The Letting Go by Deborah Markus

Author:Deborah Markus [Markus, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510734050
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Published: 2018-07-31T07:00:00+00:00

They say that “Time

assuages”—

Time never did assuage—

An actual suffering

strengthens

As Sinews do, with Age—

M has backed off a bit, which ought to make things easier, but everyone else is obliviously awful.

That Stephen James event is coming up and no one but M can stop talking about it. Every meal, all breakfast and lunch and dinnertime long: Are you going? Should I go? I don’t know if I want to go. I don’t know if any of us should go. I think all of us should go.

On and on and on, like little songbirds from hell.

I wish I could just stay in my room forever. I’d rather dine on dust and cobwebs than try and fail to eat Hawthorne’s lovely repasts while my sister-students chirp on about death and death and death.

But I can’t just close my door and shut it all out. Rules are rules. Or, since we’re talking about Hawthorne, that one rule is still the rule.

“I’m officially horrible,” Brianna said at lunch today. “I think I really want to go now.”

M looked at her in mocking, wide-eyed fascination. “Let the sky rain potatoes,” she said.

“Please shut up,” Brianna explained politely.

“Only if you tell me what brought this on.”

Brianna sighed. “I’m morbidly curious,” she said. “Literally. I want to see what his work’s like. I want to know who this guy is. Was.”

“I don’t think that’s so horrible,” M said. “Give me a dollar and I won’t even call you a hypocrite.”

“Except I’m also kind of afraid,” Brianna said.

“Because … ?”

“If he’s really good, it’ll be that much worse that he’s dead, you know? It’s a loss to the whole world. But then I’m really afraid that—” She lowered her voice and looked around uncomfortably. “What if I think his paintings suck?”

“Definitely keep that opinion to yourself,” M recommended. “At least until you get back to Hawthorne.”

“I do know that much, thank you. I just mean—it’ll be depressing to think that this guy never got the chance to be really good.”

“It’ll be depressing no matter what,” M pointed out.

“Yeah.” Brianna sighed.

“Don’t overthink it,” Natasha-the-playwright said. “Go, since you might want to. If you get there and it feels wrong, just spend the day at the library. Or go shopping.”

“That seems shallow,” Brianna said.

“Shop for something deep and meaningful,” M suggested.

Brianna snickered. I hoped hopelessly that the conversation would now turn to local shopping opportunities.

Of course not. Anxious Girl was at the table.

“I’m scared to go,” she almost whimpered.

God. Here we go again.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Lucy said. As annoying as she can be at times, at least she doesn’t indulge in A.G.’s style of stupidity.

“But it’s—him,” Anxious Girl whispered.

“It’s not,” Lucy said positively. “It’s his work. It’s his art. His friends will be there. There’s going to be music and food—”

“I know, I know.” Anxious Girl was not convinced by Lucy’s forceful optimism. “I know I’m supposed to think about his life. I just—I can’t stop thinking about what happened to him.”

So none of the rest of us gets to stop thinking about it, either.

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