We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Read Online Free PDF Page A

minimalism, with no bright colors, only oatmeal,
     sand, and ivory. And still, three years after the move, oddly bare, as if no one planned
     to be here long.
    I recognized my rocks, but not the dresser beneath them, nor the bedspread, which
     was a quilted velvet-gray, nor the painting on the wall—something murky in blues and
     black—lilies and swans, or maybe seaweed and fish, or maybe planets and comets. The
     geodes did not look as if they belonged here and I wondered if they’d been brought
     out for my visit and would be boxed up as soon as I left. I had a momentary suspicion
     that the whole thing was an intricate charade. When I left, my parents would go back
     to their real house, the one with no room for me in it.
    Mom sat on the bed and I put down my pencil. Surely there was preliminary, throat-clearing
     conversation, but I don’t remember. Probably, “It hurts your father when you don’t
     talk to him. You think he doesn’t notice, but he does.” This is a holiday classic—like
It’s a Wonderful Life
, we rarely get through the season without it.
    Eventually she got to her point. “Dad and I have been talking about my old journals,”
     she said, “and what I ought to do with them. I still feel they’re sort of private,
     but your father thinks they should go to a library. Maybe one of those collections
     that can’t be opened until fifty years after your death, though I hear that libraries
     don’t really like that. Maybe we could make an exception for family.”
    I’d been taken by surprise. My mother was almost, but not quite, talking about things
     we absolutely, resolutely did not talk about. The past. Heart clicking loudly, I answered
     by rote. “You should do whatever you want, Mom,” I said. “What Dad wants isn’t relevant.”
    She gave me a quick, unhappy look. “I’m not asking for your advice, dear. I’ve decided
     to give them to you. Your dad is probably right that some library would take them,
     though I think he remembers them as more scientific than they are.
    “Anyway. The choice is yours. Maybe you don’t want them. Maybe you’re still not ready.
     Toss them if you like, make paper hats. I promise never to ask.”
    I struggled to say something to her, something that would acknowledge the gesture
     without opening the subject. Even now, even with years of forewarning, I can’t think
     just how I might have done that. I hope I said something graceful, something generous,
     but it doesn’t seem likely.
    What I remember next is my father joining us in the guest room with a present, a fortune
     he’d gotten in a cookie months ago and saved in his wallet, because he said it was
     obviously for me.
Don’t forget, you are always on our minds.
    There are moments when history and memory seem like a mist, as if what really happened
     matters less than what should have happened. The mist lifts and suddenly there we
     are, my good parents and their good children, their grateful children who phone for
     no reason but to talk, say their good-nights with a kiss, and look forward to home
     on the holidays. I see how, in a family like mine, love doesn’t have to be earned
     and it can’t be lost. Just for a moment, I see us that way; I see us all. Restored
     and repaired. Reunited. Refulgent.

Four
    T OUCHED AS I WAS, there was nothing I wanted less than my mother’s journals. What’s the point of never
     talking about the past if you wrote it all down and you know where those pages are?
    Mom’s journals were large, the size of sketch pads but thicker, and there were two
     of them, tied together with old green Christmas ribbon. I had to empty my suitcase
     and repack, sit on it to zip it closed again.
    At some point, perhaps when I changed planes in Chicago, the suitcase waltzed off
     on its own adventures. I arrived in Sacramento, waited an hour at the luggage carousel,
     talked for another hour to a bunch of people with clear consciences and bad attitudes.
     I caught the