According to Robbie, the third floor was originally servants’ quarters. The ceilings were lower than in the rest of the house and the floors were of pine rather than oak. Cook found it all comfortably snug. It reminded him of the Zimmer frei lodgings he had taken in Swiss villages during a summer of hitchhiking—single rooms in the midst of strange households, where he always had to nudge family photographs aside on the nightstands to make room for his things.
After Robbie showed Cook to his room, the boy engaged him in a brief, almost token conversation, as if he had read in some juvenile book of etiquette that one should chat for sixty seconds with a new guest in his room to make him feel at home:
“When I get a new hamster I’ll name him Jeremy,” Robbie announced rather flatly.
“That’s nice,” Cook said as he began to unpack. “You expecting to get one?”
“Yeah. My last one died.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I’ll get a young one.”
“Oh?”
“So he’ll live longer.”
“Ah. I thought you were making fun of my little boy’s name again.”
“I didn’t say it was a little boy’s name.”
“That’s true, you didn’t. You’ve got a good memory.”
“I remember what I say, anyway.”
“There’s an old saying: ‘A liar must have a good memory.’”
Robbie frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“If he has a bad memory he’ll forget what lies he told and end up saying things that don’t fit together.”
“Oh.” Robbie seemed subdued.
“I’m not saying you’re a liar,” Cook quickly added.
“I know. Is that real gold?”
Cook followed his eyes. He was looking at his shiny briefcase latch. “No. It’s paint or something.”
“Oh.” Robbie heaved a leave-taking sigh. “See you later, I guess.”
“Okay. Can you tell your mom and dad I have some things to do up here? I’ll be down in a bit.”
Robbie jabbed a fist in the air and said, “Right on.”
Cook wasn’t aware he had made a political statement, and he smiled quizzically as Robbie left. He began to unpack. He found two empty drawers in the dresser and half of an armoire free. Apart from these two pieces there was a double bed, a nightstand, a small, ill-painted yellow desk, and a long, overflowing bookcase, which he browsed in between trips from the open suitcase to the dresser. The books were standard extra-room fare: mixed collegiate liberal arts paperbacks, outdated self-improvement texts, and the odd bizarre title like The Pipe: A Photographic Celebration. There were also lots of novels by people he had never heard of. But he saw some old friends there, too—Dickens, Jane Austen, Thomas Mann, D. H. Lawrence. God, Lawrence. Did anyone still read Lawrence? He thought of the gamekeeper in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, with his perennial “fire in the loins.” It always reminded Cook of what they yelled in mines when they blasted: “Fire in the hole!”
His room was long, running nearly the full width of the house, and windows filled most of one wall. In the midst of these was a glass door leading to a small balcony. He was pleased to see that his room faced the street. It would make it easy for him to observe comings and goings, if he needed to.
When he was finished unpacking he took The Pillow Manual from his briefcase and sat down with it at the little yellow desk. He reread the cheerless verse from Proverbs on its blue cover, evidently the Pillow Agency motto:
He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.
That morning in Pillow’s conference room Cook had frowned over this sentence, searching it for hidden encouragement. He had finally given up and tackled the first chapter of the manual—two hundred dense pages on the history of matrimony in Western culture—beginning it with good intentions, then skipping major portions of it, then guiltily going back and skipping them all over again. Thus looping and skipping, like a daydreaming child on his way to the candy store, he had made it to the second chapter, “The Pillow Agency Today”—a title that reminded him of industry films about oil and electricity with lots of zippy music. Here he found names and addresses of dozens of married couples. A single brief comment concluded each entry. “Will get better and better” was the hopeful comment for one marriage. But another read, “Pattern will continue: Bill having affairs, Peggy forgiving him, until death of one or both.” Another read, “All this marriage needs is a little more money.”
The Wilsons were not listed. Cook assumed this was the dead file—completed cases. It would be up to him to sum up their lives when he was done—a task that at the moment seemed ridiculously beyond his reach.
