Free Dead Languages by David Shields Page A

flowing from the lungs to the tongue; if Father was having trouble with
S
and
F,
his stomach must have been in knots, his chest must have been constricted, his throat must have been thick with pressure: he must have been very nervous. And I’m the one who created such an awkward situation. I’m the one who moved the microphone down his mouth and urged in a stage whisper every five minutes: “Relax, Dad, just relax. Tell it like you usually do. Just pretend I’m not here.” I’m on the tape, actually saying that, barely audible in the background: “R-r-relax, Dad, just relax.”
    Sandra has heard the third-rail tape and says Father is definitely not a stutterer. “No more than six percent disfluencies,” as she would put it. I would put it that the third rail didn’t produce in Father a speech impediment, but that it’s probably the origin of his preoccupation with the Rosenbergs. He nearly wrestled once with Uncle Gilbert over Gil’s lackadaisical pace proving the Rosenbergs’ innocence through special-access AEC documents. It’s himself Father sees at Sing Sing: electrified at last, purged of all pain. Sometimes I think I’ve inherited all of that from him: the relentless misdirection, the oblivious wandering, the fatal footfall, the helpless passivity, the catch in the voice. He used to tell me about the time when, waiting for a subway back from Coney Island, he watched the impatient crowd push a pretty girl onto the tracks just as the Brooklyn train was arriving; on certain late summer afternoons he can still smell the pretty girl’s body burning. That’s sort of the way I think about the third rail. In certain situations I can still feel Father’s body vibrating from the voltage because that’s what has been passed down to me: nervous energy running nowhere. Sometimes I could swear those electrical currents are coursing through my veins; sometimes when my jaw jitters I could swear all the circuits have been disconnected.
    I don’t mean to suggest that, ordinarily, Father was anything other than fluent. It was only when he was shy or unsure that he faltered. I hear him hesitate as he introduces himself over the phone to Mr. Oligher before he asks Mr. Oligher if he would like a free estimate of the market value of his house from the real estate company Father has so recently and temporarily joined. Then I hear him hesitate when he calls me cross-California: “J-J-Jeremy?” he’ll ask and I’ll say, “Yes, Father,” because with Father I’m always articulate, because of Father I’m not afraid. Beth says when she visits him occasionally he’ll babble a bit, but that’s more the result of old age than the manifestation of any neurosis. And yet I hear him at dinner one night a decade ago.
    Mother worked part-time as editor of
Eureka,
the monthly magazine of the San Francisco Historical Society. She came home around five some Friday with the news that we should eat and run, since in just a few hours the society was unveiling the exhibition the public had been panting for: Charcoal Drawings of the Damage Done by the 1906 Earthquake. None of us had the heart to tell her we were less interested in perusing fuzzy re-creations of the wreckage than staying right where we were—drinking lemonade, scouting hummingbirds, barbecuing steaks. Mother appeared at the steps of the patio and said, “Okay, you guys, time to get ready. Gulp it down and get changed and let’s go. We don’t want to be tardy.”
    We didn’t want to be tardy. We didn’t even want to be present. We wanted to lie back in our lounge chairs and let the night fall. Mother returned ten minutes later, looking very sharp in an Indian-style hoop skirt. Still quite cheerful, she said, “What’s the matter with you lazy bums? I’m offering you an education in art and a night on the town, and you’re guzzling lemonade. Come on. They’ll be waiting for us.”
    Father took the easy way out. He stirred the coals in the barbecue and said, “I