THE MAGNIFYING GLASS
567
"If
you've seen everything, let's go," I said. "You can read
that at home."
"What," uttered John absently. That word was always a sign
of immunity-a protection against obedience.
I gathered my forces. "Let's go," I repeated loudly.
This time he looked up, but he obviously hadn't heard me, his
face had a rapt, dedicated look. "It says here, that in the year two
thousand, there will be space ships to the other planets. I'm going to
fly my own space ship to the moon. Will you
try
to stop me-will
you, Mother?"
I had an ugly vision of John helmeted and goggled, like some
astral insect, catapulted off into space. I started to say something,
then stopped-the year two thousand-why, I wouldn't be here to
protest then, I would be dead. I was suddenly shaken by a feeling
of impotent rage. I subdued the instinct to shake John, to throw
something: it was no fault of his, but it was maddening to think that
I would not be here to witness the full circle of his life-because I
loved him, I wanted to reach out into his future....
Then, quite easily, it came to me- I was able to read the
hieroglyphics after all-that was why my grandfather had shouted
and thrown his cane, the night of the "theatricals"! He had seen me,
dressed as a bride, masquerading as the woman he would never
know, in tawdry imitation of my future, that he would never see.
Abruptly, he had been brought face to face with the immutable fact
of
his
death (just as now, I, too, had a transitory awareness of the
limits of my own mortality.) He would be gone, at the time of my
actual marriage, perhaps forgotten. He could never participate in
my adult life.
I looked at the magnifying glass--no, not forgotten, in a way,
still participating: memory cheats death. At the most unexpected
times, it returns-not only the recall of experiences within one's own
life span; but, deep-rooted, atavistic memories, reaching far back into
the past. In spite of change, the masked symptom of death, some
things are never lost. I glanced at John-some day, he will remember,
too, I thought.
Then I walked to the desk and picked up the magnifying glass.
"This isn't needed here," I said, addressing no one in particular. "I
don't
think
anyone
will
object if I take it away with me."
