The World is Bigger than an Ell Read online

free, right?”

  “Isn’t that your answer? Partly?” Dad set down his cup. “Language is language, whatever that means. But what I mean is, whatever language a person is using to convey meaning, then the world is already different, right? No longer just stuff.” Practical man. “It may be that the world of language doesn't fully map the real world. So a toddler’s language, maybe anyone's, is incomplete, but it’s still making the world.” He poured more wine, and took a sip.

  “Right!” Juan loved that. “We use language to press the edges of meaninglessness!” He grabbed a roll from the basket, and threw it at me. It bounced off my forehead. “Catch! Ha! What was that?”

  “Assault.” I grinned as I picked it up off the tabletop, and I took a bite. I shook the butt end of it at Juan. “A roll.”

  “Ciabatta? Pab? Stottie? Manchet? I can see you thinking! It’s so cute! You call it a roll. I know it’s a barm cause I made it from a recipe I got on a trip to Lancashire in college days. Mmmmmmm. What a trip!” Juan’s husband grinned into his wine.

  By late October, the words were everywhere. Sometimes things were more word than thing. One night I asked Elena about it.

  “Have you ever noticed that when you look really closely at things you see the word for the thing?” The wind was really blowing outside, making a big howl, and knocking branches to the ground.

  “What?” Elena looked up from her crossword puzzle.

  “Like this tabletop,” I said lightly knocking on the end table between our chairs as we watched T.V.

  “What about it?”

  “If you look really closely at it you can see the word “tabletop” on it in teeny letters all bunched up against each other. I figure it’s some sort of nanotechnology I hadn’t heard of. Haven’t you ever noticed?”

  “Quit fooling around.”

  “No, really. Look.” I put my head down close to the tabletop, nose almost touching the grain of the veneer. “It says “tabletabletable,” and “tabletoptabletop,” and “endtableendtable,” all at once, all sort of wiggling around each other. And if you look really close, you can see that the grain is made up of “blonde,” and “maroon,” and “ocher,” and something called “bole,” which I don’t think I’ve ever heard of before, and all those words and letters are smooshed up against each other, and kind of jostling against each other where they bump, and…”

  The next day I was at an ophthalmologist’s office. I sat very still, looking through one of those big cameras having a picture of the inside of my eyeball taken. My wife sat, lips a short line tight together, holding my hand. The doctor chatted away about how weird it was outside and so warm after it had been so cold and stormy, like below forty or something, just yesterday, and how glad she’d been when she had the landscaper come early, really early, like the end of September, to clean up the yard, but now there was this old maple down in her front yard, and now she wanted me to keep my eye open for the… A poof of air hit me in the eye. She talked a lot, and didn’t need much of a response. I only half listened; I was enjoying seeing all the words embedded in all the stuff in the dimly lit office.

  It was tough to see them because of the low lights, and because of the awkward-looking words for things, words I didn’t know I knew like “tonometer,” and “phoropter.” I liked phoropter; I’d always wondered what that big mask of lenses on gears and rotators was called. Sounds like some kind of dinosaur. Most of the colors were things like “taupe,” “egg-shell,” and “off-white.” And it was tough because though I wanted to see these things, the doctor kept asking me to look straight ahead, or over her ear, and just keep my eye still please, and don’t blink, so the words sort of faded back into the things. All I could really see most of the time was a bumpy mottled pattern sort of shimmering across the surfaces. I saw this shimmer all the time now, and I was getting pretty good at shifting my perception so it was mostly something I could ignore. I called it shifting up or down. Up to the thing I was looking at, or down to the words and letters that made up the thing.

  “Well,” said Dr. Banks, “there’s nothing unusual there that I can see. A slight astigmatism in the left one, but nothing to cause you to see words on objects.” She turned to Elena. “His behavior, aside from the symptom you describe, is nothing I would be concerned about. He’s distractible, but he says that’s so he can get focused on trying to get a good view of the words. This could develop into a real problem, but it might not. He’s cogent, so far as I can tell. If you’re worried, he should see his regular physician who might have something more to recommend. But,” turning back to me on her squeaky three-wheeled stool, “there’s nothing wrong with your peepers.” She smiled at me, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and her eyebrows rose toward her cascading “salt and pepper pony tail.” I thanked her, and my wife and I left the office.

