LITMIR.BIZ

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to— they were needed. Often, I took heat for the president. What was wrong? The president asked. Was I feeling all right?— Was there some problem he should be aware of? Was it family? Was Mark Stephen the problem? No. No. I was thinking we could eliminate a section of a department, instead of the whole department. It would be easier. In language, for instance, Russian has had a diminished enrollment for several years. Yes, the president said he could consider that. I returned to my office and closed my door. I put my head in my hands. I shut my eyes and swam in the darkness there. It was the first time I’d been called on my forgetfulness— my absence of mind in meetings. They had noticed. I’d been discovered. What could I do to cover my loss before they told me to leave?

      “I don’t want to go to church this morning,” I told Solome. “I know there’ll be people I should know, but won’t remember their names. My memory doesn’t work like it did.” There— I had told her. But she let it slip without comment.

      If Solome walked into church walked first, and said their name— she explained to me— then I would know. But I couldn’t rely on her every moment. Sometimes she stopped and talked to someone and left me standing in the open. Someone else I should know would approach and speak as though I remembered who they were, and what they did. Often I knew that I knew them, but didn’t see them often enough to remember.

      “I don’t want to go to church,” I said again. But she didn’t let it slip.

      “I could go alone, Stephen. Students and other faculty would wonder where you were. We belong to that church because it’s close to campus and you could be with colleagues and students. What if they no longer saw you? What would they think?”

      Solome was right. Was I losing the ability to reason? I went upstairs and put on my suit.

      Solome Savard

      Solome’s Bible Study group became a small, tight-knit group, despite their differences. The man who came without his wife— what was his name? John Everett?— was the only one not solicitous to her.

      What did Solome want? She questioned herself in times of introspection with the group. What did she hear in the bark of the dog? What longing? What? She wanted recognition of herself. She wanted Stephen to see her for who she was.

      No, it was more than that. She wanted to know who she was. It seemed to her that Stephen had been himself all his life. He was his own authority. He knew what he was doing. She knew also, or had known once, but it had been pushed aside while she raised her family and thought of herself as Stephen’s wife. It was hard for her to put in words. She wanted to feel her whole being. She wanted to feel the whole of being.

      Solome had lunch with Jane Mead whom she’d known most of her life. After high school, Jane had married, had been Jane Harrison for a while, but took back her name after her divorce, and kept her name when she married again. She had since divorced a second time.

      “I don’t know how you stay married to one man. I don’t have the stamina it must take. I just want out when I’m not happy. Then I’m single again and all I think about is the next man I’ll meet. I look for him at the grocery, when I’m with my friends, laughing as though being with other women is what I wanted, when all the time I’m looking for a man in the crowd who’s looking at me.”

      “It feels like we’re in high school again.” Solome said.

      “I see our girls starting down the same path.”

      “Soos wants to stay married to Brian. It’s Brian who’s not sure. I want to shake him sometimes for the pain he’s causing her. I think the baby picks it up too.”

      “What else do men cause?” Jane asked.

      “You haven’t been this bitter.”

      “I’m just tired of disappointment.”

      “I’m reading a book about the daughter of Galileo,” Solome said. “We should use it in our discussion group.”

      Stephen Savard

      Different pieces of conversation overheard. That’s what I was experiencing. All the conversations I’d had. The words circled, crossed over from the past, mixed into one another. I felt like I was flying over my life with nowhere to land, or I’d forgotten where the airport was. And where was the pilot? Wasn’t that his job? Solome and I picked up Gretchen and Dennis from the airport. What’s his name? I still didn’t know. I stayed in my room until Solome called me down. What’s wrong dad? Gretchen asked. His mind on something, I heard Solome say. Changes at the college. Mark Stephen at the house. Susanna and Brian and the baby. They looked at me like they did at college. Why did they look? That night I called out something to Solome. She woke and held me, quieted me.

      It didn’t do any good to ask for help. My colleagues didn’t know what was happening. I saw it clearly sometimes. I had to stay where I was. Not ask for help from them. It only confused and frustrated my secretary. I wouldn’t call out again to Solome at night when I heard someone. I knew the voice came from the past, from someone already in another world.

      I think Solome wanted to say something to me, but she swallowed the words. She wouldn’t ask anything of me.

      At times, we had a language of politeness when meaning had gone.

      It was deflection when there was something I wanted to hide.

      It was imagination. Imagination was an ocean. I was trying to wash my words in it. I was trying to be shaped by language, or maybe it was language that would shape me— if I kept talking like I always had.

      Solome Savard

      Imagine a borrowed language. Changing. Unreliable. Imagine a language in flux, the dynamics of change and redefining the meaning of words, their messages and migrations, the different ways they could mean in combinations with other words.

      Imagine spring after seven months of winter. A summer passing quickly.

      On Friday, Solome had lunch with her mother at the Historical Society across the atrium from the museum shop. Her mother pushed her tray slowly. Others went around them. Afterwards, they walked through the rooms, looking at the paintings of Minnesota history and the artifacts, as they often did, until her mother tired.

      “There’s an opening for an assistant in acquisitions,” Solome told her mother. “Part-time. I heard about it this morning. The Historical Society needs someone to research facts for the news releases and reviews of exhibits and programs.”

      “Can you take the time to work?” Her mother asked.

      “I don’t know,” Solome answered. “It sounds like something I would like.”

      Later that afternoon, in the research library, Solome retrieved material on the Birch Coulee Battlefield Historical Site: the Battle from both U.S. and the Dakota perspectives for a change. She came across the native word for Minnesota, Mni Shota, turning it over and over, thinking of the changes to language. The word meant something about many waters— or something about clouds in the waters— or turbid white-edge water. When Solome wasn’t retrieving materials, she looked through other books, stopping here and there in the stacks. She turned down a Minnesota Public Radio program on the radio that was left playing in the stacks for some reason. It interfered with her reading. When Solome looked at the clock, it was nearly five.

      Stephen was frustrated when she got home. She was late. He couldn’t find anything to eat. The dog was barking. Where was she? How could she be someplace else when he needed her? Solome didn’t want Stephen’s anger. Did she wish her marriage was over? She suddenly thought as she listened to him. Would she marry again? Was there anyone else she wanted to marry? How could she be thinking that? Where did those thoughts come from? The name of the Salome who asked for the head of John the Baptist was not actually mentioned in the Bible, but by other records, her name was known. Maybe that Salome was part of Solome also, a part that was veiled, hidden. If Solome wanted to be whole, she would have to look at her also.

      Stephen couldn’t find a shirt he wanted. He had started getting out what he wanted to wear

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