No wonder she looked at it. “I believe that most people do have unique problems. They just shouldn’t talk about them all the time.”
“Can anyone,” Fenstad asked, looking at the back wall and hoping to see something there that was not wall, “can anyone give me an example of a unique problem?”
“Divorce,” Barb Kjellerud said. She sat near the door and knitted during class. She answered questions without looking up. “Divorce is unique.”
“No, it isn’t!” Fenstad said, failing in the crucial moment to control his voice. He and his mother exchanged glances. In his mother’s face for a split second was the history of her compassionate, ambivalent attention to him. “Divorce is not unique.” He waited to calm himself. “It’s everywhere. Now try again. Give me a unique problem.”
Silence. “This is a trick question,” Arlene Fisher said. “I’m sure it’s a trick question.”
“Not necessarily. Does anyone know what ‘unique’ means?”
“One of a kind,” York Follette said, gazing at Fenstad with dry amusement. Sometimes he took pity on Fenstad and helped him out of jams. Fenstad’s mother smiled and nodded.
“Right,” Fenstad crowed, racing toward the blackboard as if he were about to write something. “So let’s try again. Give me a unique problem.”
“You give us a unique problem,” one of the sanitation workers said. Fenstad didn’t know whether he’d been given a statement or a command. He decided to treat