At the Bureau of Divine Music

Do We Never Tire of This?

43 Do We Never Tire of This? You had redone the dining room again. I came downstairs to find my father’s urn. It wasn’t under the set of Chinese dogs on the knickknack in the corner where it was with the Flemish compote tureen under it on the Amboise table, and I was miffed a little. I have more patience to put up with things than I used to, but only so much this time. I let my father go for just a while. There was no hot water, so I took a shower. It was the morning of the day I would decide to try to fix the friction at the interface, which I had regularly gotten mixed up in. We have a tendency to analyze things too much I used to say, until I realized we never actually analyzed things enough. It was then that I resolved to become the sort of person upon whom nothing was lost for good. I stood there in the dining room looking for Dad. He had made a living as a cattle breeder until the genetic code of the Galloways he brought down to Texas ruined everything. The calves would be born dead and their mothers die with their eyeballs swollen so they burst. He blamed it on those goddamned Scottish bulls. Their pubic hair was on their necks and faces he always said. I mentioned that to someone once at a dinner party on the Île Saint Louis. She folded her serviette like a nun’s, bowed to excuse herself, and stepped outside. ...