Chapter Three, though promisingly titled “Methods,” was Pillowesque in its informational stinginess: every page of the chapter was sealed except for the first, which contained an “Unsealing Schedule”: “Day One—Read Pages 227–228,” “Day Two—Read Page 229,” and so on. Pillow had pointed this out to Cook upon tendering him the manual, cautioning him not to read a word of this chapter until he was “on the job site,” as he put it, and then to read only what that day’s schedule allowed. He warned Cook that the manual was “subject to inspection” to ensure that the reading schedule was being adhered to. At the time, Cook had had a rebellious urge to unseal the whole damn thing right there in front of Pillow, just to see him come apart.
This was Day One, and he was on the job site, so it was time to do the dirty thing. He slid his hand under the first sealed page and popped the pink tab at the right margin, surprised at the pleasure it gave him. He turned to the popped page and read:
DAY ONE
Have a regular social evening.
Demonstrate your conversational competence.
Ask 25 questions.
Cook made a face. “Have a regular social evening” was close enough to “Have a nice day”—or the even more putrid “Have a good one”—to enrage him. There was a bit of a paradox in the directive, too, on the order of “Be spontaneous!” The sentence about his conversational competence instantly made him feel he didn’t have any. “Ask 25 questions.” Did it matter what they were? An odd exercise, even by Pillow’s standards. But at the bottom of the page, Cook noticed a “Turn, please,” and he did, for the sealing tab had held two pages, not just one. On this second page were the questions—standard queries about courtship and the like, with instructions that Cook was to put them to each partner while the other one was absent and then to collate the responses. The tape recorder in his possession was to be used for this exercise only. The instructions concluded with the promise of a courier to arrive on the following day to snatch the recorder from him, guaranteeing compliance. Pillow ran a tight ship. Cook looked for encouragement there. Didn’t methodological uniformity imply methodological soundness? Not really, he said to himself. Shut up, he said to himself.
Cook took the tape recorder from his briefcase. He established to his satisfaction that he could work it (it was a more recent model of the same Sony he had used with tinier informants at Wabash), and he went downstairs for a regular social evening of good old-fashioned conversational competence.
As Cook pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen, where the family was gathered, he experienced a fresh crisis of confidence. He tried to beat it back with an eager display of friendliness, saying, “You’ve made your house very comfortable.” He overdid it a bit, braying the sentence.
“You think so?” said Beth, looking at him from the refrigerator, where she was kneeling and wrestling with a vegetable drawer. “I’m not really happy with a lot of it.”
Cook lacked a follow-up remark, as he always did when he was insincere. Dan was standing near Beth, his hands extended toward her in the obvious posture of a man thwarted in midutterance.
“Did I interrupt?” Cook asked. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right,” said Beth.
Robbie said, “It’s not all right when I do it.” He was carrying a tray of plates and utensils from the kitchen into the sun-room at the rear of the house.
“Go on with whatever you were doing,” Cook said.
Dan, obeying Cook without acknowledging him, resumed speaking to Beth. Cook stood still and listened. Dan was telling her about something that had happened at work. But there was trouble at the receiving end. Beth was not all there for him. She was moving briskly from station to station: from refrigerator to counter to spice rack to sink, nodding and interjecting “Mm-hmm” and “Wow” at the right spots, but obviously not listening. Dan began to talk faster and louder. He gave the impression that he was physically following her, even though he stood in one place the entire time. Cook watched and grew agitated himself. Dan’s story climaxed just as Beth finished her work. She picked up a platter, and with a brief laugh signaling not amusement but only the end of this failed speech event, she presented him with his reward: a big raw fish.
Dan accepted the fish without a word and went through the sun-room and out the back door. If he was angry, he hid it. If Beth knew he was angry, she hid it. But Robbie, making a trip into the kitchen, sidestepped his father as if sensing he could easily be bowled over.
