The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [69]
As we dined, Lydia and Tal talked, the two women’s voices twisting together into a songful braid of conversation. I did love listening to them talk. My mood lightened. The dish Lydia had prepared—while it still struck me as unnecessarily complex—wasn’t so bad, after all. I looked from one woman to the other, back and forth as they spoke, hearing the rhythms of their speech, the notes, the timing, how the sound was formed in the spaces of their mouths, how their conversation was formed in the space of time. Like music. Just like song. In those early days, just a few moments of listening to the conversation of two friends over dinner would teach me more language than I would learn in countless hours of deliberate instruction in the lab. I think that the wordless songs of love are the true mothers of language, not semiotics. Music precedes meaning.
Of what they spoke, I cannot accurately remember. I did not understand much of it. I do remember that they finished the bottle of wine as they talked and ate, and then they opened another. I remember intuiting that they were, ultimately, though perhaps indirectly, talking about me. I remember that they often uttered a word, or series of words, that sounded to me like, “Gnome Chompy.” Of course I understood what a gnome was, because a gnome happened to be the protagonist of my second-favorite TV show, Francis the Gnome. Francis was portrayed as a small, benevolent force in a big, wicked world. So I assumed that they were speaking of a gnome named Chompy. However, I could ascertain from the wrathful tones in which the two women spoke of the Gnome Chompy that they considered him to be a harmful and vituperative creature, much unlike the magnanimous-hearted Francis. I imagined Chompy—as his surname connotes—as a predatory gnome with a great gnashing jawful of evilly gleaming teeth, with which he dismembers the innocent creatures of the forest and devours their bloody entrails. I remember how they hated the Gnome Chompy. I remember hearing them say—or thought I heard them say—that they would have to protect me, Bruno, from the Gnome Chompy. I remember that they mentioned—and when they did their tone took on almost conspiratorial tones—they even mentioned Norm Plumlee’s name once or twice in connection with the Gnome Chompy, as if they believed that Norm and Chompy may have been in some kind of collusion. I remember that Tal said she would wash the dishes, and in response Lydia reached a hand across the table, and that her hand came to rest briefly on top of Tal’s hand, and Lydia said, “You don’t have to wash the dishes.” I remember that Tal insisted. I remember that Lydia finally politely acquiesced. I remember that I saw Tal standing at the kitchen sink, dipping the dirty plates one at a time into a pool of soapy water and scrubbing them clean. I remember that as she was doing this, Lydia walked up behind her and put her hands on Tal’s hips, and half-embraced her from behind. I remember being confused at the gesture. I remember that I found it saddening in one sense, because I loved Lydia. But I remember that in another sense it made me happy, because Lydia was happy. I remember it made me happy and sad simultaneously, and yet these two evenly matched but contradictory feelings both pushing and pulling at my heart somehow did not result in a sort of emotional net force zero, such that I simply felt normal—but somehow their equal opposition deepened both the happiness and the sadness that I felt. I remember there was chocolate ice cream for dessert. That I liked unequivocally.
The evening did not end there. After dinner, the dishes washed and the chocolate ice cream consumed, Lydia and Tal sat on the couch in our living room and continued their wine and conversation. Lydia built a fire in the fireplace. For a long time I sat and watched it. This was something I loved to do in the winter. I would stare into the coals and let the fire hypnotize me. I loved to watch the veins of fire tickle across a log,