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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