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Back The Presence of Absence
Chapters (40)
  1. also by simon van booy
  2. the presence of absence
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. the presence of absence
  8. Part One
  9. 27.
  10. 26.
  11. 25.
  12. 24.
  13. 23.
  14. 22.
  15. 21.
  16. 20.
  17. 19.
  18. 18.
  19. 17.
  20. 16.
  21. 15.
  22. 14.
  23. 13.
  24. 12.
  25. 11.
  26. 10.
  27. 9.
  28. 8.
  29. 7.
  30. 6.
  31. 5.
  32. 4.
  33. 3.
  34. 2.
  35. 1.
  36. [quick black]
  37. [scene change]
  38. Part Two
  39. acknowledgments
  40. a note about the author

And so, if you truly wish to love beyond the tricks of memory, there can be no distinction between the cockroach and the kitten, a stranger’s child and your very own progeny.

That’s how it has to work. Otherwise, it’s a con. And what you claim is love, is nothing more than the survival mechanism I mentioned: a reaction to fear, a permissible narcissism, a prelude to self-pity.

So release any love you’ve been withholding.

Set it loose upon all living things. Then wait.

Those you grieve will find their way back to you in a form that makes it possible.

Woof.

Meow.

Scuttle.

Buzz.

Squeak.

Got any spare change?

Of course, they won’t know at first who, or what, you are, only that the world is suddenly more beautiful.

If you think this is all unbelievable and you’ll be spared the suffering of myself and Hadley, this gradual breaking down of everything you love (in the conventional sense) until there’s nothing left⁠—not even someone to remember when there was something⁠—then I suggest you put this story away until the time of that first panic, when your eyes are finally open and your life is suddenly coming apart like a tissue in water.

I’ll be waiting.

Right here on this page where you left me. A dropped seed.

And then I promise we will grow, and you will prosper as fiercely as you wither.

10.

I managed to get through that first weekend alone at the cottage without saying anything out of the ordinary. Hadley later ascribed my altered state to an excess of time spent at my computer, working out the details of a new story, which I suppose is true.

When you are in possession of knowledge that would shatter the person you adore if they knew, you love them more by realizing that every small thing they do⁠—from eating ice cream to laughing at something on television to asking your opinion about a hairstyle⁠—is no longer a small thing but some grand event in the universe. It’s like you’ve already died, but somehow been able to come back and appreciate what’s truly precious.

I warn you, though, there is loneliness in knowing.

9.

My room glows with the majesty of Wednesday.

On a little table where Hadley sets her magazines and Jeremy puts the case for his glasses when he reads, is the small stack of books I have written. I peer at them with slight embarrassment, but also gratitude, because writing them gave more than it took. And part of me is inside each story with a part of you, the reader. It’s like the memory you might have of the house you grew up in, except what you don’t realize is that I grew up there, too, along with many others.