Sympathy

The truth was, she couldn’t really imagine what it would feel like to be them. The truth truth was, she didn’t really want to. In a fit of fleeting empathy, she’d tried, she’d tried to close her eyes, put stoppers in her ears, refrain from what her fourth grade teacher once called “verbalization.” It was futile (though she was glad she’d tried).

And why feel sorry for them? From the bottom of her heart she did feel sorry. It hurt her to consider the implications, a life spent that way, childhood, the day-to-day. Life’s tiring enough without that. But maybe she shouldn’t feel sorry. Maybe they were happy. Maybe they were better off than she was. They had each other, and movies are made about that search.

So here they were, chatting away as they sat next to her on the two seats that make up 2/3 of a three-seater aisle on a flight from L.A. to N.Y.

Closest to the aisle, she should have been the one to feel more connected to humanity. But here they were, carrying on as if they were the only two people left in the world. The absorption of love. Or shared situation. There was no way to tell.

They held their conversation in complete silence, their only movements those of their fingers, nimbly drawing butterfly wings or the silhouettes of sonatas on the other’s palm.

And here they were, the couple, each deaf, blind and mute, and they were traveling together, no companion in ’sight’ but those mentioned. They could have been discussing anything: philosophy, pornography, the bible or juice. To her, even lofty ideals were simply fingers on palms. In wonder, she turned, realized she was the third wheel. Their chatter continued in an animated manner. They had no way to communicate with their aisle mate. She, no way to communicate with them.

Who knew a tickle could mean a word? A gesture, when nuzzled on a hand, gently traced as if in flirtation, could indicate something as trivial as “where’s the sky mall?” (no matter, it’s not written in braille), something as grave as “while we fly through the clouds, it occurs to me, yet again, that I do not know whether there’s a God.”

She would have thought them isolated. And here she was, left out. So why feel sorry? No, no, it’s just she could not imagine what that would be like.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 1:11 am and is filed under Blog, Essays/Op. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.