Cook remained standing across the kitchen from Beth, thinking. There was a technical name for what he had just seen Dan and Beth do, but he couldn’t think of it. Beth turned to see if he was still there, reacted with surprise when she saw that he was, but quickly smiled and offered him a drink.
“No, thanks,” Cook said.
“First time in St. Louis?” she asked as she turned back to the counter, where she was chopping something.
“Yes. I’ve passed through here, but that’s all.”
“It’s a nice city,” she said—with emphasis, as if he had asserted the opposite. “It’s a great place to raise a family, and you can get anywhere in twenty minutes.”
“Sounds good,” said Cook. He had no family and didn’t want to go anywhere.
“Ooh. Dan didn’t take the oven mitt out. He’ll probably need it.”
“I’ll take it,” said Cook, grabbing it from the counter.
“Can you remind him not to overcook the salmon?”
Cook said he would do that. He walked into the sun-room, a large room with an almond-tile floor and a curve of tall casement windows looking onto the backyard. It was obviously an addition to the house, joined to the kitchen by French doors. Robbie was seated at the table with an open book on his plate.
“You’ve set a very nice table,” Cook said to him.
“Give me a break,” Robbie said without looking up.
Cook stepped out the back door onto the wooden deck. He trotted down the stairs to the brick patio, where Dan was hunched over a barbecue kettle.
Dan looked up, but just for a moment. He was concentrating hard on the grill. “First time in St. Louis?”
“Yes, not counting the times I passed through.”
“Yeah,” Dan said sourly. “The Great Flyover.” He had been holding a knife and fork poised above the salmon, and now he suddenly plunged them into it, making a deep slice. Cook saw several open scars from previous slices, even though Dan had just put the fish on. Dan was wearing a chef’s apron with loops at the waist for utensils. Two spatulas dangled there. Bumptious lettering across the front of the apron read, NOW WE’RE HAVING FUN!
Cook said, “I’m supposed to tell you not to overcook it.”
Dan raised his eyes more slowly than Cook would have thought possible without humorous intent, but there was clearly no such intent here—Cook knew this when Dan failed to return his strained grin. He just stared at Cook.
Cook said maybe he would have a look around the yard, and he eased away, casting a final glance at Dan. Hovering over the fish, he looked like a ravenous heron on the prowl in shallow water. Cook wondered why Dan was so tense. Was it Cook’s mere presence? Was he angry at Cook for interrupting his story in the kitchen? Or was he angry at Beth for not listening?
“Complementary schismogenesis,” Cook said to himself, softly. That was the name he had tried to remember in the kitchen. In The Woof of Words—Cook’s surprisingly popular general introduction to linguistics—he had devoted a tidy chapter to this concept, originally developed by some anthropologist whose name he could never remember. Complementary schismogenesis was what happened when person A did something that irked person B, so B did something in response that made A do even more of the thing that irked B, which made B do his thing even more, and so on. It could all take place quite unconsciously. The classic metaphor illustrating it involved a married couple under an electric blanket with dual controls that have been switched by mistake. The wife wakes up cold, so she turns the thermostat on her nightstand up; this raises the temperature on her husband’s side of the blanket, so he wakes up hot and turns his thermostat (actually his wife’s) down, so of course she turns hers up even farther, and so on.
In the kitchen, Dan had had a story to tell. But Beth had had a meal to prepare. Dan talked. Beth cooked. Dan, reacting to Beth’s inattention, talked harder. Beth, fighting the distraction, cooked harder. The repulsion was mutual and meticulously balanced. Complementary schismogenesis. It was a killer concept.
Cook walked slowly along the edge of the lawn, looking at the flower beds, which he liked for their signs of nonfanatical maintenance. He appreciated the human touches—the dead marigolds that should have been removed some time ago, the soccer ball lying in the impatiens, smashing them. At the back of the yard he spotted a little cross made of Tinkertoys, with a tiny mound of fresh dirt in front of it. Robbie’s hamster.
