“I wanted to,” I told him.
Boshoff tried his best to neatly undo the paper before giving up and simply tearing it open. Inside, he found a cookbook—not one I’d bought, but rather, one I’d made by gluing a wallpaper swatch over two pieces of cardboard then sandwiching a dozen or so empty pages inside. With duct tape from Kev’s toolbox, I bound it into a book, which looked less homemade than I imagined. Even if I never managed to find wallpaper that perfectly matched my personality, I found one that suited Boshoff’s book just fine. The Keep Calm—that’s what it was called. The pattern was the deep blue of a nighttime sky with a dusting of dim yellow stars placed here and there. It seemed the sort of thing that might calm anybody who had trouble sleeping at night.
I watched as Boshoff opened the book to see that I’d filled the pages with recipes. Beef barley soup. Pork piccata. Lady Baltimore Cake. Those and the others were the meals my mother used to make during my childhood. Before leaving home, I’d found them written in her careful cursive on index cards she kept tucked in a kitchen drawer. It seemed important that she be remembered for something besides the strange artifacts on display in that room in Marfa, Texas. What I wanted was for some people—even if it was just the two of us—to remember her as a mother first, because that was the more important role she played during her time in this world. For that reason, I also filled the last of those pages with passages I once underlined in the books she made me read, like:
If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.
That was just one, but there were others. I thought those lines were like poetry in their own way too, because you had to stop and think about them in order to understand their connection to things around you.
Boshoff turned the pages, clacking a cough drop against his teeth, but not saying a word. After some time, I worried he did not understand what it was meant to be, so I explained, then finished by saying, “It’s just a little something to read at night when you can’t sleep. That’s all. Anyway, how is your wife?”
When he looked up, I could see his eyes were rimmed with red at the lids. He blinked a few times, and I thought he was about to deliver sad news when he told me, “You are a very thoughtful young lady, Sylvie. Thank you for this book. It will remain special to me, always. And thank you for remembering my wife too. You’ll be glad to know that she’s doing well actually. In remission for a few months now, which is the biggest blessing we could ask for.” He closed the book and said he wanted to save it to read at night the way I intended. “Now, tell me about you. How is your ear?”
“My uncle took me to a doctor,” I said. “Turns out the shhhh I heard all this time is caused by tinnitus brought on by the gunshot that night in the church. The doctor said it will come and go for a long time, since there’s no cure.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It seems to be getting quieter every day actually. I get the feeling that, pretty soon, I won’t hear it at all.”
“That’s happy news. And your sister? Have you heard anything?”
“No word,” I told him, thinking of that globe spinning and spinning, all those faraway places. “But someday, a long time from now, I bet I’ll hear from her.”
“Well, it is important to stay hopeful,” Boshoff told me.
With that, the bell rang. The sound broke some spell between us as the halls filled with the roar of students eager to leave this part of their lives behind and start the next. I supposed I was one of those students now too. “I should go,” I said. “While I can still escape the stampede.”
“Okay, Sylvie. Thank you again for thinking of me.”
“Thank you,” I told him.
When I stepped into the hallway, I turned in the direction of the crowd, which did not part the way it used to do, but rather, carried me along until I was moving out the front doors into the daylight once more. When I climbed into the Jeep, my uncle was waiting for me. He had rolled down his sleeves so I could see only a hint of his tattoos, not that I minded them. “All set?” he asked.