真正的爱，是未必说得出口的爱

母亲毫不犹豫地从书和报刊中剪下自己钟爱的文字，大大方方地贴满整个厨房的墙壁;可是面对自己的女儿，她却从未说将“我爱你”三个字说出口……

When I read a book from my mother’s shelves, it’s not unusual to come across a gap[2] in the text. A paragraph, or maybe just a sentence, has been sliced out, leaving a window in its place, with words from the next page peeping through.[3] The chopped up page looks like a nearly complete jigsaw puzzle waiting for its missing piece.[4] But the piece isn’t lost, and I always know where to find it. Dozens of quotations, clipped from newspapers, magazines—and books—plaster one wall of my mother’s kitchen.[5] What means the most to my mother in her books she excises[6] and displays.

I’ve never told her, but those literary amputations appall me.[7] She picks extracts that startle me, too: “Put your worst foot forward, because then if people can still stand you, you can be yourself.” Sometimes I stand reading the wall of quotations, holding a scissors-victim novel[8] in my hand, puzzling over what draws my mother to these particular words.

My own quotation collection is more hidden and delicate. I copy favorite lines into a spiral-bound journal[9] —a Christmas present from my mother, actually—in soft, gray No. 2 pencil. This means my books remain whole. The labor required makes selection a cutthroat process: Do I really love these two pages of On Chesil Beachenough to transcribe them, word by finger-cramping word? (The answer was yes, the pages were that exquisite.)[10]

My mother doesn’t know any of this. She doesn’t know I prefer copying out to cutting out. I’ve never told her that I compile[11] quotations at all.

There’s nothing very shocking about that; for all our chatting, we don’t have the words to begin certain conversations. My mother and I talk on the phone at least once a week, and in some ways, we are each other’s most dedicated listener. She tells me about teaching English to those old Russian ladies at the library where she volunteers; I tell her about job applications, cover letters, a grant I’d like to win. We talk about my siblings[12], her siblings, the president, and movies. We make each other laugh so hard that I choke[13] and she cries. But what we don’t say could fill up rooms. Fights with my father. Small failures in school. Anything, really, that pierces[14] us.

I like to say that my mother has never told me “I love you.” There’s something reassuring in its self-pitying simplicity[15] —as if the three-word absence explains who I am and wins me sympathy—so I carry it with me, like a label on my back. I synthesize our cumbersome relationship with an easy shorthand[16]: my mother never said “I love you.” The last time my mother almost spoke the words was two years ago, when she called to tell me that a friend had been hospitalized[17].

I said, “I love you, Mom.”

She said, “Thank you.”

I haven’t said it since, but I’ve thought about it, and I’ve wondered why my mother doesn’t. A couple of years ago, I found a poem by Robert Hershon called “Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?” that supplied words for the blank spaces I try to understand in our conversations:[18]

Don’t fill up on bread[19]

I say absent-mindedly

The servings here are huge[20]

My son, whose hair may be

receding[21] a bit, says

Did you really just

say that to me?

What he doesn’t know

is that when we’re walking

together, when we get

to the curb[22]

I sometimes start to reach

for his hand

It’s a humble poem, small in scope, not the stuff of epic heartbreak, yet poignant.[23] After copying it down in my quotation journal, my wrist smudging the pencil into a gray haze as I wrote, I opened an e-mail I had begun to my mother, and added a postscript: “This poem made me think of you,” with the 13 lines cut and pasted below.[24] My mother doesn’t read poetry—or at least, she doesn’t tell me that she reads poetry—and I felt nervous clicking, “Send.”

She never mentioned the poem. But the next time I went home for vacation, I noticed something new in the kitchen. Not on her quotation wall, but across the room, fixed to an antique magnetic board: Robert Hershon’s poem, printed on a scrap of white paper in the old-fashioned font of a typewriter.[25] The board hung above the radiator, where we drape wet rags and mittens dripping with snow, in the warmest spot in the kitchen.[26] The poem still hangs there. Neither my mother nor I have ever spoken about it.

Vocabulary

1. oblique: 转弯抹角的，不直截了当的。

2. gap: 裂口，缺口。

3. slice out: 此处指“挖剪”;peep through: 从……中隐现。

4. chop up: 剁碎，此处指被挖剪的纸页支零破碎;jigsaw puzzle: 拼图玩具。

5. clip: 从报纸(或杂志等)上剪下;plaster: 粘贴。

6. excise: 切除。

7. amputation: 切断，此处喻指文字片段;appall: 使惊骇。

8. scissors-victim: 剪刀的牺牲者，指被剪过的书。

9. spiral-bound journal: 螺旋圈记事本。

10. cutthroat: 严酷无情的;On Chesil Beach: 《在切瑟尔海滩上》，是英国作家Ian Mcewan的作品，其代表作还有《赎罪》(Atonement);transcribe: 抄写，誊写;finger-cramping: 让手指疼痛的，此处形容誊抄作品很不容易;exquisite: 优美的，精致的。

11. compile: 汇编，收集。

12. sibling: 兄弟或姊妹。

13. choke: (因感情激动而)哏得说不出话来。

14. pierce: (寒冷、忧伤等)强烈地影响，深深地打动。

15. reassuring: 安慰的，鼓励的;self-pitying: 自怜的，自哀的。

16. 我用一句简短且含蓄的话来概括我们之间不那么轻松的关系。

17. hospitalize: 送……进医院治疗。

18. Robert Hershon: 美国当代诗人，曾出版过11部诗集，他的这首诗《伤感的一刻或者为什么法国面包曾过马路?》描述了一位疼爱孩子的父亲有那么一刻会忘了自己的儿子早已长大成人。

19. fill up on bread: 吃餐前面包把自己填饱。大部分西餐餐馆都会提供餐前的免费面包，供顾客在等候上菜或点餐时享用。

20. 这里的菜份量很大。serving: (食物或饮料的)一份(或一客)。

21. recede: (男子头发)开始从前额向后脱落，此处形容儿子年纪已不小。

22. curb: 〈美〉(由路缘石砌成的街道或人行道的)路缘。

23. epic: 宏大的，极大规模的;poignant: 强烈的，深深打动人的。

24. wrist: 腕，腕关节;smudge: 把……擦模糊;haze: 烟雾，此处形容笔迹被擦成模糊的灰色阴影;postscript: (信末签名后的)附言，又及(缩写P.S.)。

25. antique magnetic board: 古旧的磁铁板;a scrap of: 一小片(纸);font: 字体。

26. 磁铁板挂在暖气片上方，这是(冬天)我们搁放滴着雪水的湿抹布和手套的地方，也是厨房里最温暖的地方。