meeting room of generals in some old time and place, like a house decorated to remind some old general of the old places he had been. Perhaps it reminded Levi too, or reminded us of him and of the feeling that the place was all a ghostly figure of a place that had been before, and our living in it a kind of seance.
On the card table I laid out the diaries one by one. Leather-bound, gilt-edged, unread. Along with them I placed the pictures of my grandmother, the ones from her wedding where she looked so beautiful and where I can make so little sense of her, can so little imagine her living in the actuality of this place or of any place. I imagine Levi at my shoulder, rustling the pages.
Let’s go down. The bedrooms are below, Mikey’s to the left, and my grandfather’s in front of you, then Sarah’s, if your turn your head, though she does not sleep there now. To the left now please, because in Mikey’s rooms there are strings of number taped to the wall, etched in pencil on long brown strips he cuts from paper bags. Like most people with his condition he is remarkably cheerful, but the room shows something else—an anxiety, a