She called me. “I’ve been working on this project for months now and it’s starting to kill me.” I paused meaningfully. “Don’t die,” I said. She shook her head. I couldn’t see it but I was sure of it. We’ve known each other that long. “You don’t get it,” she said. “I sketched this out back in May, and I had a quick way to do it, but the client came back to me with notes and concerns, and I overreacted. There’s no other way to say it. I was a good student in the worst way and now I have a hundred and fifty pages of notes and no energy left to go through them.” Toward the end, her voice became high and ragged, and I started to worry that she was losing it. It didn't seem like a controlled performance. It didn't seem like a performance at all. “You’re hearing a fact, not an act,” she used to tell me when we were dating, as a way of letting me know that I shouldn’t make the mistake of attributing the moment to calculated theatrics. “What can I do?” I said. The silence on the line took roots, bloomed, blossomed, until it obscured everything else. She still said nothing, but I understood her meaning, which was that existing with her inside her silence, giving her some small confidence that even in that moment she still had her piece of the world, and that she had someone to verify that she had it, was not only the limit of my capability but all that was wanted. Her breaths sketched out a faint punctuation.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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