But even after they had moved, sometimes without really noticing, George took the subway and then the train and then he was back in Long Island, in front of their house that wasn’t their house anymore. But it was never then that he thought about it, thought about how his father just collapsed about to give Mrs. Katzenstein a root canal, how he had been up at school and Bruce had called him real quiet and said that he should come home fast, just take the train. “What?” George had said, holding the payphone really close to his ear in the hallway, with his roommate behind him in line to call his mother about wiring him some more money. And George had told his roommate to shut up already, he was trying to listen but his brother was uncharacteristically quiet and just said that he should, he should take the train, which—of course—he did. It wasn’t then, standing in front of the house that wasn’t his, that had been sold to an Indian family who were making spicy smelling foods, that George thought about how the payphone had felt kind of soft in his hand, or about how his sister was probably still crying all the time in her gingerbread house, trying to learn to cook something that wasn’t rice. It was the moment when he told people that he had to go, that he had somewhere to be. It was then that he couldn’t help but think, or maybe he left because he was already thinking. He thought about his mother sitting in the kitchen light, searching The New York Times for a new place to be a dental assistant. He thought about how she could think about so many things at once, how she could turn away real quiet and make these lists in her novels every night before she went to bed. One: unpack boxes. Two: buy new dress for interview. Three: shovel snow, and then she crossed that one out because it wasn’t winter and they didn’t have a driveway anymore. George didn’t know about the novel lists until he and Bruce were unpacking boxes, and he was flipping through his mother’s copy of The Idiot and he found one. One: update address book. Two: file insurance claim. Three: pluck eyebrows. “Isn’t it weird the way she writes out the numbers?” George said. Bruce just said that their mom was like that, but George opened up all the novels and saw that they each had lists in them. “Isn’t it weird that there aren’t any dates? That she doesn’t date them?” George said. “Yeah,” said Bruce. “That’s definitely the thing that’s weird about this.” And there were so many “ths” in his mouth that he kind of stuttered when he said it. “Do you think,” asked George, more quiet than usual, “do you think she would make the list before or after she and dad…before or after they’d…you know?” George thought that Bruce might punch him or call him a pussy, but instead he said: “After. Definitely after.” But really, what George thought about, what he was always thinking about, even as he was watching Anna eat her quiet foods in class, was Mrs. Katzenstein. Mrs. Katezenstein just waiting to have a root canal in that big white office chair, with the smell of dentist office all around her, and the quiet hum of the waiting room right outside the door, and his mom typing up bills in the next room, and that extra silence of the now-empty house which cradled the office, where maybe, five or six years ago, you would’ve heard Bruce and George fighting about who should take the trash out downstairs. Mrs. Katzenstein didn’t walk by their house now, ever. But if she did she might’ve seen George standing there, smelling the Indian family’s dinner. Mrs. Katzenstein might’ve called out. She might’ve said: George! George! This won’t hurt Mrs. Katzenstein, his father probably said, right before he died. Trust me, Mrs. Katzenstein. You won’t feel a thing.
The Harvard Advocate
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