Badges The Elder
It’s an odd thing, this. Bachelor life, I mean. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it. I am sure, though, I don’t like it very much, but one can’t quarrel with Fate, I suppose. Make do and get on, my grandmother used to tell us. Rather funny the things I remember about her, the strangest details. Like her spectacular posture, if you would permit me to use such an excitable adjective to describe the angle of her back to the floor, or the tiny pearl necklace with the jade pendant she liked to wear during dinner.
A veritable tornado woman, always doing things, always in motion, helping others, starting groups—reading groups, cooking and gardening clubs, even knitting circles, though she hated knitting—going on protest marches, organizing parties, first onto the dance floor, last to leave church, she was that woman. Religious, but devilishly funny, wickedly funny, in private and among close friends and family. Make do and get on. It’s advice she practiced, I did not want for a role model growing up, but, and this you know, or at least, you suspect it about me, despite our relatively brief acquaintance, I’m not as strong as she was, and this is all just a long way of saying the past few months have not been very easy for me.
I’m glad you’re still here. Dear, sweet guests. If only I could express myself like Melancholy, I would tell you how much your presence has meant to me. I apologize for darting in and out. I sometimes feel like a butterfly on the lip of a flower. There has been so much going on, too much, and I have forgotten, on several occasions, that we have guests. Prune sometimes has reminded me to check in on you, but, well, it’s all been so hectic, so strange, so odd, these past few months.
May I confess something to you?
Ah, thank you. You are so kind to listen. You do have good manners. My grandmother, I know she would not have approved of this little confession, in public and among strangers her manner was, well, never rude exactly, but glacial would not be an inaccurate description, but she would have approved, I know, of your good manners in indulging my weaknesses. To those with good manners, all is forgiven.
My confession: despite appearance to the contrary, you’ve just met him, so I can’t very well expect you to understand completely what I mean, but I fear Melancholy is very ill. Depressed. Possibly suicidal, although the doctor was satisfied on that score, so I should be too. Melancholy has hardly spoken to me since Kitty left, and he stays in his room all day. Prune brings the meals up to him, and I guess he eats dinner sitting on his bed with the food on his lap, or something awful like that, while I must sit down here and also eat alone.
That’s what I’ll never get used to. Eating alone. You see, we used to have dinner together, the three of us, every night. That was one of those principles Melancholy had and which he strictly enforced: families eat dinner together. Of course, we were hardly a family, the three of us, I mean, no one could mistake us for a family. I’ve known Melancholy since primary school, and we are great friends, we even went to the same university, but we aren’t exactly blood relations, and Kitty he’s known only for the past few years, and she only started living here, about a year ago, and only part of the time, since Melancholy insisted she keep her apartment in the city. But Melancholy called us a family, and families eat dinner together, so we ate dinner together, every night.
I don’t blame her for leaving, you understand. It’s not easy to have someone disappear like that, and she was so afraid something had happened to him. The doctor and I tried to dissuade her, but Kitty insisted we file a police report, and once the great public safety bureaucracy is in motion, a missing person report and such, the whole thing takes on an ominous tone.
