You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [74]
He nodded and he had the look on his face that always made me proud.
“Obviously,” Hala said, “there are many people who believe in a single truth, Mr. Silver. But it’s obvious to me that, I mean, it is an impossible, stupid, childish idea. I read a book, or see a film, or even go to a party, what I see there, what I take away from those experiences can never be the same as what someone else takes away.”
“Yes, Hala,” he encouraged. “And let me make clear that these are not my ideas; I certainly wasn’t the one to come up with them. These are the principles of deconstruction, the notion, essentially, that the reader, as much as, if not more than, the author provides meaning to a text. We, as readers, apply our experience, our knowledge, not to mention our ignorance, to the meaning of a given work. This is interesting as literary theory, but for our purposes, I think more interesting if we apply it to our lives, to the way we view not only texts, but also the world around us. Does everyone see what I mean?”
Cara didn’t understand. How could a paragraph not mean precisely the same thing to every reader?
Silver wrote a sentence across the board: “The dog ran across the field.”
“Consider this sentence. Read it to yourselves a few times.” He waited and then read aloud, “The dog ran across the field. The dog ran across the field. Rick, what does the sentence mean?”
“A dog ran across a field?” He looked flatly back at Silver.
“Yes, O.K., fine. But give me your interpretation of the sentence.”
“There’s nothing to interpret, a dog ran across a field.”
“I agree,” Abdul said, eyes on his desk. “It’s obvious.”
“No mate, what you see is obvious, but the sentence might mean different things to other people,” Colin said.
Silver nodded and folded his arms. He turned to Lily, twirling a braid in her fingers, studying the board. He kept his eyes on her.
“What do you see Lily? I mean exactly.”
She shrugged. “Ummm, there’s a little white dog, he’s missing a leg, and he runs with this weird limp. He’s small and the field is all covered with snow and he leaves his little tracks as he goes.”
She never took her eyes off the board, and when she finished we all laughed. She shrugged her shoulders again and said, “That’s the dog I see.”
Which was precisely what Silver wanted. And he knew Lily would give an answer like that. Then the bell rang and we were left with an image of a three-legged dog limping across a field of snow.
Winter break began the next day.
WILL
Nothing was the same.
We’d never see each other outside of the apartment. She’d come over and lock the door. We watched movies together. She complained about her parents.
“You’ll survive it all,” I told her.
All month it was cold and gray outside. She walked around the apartment naked. She called me an old man. One Sunday morning we woke up and she said, “I love you.”
She shook her head. “I know you don’t love me. But I love you. Will you fuck me like you love me?”
I didn’t say anything. I was as gentle and kind as I knew how to be. I touched her as softly as I could. I kissed her slowly.
“Make love to me,” she said. And I did. As best I could.
After she came, she cried and I held onto her. She pressed her head against my chest. I kissed her hair. “It’s O.K.,” I said. “It’ll be O.K.”
“I love you, Will. William.” It was the first time she’d called me by my first name.
We lay there for a while in silence. “I’m going to get us breakfast Marie. Stay here. I’ll be back.”
I climbed out of bed, got dressed and stood in line at Carton. As I was leaving the bakery, Julia Tompkins and her mother walked in.
“Oh my God, Mr. Silver!”
She hugged me. Mrs. Tompkins smiled. “Having a nice Sunday, Mr. Silver?”
I imagined Marie asleep in my bed.
“I can’t believe you live around here.” Julia laughed. “We live like five seconds away. We come here all the time. They make the best bread in the world. We’re totally neighbors.”
Mrs. Tompkins shook her head at her daughter’s enthusiasm.