Cook made his way back to the grill. Dan was still leaning intently over the fish. He suddenly swore and stabbed the fish with his knife, then grabbed at the two spatulas on his waist loops, struggling with them like a double-holstered greenhorn in a shootout. He freed them and wrestled the fish off the grill. He set it on a wooden platter, where it promptly broke into several small pieces.
Breathing heavily, Dan said, “There’s a two-second window when it’s ready. I missed the window. It’s overdone.” He laughed bitterly and looked at Cook. “You got a dumbshit cook, it’s gonna be a dumbshit meal, right? What’s she expect?”
Cook shrugged. “For my part, I don’t care. I don’t like food much.”
Dan frowned. “What do you mean?”
Cook shrugged again. “I just don’t like food.”
Dan looked wildly perplexed. “So what do you do instead?”
“Oh I eat, like everybody else. But it bores me.”
Dan laughed softly. “I’ll try to make it interesting for you by giving you a job. I want you to say the fish is perfect. Say it’s the best goddamn fish you’ve ever had.”
Cook forced the grin of a jovial conspirator. “All right. I’ll do my best.”
“Sound like you mean it.”
“I will.”
“Here we go.” Dan led the way up the stairs.
Beth greeted them at the back door and took the platter. “Gee, honey,” she said. “It looks like mashed potatoes.”
Robbie, still seated at the table, laughed out loud, but his eyes remained on his book. It wasn’t clear what he was laughing at.
“It so happens that I like mashed potatoes,” said Dan. He untied his apron and tossed it on a chair. Beth brooded silently over the fish and set it on the table. As she walked back into the kitchen Dan caught Cook’s attention, then rocked his hand back and forth between them, his three middle fingers clenched, his little finger pointing at Cook and his thumb at himself, while he mouthed in rhythm with the rocking of his hand, “You and me, you and me.”
Beth came back with a water pitcher and they all sat down.
“Fish,” said Robbie, looking at the platter. “Yum. Yummy-yum-yum-yummy-yummy.” He turned away from it and took a big bite of the frozen pizza Beth had baked for him.
“Wine, Jeremy?” Dan held the bottle over Cook’s glass, about to pour.
“No, thanks,” Cook said quickly.
Dan poured some for his wife as she began to serve the fish. “Beth makes a lovely salmon,” he said.
“But you grilled it, honey.”
“Yeah, but the seasoning’s what’s important. That’s what makes it special. Give him more, honey. Yeah. Take it, Jeremy. Good. There you are. Now, dig in. Right. Chew it up good. Unh-hunh. What do you think?”
Dan talked the fish right into Cook’s gullet. It seemed so bathed in words, and Cook felt so robbed of independent speech, that when he said, “Very tasty,” he felt as if the fish were saying it, calling the message back up Cook’s throat. He was about to say more, but Beth beat him to it.
“It is good,” she said, licking her fingers. She had popped a piece into her mouth. “Nice going, honey.”
Cook looked at Dan, but his face was surprisingly blank as he poured himself some wine. It seemed to be a joyless moment for him.
“So,” said Dan, “what happens, Jeremy? What’s on the agenda?”
Cook went on alert. Since Robbie was in the dark, wouldn’t it be better to discuss this when he wasn’t around? Cook looked at Robbie. He was wolfing his pizza at an astonishing pace.
“There will be a number of activities,” Cook said. He let them ponder that word—a distant echo from the daycare center at Wabash. “I’ll be letting you know about them as they come up.”
“We’ve told Robbie about the survey you’re doing of the language of St. Louis,” Beth said to him. But she was looking at Dan.
“Do you know where words come from?” Robbie asked. “My teacher’s always talking about where words come from.”
“Sure,” said Cook. “That’s part of what I do.”
“Like, do you know where ‘salmon’ comes from?”
“No,” Cook said flatly. The truth was he hated etymology. People always expected him to know the origins of words and he never did.
“How about ‘napkin’?” Robbie said.
