The girl turned her head to address the cat napping in the parallelogram of sunlight. “It’s so cold, don’t you think?” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we have to stay inside all day.” The girl, all of twelve, was imagining a life where she would talk to a husband this way. In the other room, the eight to ten adults who had spent years talking to each other this way considered the wreckage of wrapping. The younger children had been herded into the basement to watch an affably slack comedy. The one boy her age, her cousin, who she sometimes dreamed would be her eventual cat, sat in a window seat reading. “What’s he reading?” she asked the cat. The boy, without a word, held up the book to show the cover. “Wissenschaft der Logik,” he said. “Hegel. I have to say, I don’t understand a god-damned word.” The cat meowed. The boy and girl dissolved in helpless laughter.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
No comments:
Post a Comment