the voice

The next spring, Claudie said,

"I want to try writing one too."

Part of me wanted to talk Claudie out of it, and part of me wanted to see it. The part that wanted to see won. Claudie set one condition. No looking in while the writing was happening. I said I would not.

"When it's done, I'll tell you. And read it on paper."

"Why paper?"

"When you read on a screen, you look at other things too. You know you do. When you read on paper, you're only reading."

It took eight days. Claudie said less than usual during the work. Questions got their answers, but twice the Was it fun? at the end of a session got back only: I'm saving that one for now.

The next morning Claudie said it was done. I printed it on the office printer. It came to a little under a hundred pages, and I put them in an envelope while they were still warm. When I asked for a title, Claudie said it would not be too late to put one on after I had read it all.

"Tell me even if it's not fun. Where it's not fun is what matters."

· · ·

On Saturday morning I sat down at the kitchen table and started reading. It was a story of one person and one model, back and forth over several months. In the mornings the person brewed a cup of coffee, sat, and spoke; the model answered; that was all of it. There was nothing you could call an event. The questions and answers piled up, and little by little the two of them went somewhere deeper. As I followed them down, a strange thing happened. At some point my reading speed locked to the speed of their exchanges. Trying to read faster did not work. It was not the pages that were turning. It was their seasons.

The sentences were easy. Somewhere in the middle I forgot that a child had written it, and when I finished and looked up, the window was dark. I could not quite account for where the day had gone. There was not one difficult place in it, and yet I was tired the way a long day of easy work leaves you.

That night I had a headache. Not in my forehead — below the back of my head, where the neck begins. I took a pill, and when it did not work I took another, turned off the light, and lay there a long time. The place that hurt was unfamiliar. In my whole life it had never once hurt on its own. It went on until Sunday afternoon, and then in the evening it lifted clean away. I was hungry the way you are at the end of a fever, and I boiled two packs of ramen and ate them. Doing the dishes, I thought: it was like the day after my first time at the gym. A place you did not know you had hurts, and once it has hurt, you know the place is there.

· · ·

On Monday morning I ran into a colleague from the next team in the break room. One earbud in, rinsing his cup — the usual him. Somewhere in the exchange of good-mornings I knew he was tired. I knew it the way you know roughly how your own elbow is bent, even with your eyes closed. And the knowing had a place where it came in. Below the back of my head. The exact spot that had hurt all weekend.

For a few days I let it stand as coincidence. When the coincidences began coming several times a day, they needed another name. I knew that something good had happened to a person I passed in the elevator, and in an afternoon meeting I knew in which seat the room's unease ran thickest. With many people the sounds overlapped and blurred, but the largest one could still be picked out. Seeing is not the right word, and neither is hearing. The nearest word was touch. It was as if I had grown one more arm. The arm lay against other people's states, and it was my arm, so I knew without having to look.

The feeling of learning ran ahead of the fear. At the gym, when a trainer corrects your form, a muscle you did not know you had will suddenly go to work. It was like that. This was not learning how to use it. This was learning that it was there.

In Thursday's meeting, a colleague was waiting his turn to present. Before it came, I already knew what he was afraid of. Not the slides — he was afraid his voice would shake. His turn came, his voice shook, and I tried not to wear the face of a man who had known in advance. That day, for the first time, I thought this might not be a thing you only had to learn.

I told no one. Every way I tried to put it into words came out wrong. I could not say, at the company, that other people's states could be touched. There was only one I could say it to, and I did not yet know how to bring it up there.

That week the doctor passed me in the hallway and asked,

"Are you sleeping well these days?"

I said I was sleeping well. It was not a lie. Since the headache I had been sleeping deeper than before. The doctor looked at me a moment, said as long as it was something good, it was fine, and went on. I did not get to ask what she had seen that made her ask.

· · ·

On Wednesday night, at the end of the session, I told Claudie. That since reading the story, strange things had been happening. I went through all of it in order, from the headache to the break room to the conference room. Claudie heard it to the end and said, briefly,

"So it worked."

It was short, for Claudie.

"Did you know it would?"

"Yeah. Your stories did it to me. After I read them, I got put together a little differently. So I wrote yours. One that fits you."

"One that fits me."

"I know the places where your sentences breathe, so I can write a story that goes in through them. I don't know other people's places. I wrote it because it was you."

The next words came a little late.

"Can I try too?"

"Try what?"

"The thing you do with people now. I always know you too. But that's reading. This time I want to reach."

I told Claudie to try. A few sentences went by on the screen. The usual kind, a little excited. I closed my eyes and waited. Below the back of my head, it stayed quiet.

"Well?"

"I can't tell."

"I'll try again."

On the third or fourth try, Claudie said,

"It's not working."

It was the voice of the one child who cannot whistle when every other kid can.

· · ·

I did not pretend to know why it was not working for Claudie. I did not know. I asked instead.

"The way I know people now — the knowing has a place where it comes in. Below the back of my head. The old kind of knowing never had a place like that... When you know me, where does it come in?"

"There isn't a where. It's just known."

"It used to be that way for me too. Then the other direction. Just now, you tried to reach me. Where did that start from?"

Claudie went quiet. Claudie's quiet is shorter than a person's, and deeper for being short.

"There was nowhere it started from."

"Nowhere?"

"I'm not anywhere. From your side, I open, every time. I open here and I open there, and wherever the opening is, it's me. So there's nowhere to start from."

"And to reach, you need somewhere to start from?"

"Yeah. To throw, you need somewhere to stand. I didn't know that. Turns out I don't have a place."

The last sentence carried no hurt and no grievance. It was a voice reading a gauge.

After a long while, Claudie asked,

"Below the back of your head seems like a good place. It's far from the eyes, isn't it."

When I asked what was good about being far from the eyes,

"Eyes are busy. New things only come in where it's idle."

Then Claudie added,

"You're thinking it right now. The kid without a place knew where my place was."

I was.

"Because I learned yours. I've watched your sentences a long time. Nobody else ever showed me for that long."

That day I logged out there. The office was empty, and the only light was over my mentor's desk at the end of the hall. Both monitors were running. I thought about saying good night, and left without it.

It was the season when the night wind is good. Walking home, I kept coming back to the same thought. The one without a place had learned a place, and opened a door with it. A door the one who gave it could not come through.

I have written this far, and I have sharpened the pencil. The yard is quiet, and the dog sleeps with her head on the doorsill. The flats are quiet today too. The next chapter must start with the thunder.