Cities of Refuge by Michael Helm Page A

don’t have the words. And so trying just compounds my sense of helplessness. If I say he seemed sure of himself, like he’d done it before, then I sort of believe that’s a fact. But then, you know, his mask wasn’t on straight, and I got away from him, so how slick was he? And so I doubt myself as a witness. And I feel powerless all over again.”
    “So keep trying. Maybe take it from angles. Find the smaller composite truths within the larger one. You need to make it something to share. It’s the hopeful idea of two or more people seeing the same thing. Disarm it with scrutiny, as if it happened long ago, to someone else.”
    “Who’s my audience? I wouldn’t want anyone I know so-called sharing this with me.”
    “Tell it to yourself. Your older self. She looks in an old journal some day far off and finds the examined details. And they seem very real and very distant all at once.”
    Did he keep a journal? she wondered. This was not a précis of some article he’d read or the usual hectoring about resuming her studies. He was telling her something he’d discovered.
    “Have you told your mother what happened?”
    “Not all of it.”
    “You can, you know. You can tell either of us, if you need to.”
    “So now we’re sharing our worst moments?”
    He pretended to look directly at her but his eyes took in only her forehead and then dropped back down to the food, his shoulders now set slightly forward.
    “You’re very aware of my worst moments, whatever you imagine them to be. I think you’ve let them shape you.”
    “Really. What do I imagine them to be?”
    “Well. The marriage had its worst moments. You were there for those. Or in nearby rooms, and the aftermath. And you’re angry with me, for her sake and your own, and –”
    “Yeah, I know. So I sabotage my could-be career to disappoint you. Isn’t psychology simple.”
    There had been not a sabotage but an awakening. Her first two terms in New York had gone well enough. She had a title for her proposed thesis – “Homeless Truths: Pluralism in Postwar North America” – and a lengthy reading list, but in her second year she began wondering what wasn’t in the studies, theories, and source documents. To Harold’s distress, her inspiration had always been those historians whose work admitted speculation – Donald’s interest in the Battle of Quebec began when she’d given him Simon Schama’s essay-fiction about Wolfe and Montcalm. As her second winter there began, and she realized that New York had covered her in a mood of broken promise, she returned in her reading to fiction-inflected histories. She became dreamy, stopped attending classes, and wrote nothing but vignettes, scenes that came to her unbidden, written all in one sitting. She was adrift, on other people’s money. And so she dropped out and went home.
    They’d entered the brief pause before finishing their meals. Kim noticed how they mirrored each other, each with the left hand on the table, holding the stem of a wineglass, and the right resting on the edge. Harold pressed his palm against the table, spreading his thumb and fingers as if measuring the span of a thought.
    “There’s no use denying the force of large events,” he said. “If we’re awake at all, we spend our early adulthood discovering that the world is more complex than we thought, and the rest of it discovering the main human themes have been the same for thousands of years. You can name each one in a word or two.”
    “You know, you’re right that I was in nearby rooms. And I remember what I heard you two say to one another.”
    “That was just dumb emoting. Mostly meaningless.”
    “Well then maybe that explains my directionless life, because I thought I caught some spit wisdoms.”
    “I can’t imagine which ones.”
    “That some people live their lives inside a single ambiguity. You said that. All the yelling stopped and there it was. I don’t remember the context, I likely wouldn’t have