“Nope.” Once—just once—Cook had been able to give an etymology when called on. It was for the word “starboard”—from the Old English “steorbord,” literally “steering side,” because the rudder was on the right side of Anglo-Saxon vessels. He had delivered this information at a dinner party, and even though it was solicited, he felt uniquely responsible for disabling the conversation, which limped for the rest of the evening. That was the curse of etymology. It brought an initial rush of elation, but after that came emptiness and despair.
Robbie said, “Do you know anything about parts of speech?”
Cook brightened. “I’m real good at parts of speech.”
“We’re learning them in school.”
“Already?” said Cook. “That’s great.”
“It’s repulsive,” Robbie said. This made Cook laugh, which seemed to surprise Robbie, then please him.
“What about tonight?” Dan said to Cook. “What happens tonight?”
Robbie evidently assumed his father’s question was meant for him, and said, “There’s a Garfield thing at eight-thirty. If I do my book report now, then my parts of speech”—he gave Cook a sneer, as if Cook had invented them—“I can just make it.”
Dan said, “What about math? Don’t you have any math homework?”
“Did it at school.”
“Why do they call it homework if you can do it at school?”
“I didn’t call it homework,” Robbie said coolly. “You did.”
Dan looked at Cook and rolled his eyes, as if to say, “Some kid, hunh?” Beth smiled.
They ate silently for a while. Robbie scooted his chair out and said, “Let me know when the activities begin.”
“Okay,” said Cook.
They watched him carry his dishes into the kitchen. He put them in the sink with a crash and ran upstairs. His footsteps on the stairs made so much noise that for a moment Cook guessed he was angry about something. But a glance at Dan and Beth told him these were just everyday noises.
Dan said, “Jeremy, you sure you don’t want any wine?”
“Yes. I’m sure.” Cook hesitated. Then, to prevent endless future repetitions, he said, “I don’t drink.”
“Oh? You got a problem?”
“Honey,” Beth said disapprovingly.
“It’s all right,” Cook said to her. To Dan he said, “I used to have a problem, but now I don’t. Which is to say I’ve got a problem if I drink, which is to say I’ve got a problem, but for me, not drinking is a smaller problem than drinking.”
“Geez, Jeremy,” said Dan. “Sounds like you got more problems all by yourself than Beth and me put together.”
“What’s with you?” Beth said to Dan. “You’re the one with a problem.”
“I’m tense,” Dan said. The words exploded, and as soon as they were out he looked spent, defeated.
“I guess we all are,” said Cook.
“Not like me,” said Dan. He squirmed a bit in his chair. “The man always gets blamed when a marriage is in trouble. It’s always the man.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Beth.
“It’s true,” said Dan. “People always blame the guy. They always say it was the guy that stunk it up.”
Beth looked at Cook, apparently for a comment. He had none. She said to Dan, “Tense or not, you’ve got to be more careful about talking in front of Robbie. Why did you ask Jeremy what was going to happen right in front of him?” In anger—even mild anger—Beth was not pretty. Cook was disappointed in the change.
Dan stopped chewing. His broad, alert face suddenly looked dumb. He resumed chewing, but more slowly. He took a drink of wine and said, “I figured he could tell us without tipping off why he’s really here.”
“Couldn’t you wait just a few minutes until Robbie was gone?” Beth said.
“I didn’t know he was going to dash off so quickly. For all I knew, he was going to hang around us all night.”
“In that case we could have sent him upstairs.”
Dan took a slow, deep breath. “It’s no big deal. Jeremy handled it fine. He’s no slouch.”
“It is a big deal,” said Beth. “Robbie is a separate entity. This isn’t his concern.”
Dan gave Cook a tired look. “My son—the entity.”
“You know what I mean,” Beth said.
“Okay okay okay. I get the point.”
“Good.”
Dan seemed not to like that “Good.” His body did a slow writhe in the chair. “What if I don’t like the alibi we’ve concocted for Jeremy—the old survey-of-St.-Louis alibi? What if I don’t like it?”
“If you want to change our decision about what to tell him, we have to discuss it.”
