Wednesday, April 12, 2023 // The Statement — 3
Author’s note: This piece is adapted
from and inspired by Lydia Da-
vis’ seminal short story, “Break It
Down.” The story appears in, “The
Collected Stories of Lydia Davis.”
A senior in college is reclining
on his front porch in the gray spring
light of Ann Arbor. He’s trying to
make sense of it all. He says:
The tuition was $50,000 a
year, frontloading on classes to wrap
it up in three years, that’s $150,000.
Plus food and housing, which to-
taled about $900 a month, that’s
$180,000, but I’d have needed to eat
regardless, so maybe only $170,000.
Eighteen hours a week of
classes, assuming I’d attended them
all, for 90 weeks, costs $105 an
hour, which is expensive, but not
too expensive, because my whole
college life hadn’t been squeezed
into just those 18 hours a week.
Bursley Residence Hall had
those long, tunnel-like hallways —
hallways with no windows that made
me lose track of time — and the little
convenience store with sushi that
was always picked clean, minus the
Philadelphia rolls. I remember I
had this tree, growing outside my
window, in the dorm, that changed
color day by day that first fall. I’d
never watched anything the way I
watched that tree turn colors, which
maybe speaks to my dependency
on the room, but people visited me
there, visited and laughed and slept
on the floor and threw up on the
carpet and listened patiently while
I played them songs that, frankly,
didn’t possess the sort of liveli-
ness found in music that ought to
be played around new friends, but
they listened anyway, nodded and
faked smiles and decided, after only
a month or so, that they’d like to live
with me once our class was kicked
out of the dorms.
You sign a contract to become
this little odd family, promise to
nag each other about the dishes in
the sink, the stains on the tile and
oh, my god, why are there squirrels
in the walls and mice in the base-
ment, but it’s all okay because your
housemate has a fighting spirit, just
running in circles with a broom and
a plastic tub, going to teach those
squirrels a lesson. Your schedule
picks up. Everything moves faster.
Walk to class; no, run to catch the
bus; no, skip class and write your
thesis and hole up in your room
while the dishes pile higher and
higher. See the housemates less,
yes, but when you do, it’s a real out-
pouring, because just today, I heard
Truth House is throwing, and just
today, I have a coupon at Domino’s,
and for just one more song, we can
dance, please, let’s just keep danc-
ing. And everything kind of cre-
scendos, faster than you know it,
and all of a sudden, there’s less can
you believe our house has a front
porch? and more by the time the
next season of this show comes out,
we’ll be living in different cities.
So 18 hours a week would re-
ally be selling it short. More like 120
hours a week, spent just absorbing
the strangeness of it all. Say it’s only
$16 per hour then, which isn’t too
unreasonable.
Though it’s not just 120 hours
because it doesn’t stop when you’re
sleeping. I keep having this dream
about a bowl of cereal, and I don’t
know, maybe everyone has this
dream, or some version of it, but
the bowl feels warm to the touch,
as if I’d just taken it from the dish-
washer and the milk inside is cool.
I’m eating heaping spoonfuls of
Lucky Charms, all those alluring
bright colors, eating, wondering
what’s at the bottom, like I can’t
wait to find out, but I’m terrified to
find out, and at the bottom, it’s just
an emptiness, lonely, like I’d never
had any cereal at all. It’s easy to de-
cide, then, to stay in the dream — to
keep splashing around in the cool
milk, stained with all the bright col-
ors — but you move on because you
have no choice, and I’m starting to
realize, just now, as I’m coming to
the end of it, that there is no end, no
hard, fast line drawn in the sand to
say, okay, it’s over, you’re an adult
already, just pack it up and move on.
No, instead it all bleeds over,
smearing like a child’s watercolor
after you told them to let it dry,
and the memories well up, just as
everything else starts to go, and
they leave you exhausted, gasp-
ing for air, washed up on a rocky
shore, confronted by the images
that keep appearing in your mind:
You’re soaked to the bone in the
pouring rain, grinning from ear to
ear, walking quickly down South
University Avenue, back when it
was under construction; or you’re
kneeling on Palmer Field, kneeling
in the grass with a blank stare, like
an idiot, because oh god, her ankle
isn’t supposed to bend that way,
but maybe it’s alright because your
pre-med friend looks confident; or
you’re trudging through the snow,
then drumming your fingers on
7-Eleven’s plastic countertop, mak-
ing a joke to the man ringing you
up, but he doesn’t laugh. The im-
ages flash past, too quick, really, to
catch them all, so you’re stuck with
just the brightest ones, chastising
yourself for forgetting the details
and replacing them with questions,
unanswerable questions like, why
did my English professor wear a
mask some days and not others? or
why had a photo editor worn bike
shoes to a meeting?
The little images start to haunt
you: not constantly, but in uneven
increments, so one day you’ll be
working away, laser-focused on
some peculiar comma placement,
and the next day you hear someone
accidentally use a specific word, like
barn or implication, that takes you
back to a place where the images
well up, and for hours afterward
the memories feel fresh again. So it
only cost maybe $8 an hour, taking
all that time into account.
I have to factor in the bad
memories, though, and it’s hard
to conjure them up now, in the
warmth of spring, but I know times
weren’t perfect. The everyday sort
of bad occurrences have largely
faded to the background, but one
memory stuck around: when I
had to say goodbye. The pressure
started during a weekly meeting
with some columnists — our last
meeting — when a thought popped
into my head, and I suddenly won-
dered which of them I’d ever see
again. The question didn’t spark
a panic so much as an odd fascina-
tion — an urge to hold onto all of
life’s little guest stars, people I
loved, but not enough to keep
in touch with — and so I learned
to say a permanent goodbye, not
out loud, but quietly in my head
whenever someone left a room.
JOHN JACKSON
Statement Associate Editor
Design by Leah Hoogterp
The art of farewell
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