What I did today.

 What I did today. 

“What did you do today?” Roz said, coming into the kitchen even before she took her coat off to see what I was doing today about supper.
     “I talked to Nils,” I said.
     “I thought you talked to him yesterday.”
     “I did, but I needed to talk to him again.”
     “Where's Albert?” Roz said. “He’s not in his chair.”
     “I don’t know.”
     “My God, Ted!” Roz said. And I went to look for him while she went to take her coat off.

He wasn’t that far. He was in the bathroom, listening to us wonder where he was. No, he didn’t need any help getting up and back to his chair, please close the door, he said.
     “He’s in the bathroom,” I told Roz when she came back to lift the lid on the borscht I was doing for supper. “We have sour cream?” she half-asked and half-declared. And I nodded.
     “So, you talked to Nils,” she said. “And you were going to tell me why.” Actually, I wasn’t.

 Excursus. Notice she didn’t ask why! She decided I was going to tell her.
     When I was six, or thereabouts I promised myself – if you can promise yourself anything when you are six, and I couldn’t have been any older – I promised that I would never ask anyone why they did something because that was the worst thing adults did, especially Aunt Martha, who we were living with at the time.
     I’d something I shouldn’t have apparently, and she would ask me why – or she would accuse me why – and I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know. And she would look at me and say, “I thought so!” Then, blowing out her breath, “Well, God forgive you,” in a voice carrying some doubt. Which ended the conversation that wasn’t because I hadn’t added a word to it.
     So, Roz doesn’t ask why though she will assume that I will get around to saying why because by now, some years older than six, I should know. And sometimes I do.

¿Ya nos estamos divertiendo?*

 “Because when we talked yesterday, I lied to him,” I said.
     “What?” I think she did start to ask “why,” but she ended up exclaiming, “Whuh-uht!” And then to cover herself she lifted the lid on the borscht again and looked into it as if she could see whether there was, or wasn’t, enough salt in it.
     “I told him you didn’t want to talk to him when you weren’t home to talk at all.”
     “Oh,” she said, reaching for the pepper. “Well, that’s okay. I probably didn’t.”

Sadly, it isn’t hers to say, “Okay.” No one can forgive but the one you have injured and God himself. The priests, for example. They are like the scribes of the pharisees, Aunt Martha once said. The bishops and the cardinals are like the pharisees themselves, and the pope is like either the chief priest or the devil, depending. Anyway none of them can forgive.

10.31.21

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*Philip IV as Zippy the Pinhead, Halloween 1621. 400th anniversary souvenir fan. Graphic by m ball with apologies to Diego Velázquez and Bill Griffith.