“He’s old enough to understand without being upset. I think we should tell him the truth.”
“My point is you should have discussed it with me first. You can’t just—”
“I’m discussing it now.”
“You can’t just do it unilaterally.”
“I knew you were going to say ‘unilaterally,’” Dan snapped. “I knew it.” He put his fork down hard.
Beth stared at him.
“All right,” Dan said. “Let’s discuss it. I say we tell him.”
“I say we don’t,” Beth said. She turned to Cook. “What do you say?”
“I don’t have the foggiest,” Cook said. “Can you pass the salad, please?”
“You don’t?” Beth said sharply. She seemed annoyed and handed him the salad bowl rather brusquely. “What’s the normal procedure?”
Cook saw that he had blundered. “What I meant,” he said, “was that it’s become a point of dispute between the two of you, and if I told you my view I would be taking sides.” Beth stared at him—skeptically, he thought. He decided a change of subject was in order. “Tell me what you folks do.”
Beth gave him a blank look. “You mean our jobs?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “Don’t you know?”
“Not exactly,” said Cook, wondering how he had blundered now.
“We spent hours talking with this guy and filling out forms.”
“Mr. Pillow?” Cook hoped so. They would think him wonderfully normal in comparison with Pillow.
“No, no. Some other guy from the agency. We spent hours on those forms.”
“Nothing was given to me.”
“Incredible!”
Fortunately, Dan was less outraged than Beth. “If he didn’t get them he didn’t get them. They probably have their reasons.”
“It’s ridiculous,” said Beth.
“Beth’s a music teacher,” Dan said.
“Hours we spent on them. Hours.”
“Really?” Cook said, turning to her. “Do you teach at home or—”
“She teaches at a private elementary school in the city, not far from here.”
“What’s your instrument?” said Cook.
“It’s a pisser,” Beth snapped.
“Piano,” said Dan. “She’s good. I play too, but just for fun.”
“But you’re good,” Beth said, finally switching to their channel. She turned to Cook. “He’s good. He just doesn’t practice.”
“Yes I do,” said Dan.
“That’s not practicing,” said Beth.
“It’s not practicing like you practice, but it’s practicing to me. It’s not my job or anything.”
“What is your job?” Cook asked him.
Dan began his answer with a long sigh. “I’m a …” He looked at Beth. “What am I? I never know what to say. I used to be a geographer, but now I’m a printer.”
“A printer?” said Cook.
Beth said, “You’re co-manager of the business, honey. Come on.”
“Right.” Dan took a swallow of wine. When he set his glass down he seemed a little surprised to see Cook still looking at him. Evidently for him the subject was closed.
“Dan and my brother run the place,” said Beth. “It’s a midsize printing plant. My father founded it forty years ago.”
“Ah,” said Cook.
“Dan does beautiful maps. He’s a great cartographer. Decorative ones, funny ones—all kinds. There are some in the living room. I’ll show you after dinner. The plant does some map printing, and that’s how Dan first got interested in the business.” Beth looked at Dan appreciatively. She seemed to be waiting for him to follow up. When he didn’t, she turned to Cook and said, “Did you talk at all with the man from your agency who was here?” It wasn’t an angry question. She was over that and was looking pretty again.
“No,” said Cook.
“So you don’t know what he said about Dan and me.”
Dan laughed. “Helluva thing.”
Beth grinned. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell him.”
“A helluva thing. Go ahead. Tell him.”
“Yeah,” said Cook. “Tell ‘me this helluva thing.”
Beth said, “He told us there was a horror in our marriage.”
Cook’s whole body gulped, like a frog’s.
“Actually,” said Dan, “he said, ‘There is a horror at the core of your marriage.’”
“Right,” Beth said. “‘At the core.’”
“What did you say?” Cook asked.
“What can you say?” said Beth. “It was such a shock. Dan made jokes. He said, ‘Just one?’ And he said, ‘Aren’t there any on the periphery?’”
