“The one who threw…the boy whose mother was dying?”
“You don’t have to say it like…That’s not…Belt doesn’t even think mothers should be trusted. And it’s a really major clip,” he said. “It’s historically important. I mean it might be the most important clip in the whole collage, in a way.”
“But how could you think it was a good idea to show it to Belt? This was obviously—any reasonable person would know that must have been an awful, painful moment in his life. What made you think he’d want to relive it? What made you think you had the right to make him?”
“The right? I’m trying to make art, Fon. I’m trying to innovate. I—”
“You didn’t ask him if it was okay. You didn’t even warn him first. How could you do that?”
“But my mother died. Less time ago than Belt’s. And I don’t think I would necessarily cry because I saw a video of—I’ve seen videos of myself from then. They didn’t make me cry. I just thought that Belt—I thought it would be the same for him. Why shouldn’t it be? Unless—what? Am I some sort of monster because I don’t get upset when I see videos of—”
“You were a baby when your mom died. You don’t remember her. You don’t remember when she died.”
“And that’s so much better? It’s been so much easier for me?”
“Don’t do that. No. Just don’t fucking do that. You are not the victim here. You’ve traumatized someone who…Trip, this is someone who suffers from a very serious mental illness, and you know that.”
“Does he really, though?” he said. “ ‘Suffer from a very serious mental illness’? I mean, he doesn’t seem crazy to me. Does he seem crazy to you?”
“What kind of stupid question is that?”
“What’s so stupid about it?”
“You’re really disappointing me.”
“I’m disappointing you? You’re the one who’s supposed to be on my side, and you’re yelling at me.”
“You’re acting like a three-year-old. A manipulative…”
That’s as much as I heard before I exited the bathroom, making as great a racket as I could, stomping down the stairs, shoulder-checking walls. We’d all just become acquainted, and I hadn’t even gotten to see Jonboat yet, let alone catch up with him; if Trip and Fon became too ugly with each other, ugly enough to harm their relationship, I might never be invited to the compound again. They’d associate me with the ugliness, maybe even blame me for it—they might have blamed me already—and maybe they’d be right to. Or not that wrong to: you don’t fault a hurt animal for growling at someone, but you don’t fault anyone for backing away when he sees a hurt animal, or hears one growling. Not unless the animal’s the person’s pet. Except even then, though, it’s…complicated. Was I their pet? Analogously, I mean. Was I Fon’s? Triple-J’s? Did I want to be their pet? I didn’t think I should want to. I didn’t want to want to—I’d have rather been their friend, and I was Fon’s friend—the handwich, the handwich—but, then again, a pet, I supposed, was a kind of friend, and to be a kind of friend was probably better than being no…And, no, I hadn’t growled—not even, I don’t think, analogously—but they’d seen I was hurting. They’d seen I was hurting, and since growling was fearsome because it so often preceded roaring or barking, both of which were warnings or threats that often preceded or accompanied violence—and since hurting so often preceded growling, which itself so often preceded roaring or barking, I—
“Belt,” Fon said, grabbing ahold of my hand and patting it. I’d barely taken a step into the screening room when, seeing me, she and Trip had rushed over.
I had to convince them I wasn’t hurting, hadn’t been hurting, that they’d misunderstood.
“Hey, guys,” I said.
“Are you okay?” Fon said.
“Completely,” I said. “I’m sorry for making a scene,” I said. “I’m a little embarrassed.”
“You’re not the one who needs to apologize,” Fon said.
“I should have warned you that last clip might upset you,” said Trip. “I see that now. I don’t know what I was thinking. My mom died, too, and I know that it can be…rough. Or whatever. Do you want to talk about our moms?”
“No,” I said. “I mean we could, if you want to, talk about our moms, but that wasn’t even…I’m really not upset, guys.”
“You were crying,” Trip said.
“Not about my mom, though. It was seeing that girl,” I said, which—sentence-for-sentence, word-for-word, and even letter-for-letter—was exactly as false as true.
“The girl with the evening gloves?” Triple-J said.
“Lisette,” I said. “Yeah.”
“So you weren’t upset,” he said. “You were moved.”
And there it was. Moved. Moved was my out. “Moved,” I thought. “Moved.” Not upset, which was a kind of hurt, but moved, which could appear, to an observer—or two observers—entirely indistinguishable from upset, but nonetheless was decisively not a kind of hurt, and was, even better, one of inspired’s most often-used synonyms.
“Yes,” I said. “I was really moved.”
“Well that’s actually—that’s so great,” Trip said. “You hear that, Fon?” He clapped his hands. “That’s so great, Belt. It’s great you were crying because of that girl, cause I’ll tell you what, man: she made me cry, too. I mean, not fully or whatever, but my eyes definitely stung a little when I first saw the clip, and I for sure had to wipe them. That’s why it’s the last segment. Cause it’s moving. Cause you just can’t help but identify with her, right? Emotionally. She’s witnessing history, and so are you—the viewer, I mean—but she makes the whole thing bigger than just, you know…history. Or news. She makes it art, right? Because you’re sitting there, witnessing the first overload ever—which is surprising, sure, because you thought the first overload ever was the kid at the talent show, and it turns out that, no, you’ve been wrong about that your whole entire life—it was this other kid who no one even knew he existed. I keep saying you, but you probably knew—I mean, you were in the study, you probably heard about it. But me. I. I was wrong about it my entire life, I’m saying. Until I saw the clip, I mean. And anyone who hasn’t seen the clip, which is pretty much everyone, everywhere, ever—they’ve been wrong about it for as long as they could have possibly been wrong about it. For years. Like me. It’s a really big deal. But even still, it’s nothing to cry about. Not in itself. I mean, it’s no small thing—it’s definitely a major revelation, sure, but only in the way that, like, I don’t know, finding out that Roosevelt knew about the Pearl Harbor attack before it happened was a major revelation. Or like the way Jews get when they find out someone blue-eyed and awesome’s a Jew. (That came out sounding anti-Semitic. I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m just talking about some Jews. Certain Jews. (Like this kid at school, Munroe, who—no, Meyer—no Munroe, yeah, Munroe Wolfsheim, who, he didn’t know about Paul Newman til I told him and he got extremely happy. (I really like Munroe, by the way.))) But what I’m saying’s the overload itself isn’t anything really special, right? Especially not after you’ve just watched Timmy and Tommy and that Doc Popsicles guy and all that, but she, though—the girl in the evening gloves, Lisette—she’s seeing something literally no one has ever seen or heard of before—well probably some people who worked for Graham&Swords R&D had, but that’s it—but so we get to see her seeing it, the girl, is what I’m saying. Seeing the overload. We, for the first time, get to see what it was like for her to see it for the first time, and that extra little bridge between our experience and hers—it just really, like, jacks up the empathy, right? And that’s what makes it art. It’s so human. Like…What am I trying to say, Fon?”