In an excerpt from Jenny Offill’s new novel, Weather, a university librarian contends with climate-change doom
Photo: Kristin Kastein In the morning, the one who is mostly enlightened comes in. There are stages and she is in the second to last, she thinks. This stage can be described only by a Japanese word. Bucket of black paint, it means.
I brave a theory about vaccinations and another about late capitalism. “Do you ever wish you were thirty again?” asks the lonely heart engineer. No, never, I say. I tell him that old joke about going backward.On the way home, I pass the lady who sells whirling things. Sometimes when the students are really stoned, they’ll buy them. No takers today, she says. I pick out one for Eli. It’s blue and white, but blurs to blue in the wind. Don’t forget quarters, I remember.
So now we have extra bread. I eat three pieces while my brother tells me a story about his NA meeting. A woman stood up and started ranting about anti-depressants. What upset her most was that people were not disposing of them properly. They tested worms in the city sewers and found they contained high concentrations of Paxil and Prozac.
But sometimes Eli cries if he’s left in that loud scrum of people. He doesn’t like having to walk alone from one side of that huge cafeteria to the other. Once he froze in the middle until some aide grabbed him by the elbow and pushed him toward his corner. They gave us a guide the other day. Tips for Dealing with Problem Patrons. The professors weren’t mentioned. There were the following categories.
It’s fun to watch them play. They put together buildings block by block then fill the rooms with minerals that they have mined with pick-axes they have made. They assemble green fields and raise chickens to eat. “I killed one!” Eli yells. “It’s almost night,” Ben tells him. There is a heroic tower of folded things on the table. I spot my favorite shirt, my least depressing underwear. I go into the bedroom and change into them. Now I am a brand-new person.
These other mothers knew enough not to have only one. There is a cluster of them over by the fence. They are speaking Urdu, I think. One of them smiles at me and I give a little wave. Funny how people will lecture you about anything these days. This one on the library steps is going on and on about my ham sandwich. “Pigs are more trainable than dogs! Cows understand cause and effect!” Who asked you anyway, I think, but I leave and eat it at my desk.
When I come in, the dog is sleeping under the table. Eli is folding a piece of plain white paper. “Don’t look,” he says. “I’m inventing this. No one will ever know what I have done except me.” That night, Eli calls to us hysterically from the kitchen. There’s a mouse skull under the sink, he says. I give Ben a dark look. We are killing them secretly, I thought. Heavily, he rises to go in there. He gets down on his knees to look under the sink. But it is only a knob of ginger and we are saved.