Dan laughed. “Helluva thing.”
“What is it?” Cook asked. “What’s the horror?”
“He wouldn’t tell us,” said Beth.
“Didn’t you ask him? I mean, didn’t you insist?”
“Of course! But he wouldn’t say.”
“But—”
Robbie appeared in the doorway from the kitchen. “Have you guys seen my Leif Ericsson book?” He looked at his parents. There was a pause.
“I took it back to the library on my way to work,” said Dan.
Robbie’s face collapsed. “But I need it. My book report is due tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’m dead without it.” Robbie looked at his mother. “I told you I wasn’t done with it.”
“Don’t blame Mommy,” said Dan. “I’m the one who took it back. We can go get it now if it’s that important.” He stood up from the table and looked at Cook. “Want to take a ride, Jeremy?”
“Are you done eating?” Beth said to Dan.
“Yeah.” He hesitated. “Are you mad because I want to do this?”
“Why would I be mad?”
“Because it’s kind of an abrupt end to the meal.”
Beth shrugged.
“What if someone else got it?” Robbie said, a whine in his voice.
“We’ll just have to see,” Dan said calmly. He turned to Beth. “Leave the dishes for when I get back.”
“I’ll help,” said Cook.
“Honey,” Beth said to Dan, “didn’t you ask me this morning if you could take all of the books back to the library?”
“I don’t know. Did I?” Dan was leaning away, obviously eager to go.
“And I said, ‘All of our books.”
Dan gave her a blank look. “Yeah? So?”
“‘Our books.’ Yours and mine.”
Dan laughed. “So I’m supposed to know from that that I shouldn’t take Robbie’s? Geez.”
“Yes,” said Beth. “That’s exactly what I meant. ‘All of our books.’”
Dan’s face darkened with thought, or anger, or both.
“‘Our,’” he said. “‘Our.’ It means ‘belonging to us,’ right? Us—you, me, and Robbie.”
“But I didn’t mean Robbie,” said Beth. “I meant you and me. ‘All of our books.’”
“You keep saying it like I’m suddenly going to be overwhelmed with understanding,” Dan said, his voice suddenly higher. “How was I supposed to know you didn’t mean Robbie?”
“It’s obvious.”
Dan groaned.
“‘Our,’” said Beth. “The way I said it, it makes no sense any other way. Why would I say it like that? Who else is involved? The neighbors? I meant ‘our’—”
“In a contrastive sense,” said Cook.
This cut the discussion off as effectively as if Cook had produced a battle-ax and sliced the table in half.
“Sorry,” Cook said.
“Don’t apologize,” Beth said to Cook. “You’re right.”
“Oh,” said Dan. “The linguist has spoken? I don’t accept that. I just don’t accept that.”
“Doesn’t the library close pretty soon?” said Robbie.
“Yes,” said Dan. “Our library closes in our town at an early hour.” This involuntary pun confused him for a moment, but he hurried on. “I’m taking our son, a kid that, incredible as it may sound, I often refer to when I speak.” He turned to Cook. “Jeremy? Coming?”
“Sure,” said Cook. He was feeling rather exhilarated from the direction the conversation had taken. He stood up and said, “Great dinner, Beth.” As he joined Dan he said, “You know, this misunderstanding couldn’t have arisen in seventh-century England.”
“Why?” said Dan. “No local libraries?”
“No, no. Because of the dual pronoun number. I’ll explain it. Most languages have a singular and a plural—right? Early Old English had a dual number in addition to those. It had one pronoun meaning ‘belonging to me,’ another—the dual one—that meant ‘belonging to the two of us,’ and a third that meant ‘belonging to the three-or-more of us.’ Isn’t that something?”
Dan frowned deeply.
“In fact, if you let me think a minute, I can give you the different versions of the whole sentence in question. Listen up, Robbie.” Cook put his arm around the boy as the three of them headed out of the room. “I’m going to speak some Old English. Nobody’s talked like this for a thousand years.”