  Things started changing pretty fast after that, and the next six months raced by. At least now it seems they did. It was as if, having discovered that what I was experiencing was a change in my own perception, I started living it all the time. There were tests, of course. There were lots of tests. I went to a psychiatrist for a while, but he said that my delusion was not interfering with my life in any significant way, so I stopped going after about ten sessions. I still saw things in the conventional sense. Stop signs, for instance, were still red octagons, with big black letters that read, “STOP,” with a white band around the edge, and I still stopped for them. I was just able to see the descriptive text as well, and what the text described varied depending on what level of detail I was interested in. I could get pretty far if I had the language for what I was looking at. And I was getting more language all the time. I was reading a lot. I was learning colors, but also technical terms for mechanical components, brand names, and even chemical formulas for things like pigments and lubricants.

  I also saw a neurologist, with her MRIs, CATs, PETs, EEGs, EKGs, blood tests, the full work up, and all that stuff, largely repeating the tests ordered by everyone who got to me before she did. Eventually she called it a lexophenia, said there was no treatment, told us to come back if it became a significant problem, and sent me home. Again, there was no real harm; I was not suffering, indeed, I was enjoying it. I took to reading in all my spare time so I could get even more of the language of what underlied the world when I looked at things. Though there was a secret, something I kept even from El. I could see past the surface of things. I could see foam cushions inside the seat covers of couches. I could see utensils in closed drawers. I could read closed books. I could see something was troubling El, and I didn't want to worry her with any more of my situation.

  I read oncology when there was a question about tumors and pressure on my brain, and some other pretty scary possibilities. All that came back negative, but along the way I was reading, reading, reading, and getting ready for the worst. What I expected to be the worst did not arrive. A different worst did. I could look at people and see under their skins. It had been fun when I first noticed it. I could look at people’s hands and see their bones, and if I looked carefully enough, I could see the blood flowing through their veins and arteries. After some practice, I could see further. Once I saw a heart attack happen at the beach. That was not fun. The man came up out of the Lake Michigan surf, and was walking back to his towel, jiggling his little finger in his right ear. Then he gasped, eyes bugged out, and he fell forward. Dead. Before that, though, I saw his heart race, the spasming muscle gripped round by a dark web of “blockage” rapidly replaced by “ischemia,” another word I was surprised I knew.

  The worst was the day Elena came out of the shower with a scowl I did not recognize, but could read at a glance. Though invisible, the cancer was devastatingly obvious to me once I knew where to look. Months passed. Treatments failed. Hospice came. I was with her at the end. I saw her wasting away, listened as she was barely able to speak, and saw her struggling to stay near as pain medications pulled her away from lucidity more often, and for longer times. I held her hands. I snif
fled when she slept. Finally, the last night with little sleep, I read her face, gaunt and beautiful, deeply lined when she smiled at me, yet so covered and so full of words piled on words I could barely see her in our bed. Words of her body, our life together, her life secret, and life widely known.

  All of it was visible to me, and all I wanted was time for more to be written, more from wherever words come from. I was tired; she was worn. The more tired I got the more clearly the words ran over her like news crawls of everything she knew, was, ever hoped. At the last, though, the words faded from all but her eyes, and through them and deep into her mind I saw love, and sorrow, and fear, and anger, and love, and pity, and pain, and sorrow, and love, and confusion, and then, fleetingly, peace, and, finally, the briefest flash of an unknown and irretrievable word.

  I walk often now, never far from our house, all but empty this long lonesome year. The only place I don’t see words in this world is in the mirror. No words crawl on my reflection. One thousand, eight hundred ninety-two paces to "Bowen Bridge." I scarcely ever see the bridge itself now. I walk to the center of the span, stop, and lean my forearms on the