The Blue Window


 
 “A probing, deeply absorbing examination of personal and family secrets.”
 —Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children and Tracy Flick Can’t Win
 The Blue Window
 A Novel
 Suzanne Berne
 Orange Prize Winner of A Crime in the Neighborhood
 
 
 
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 For Evie
 
 
 1
 You could assume A stood for Adam. That’s what the mother assumed if she found a note in the kitchen that said something like “Going out. A.”
 You could also assume A stood for the first letter of the alphabet, or A for anonymous. Or if you chose to get philosophical, you could posit that A meant “against” and that A was making a political statement by becoming A. If you were into physics, A might stand for something extra negative, like A for Anti-Matter.
 Or if you had been on campus three weeks ago, A probably stood for Asshole.
 Whatever it meant, A was not I. That was the point.
 A did away with I.
 I = Death.
 You might assume the above statement was related to what happened during finals, on the lawn in front of the college library. But, A would suggest, obvious causal reasoning was as bad as complicated causal reasoning. Neither proved anything.
 Plus, explanations turn into excuses.
 Though if A were ever called upon to argue the case for rejecting “I” (while testifying before the student judiciary council, or say, Congress), this might be A’s response: Erasing the first person is the only responsible moral position to take in a world full of moral positions, most of them absurd and all of them dangerous.
 To wit: the enraged Twitter lava flow accompanying news coverage of any march, speech, parade, Sunday school Easter egg hunt.
 Thus: It is profoundly unsafe to attach to anything, to identify as anything. Ergo: Show no concern. Have no opinion. The world is full of fake news, so don’t make any. Hence: Eliminate “I”—the raised hand. The flag of existence.
 Solution: A = Absent.
 Actually, it had been easier than expected to shed the first-person pronoun and most possessive word forms, once A discovered that anything could be said in the passive voice. For instance, when the mother asked if A had walked Freddy while she was at work, A could answer, “It seems so” or “It seems not.”
 If she said, “What have you been doing all day?” A might say, “Naps occurred” or “Videos were watched.” Added value of the passive voice—no definitely positive or negative statements. Although sometimes affirmation was necessary, like when the mother said, “Should I buy more avocados when I go to the grocery?” For those occasions, A used “Perchance,” a word so affected it could only mean “Yes.”
 It hadn’t even been that hard to give up self-related urges, i.e., fapping. Passivity breeds passivity.
 This afternoon, when the mother arrived home from her office and opened the bedroom door to begin her usual interrogation, A reported: Lunch had been eaten. The trash had not been taken out. Freddy had not been walked. Job applications to Starbucks and Wegmans had yet to be emailed.
 “Bad choices were made,” she said, and came into the room to sit on the edge of the bed. She looked at T-shirts, dirty underwear on the floor, sighed, and said she’d had a long day. “I won’t bore you with the details.” But then, as usual, she did.
 The men in her divorce therapy group couldn’t understand why “mansplaining” was a problem (Why not explain things that need explaining?); a client arrived forty-five minutes late for a session and then wondered if he still had to pay for it; another client spilled coffee on the office rug and went on talking as if nothing had happened. And then, as the mother was getting into her car to drive home, a huge SUV pulled in right behind her, forcing her to inch out of her parking spot while the driver stood on the sidewalk to make sure she didn’t scratch his bumper. Have a good day! she called out as she drove away.
 A watched her mouth open and close with the familiar feeling of being made of the thinnest, clearest crystal and every word spoken within hearing being a small jagged rock. Important to remember that she was not trying to be brutal, or even tedious. She was modeling forbearance. The key to survival, she liked to say, is accommodation (though she also said she loved her work and loved her clients). But in her determination to be understanding no matter what the circumstances, she sometimes gave an impression of deficiency, as if she had forgotten how to behave otherwise. Automatic goodness was not really goodness. But what was it?
 Oppression. That’s what it was.
 She’d smiled, shook her head. Said she was looking forward to a quiet evening, to having a glass of wine. Maybe after dinner the two of them could watch something? How about an old movie? There was a stealthy drift of her lemony perfume as she leaned forward and reached for A’s hand, which A slid under the sheet before she could reach it.
 “Sorry if I’m being intrusive, sweetheart.” She sat back, still smiling, though her eyes looked unsteady. “But I miss talking with you.”
 These types of assaults were increasing and growing more cunning. Fatigue setting in. Every morning the same routine: wait for the mother to leave for work, then cereal in