Picture Me Gone Read Online Free Page B

language he thinks in, he says: Depends what I’m thinking about.
    The idea of having no native language worries me. Would you feel like a nomad inside your own head? I can’t imagine having no words that are home. A language orphan.
    Perhaps this worries me because it is not a million miles away from my reality. Marieka grew up speaking Swedish first, then English; Gil learned Portuguese, French and English as a child. I can understand conversations in most of these languages, but the only one I speak properly is my own.
    Marieka rolls her eyes when Gil tries to explain syntactic semiotics or tells us his theory of typologies over breakfast. His grandad was a miner, his father became a teacher, but Gil trumped them all with a PhD in applied linguistics.
    Remember your roots, Mum says, and hmphs. Semiotics!
    I love to hear Gil talk but don’t always pay attention to the words. When I do listen, I rarely know what he’s talking about, but neither of us really minds. Sometimes it puzzles me that he’s my father, given how differently our minds work. Perhaps I was switched at birth and my real father is Hercule Poirot.
    Marieka’s mother was Swedish-Sudanese and though she’s fair-skinned like her father, she has beautiful red-and-gold hair, like a shrub on fire. Gil says he was first attracted to Mum’s hair and only afterward listened to her playing. It was a concert his friend dragged him to and he spent the first half thinking about a paper he was writing and only looked up after the interval to see this woman with wild curls playing the violin.
    Marieka couldn’t believe anyone would come backstage and appear not even to have noticed the music. She’s used to it now, but at the time thought he was eccentric, possibly mad.
    I once asked my parents why they didn’t ever live together before I was born and Gil just said, We were happy as we were.
    He says he never thought of another woman, not even once, after he met Marieka, and then in the same sentence says, Do you think I’ll need my gray suit in Geneva? and Marieka smiles and says, Yes, my darling, you’ll probably need it.
    Marieka notices the world in what she calls a Scandinavian way, which means without a lot of drama. I register every emotion, every relationship, every subtext. If someone is angry or sad or disappointed, I see it like a neon sign. There’s no way to explain how, I just do. For a long time I thought everyone did.
    That poor man, I’d say, and Marieka would look puzzled.
    Look! I’d say. Look how he stands, the way his mouth twists, how his eyes move around the room. Look at his shoulders, the way his jacket fits, how he clutches his book. Look at his shoes. The way he licks his lips.
    The impression was so clear—a great drift of hovering facts—it amazed me that she couldn’t see it. But Gil says human capacities are vast and varied. He doesn’t understand how people can speak just one language. Certain combinations of chords make Marieka wince. I peer into souls.
    Of course, most people don’t pay attention. They barge into a situation and start asking questions when the answers are already there.
    Where’s Marieka? for instance. Gil’s favorite.
    I look at him. What day is it? Which fiddle has she taken? Which shoes?
    Three simple observations tell me instantly where she is and how long she’ll be gone. But Gil always asks. Flat shoes, I tell him. Because of the stairs. There are five flights of stairs up to the place where she practices quartets. Otherwise she nearly always wears heels because she likes to be tall. And if you manage to miss the shoes, the baroque violin is gone.
    Sometimes I go along with Marieka because they rehearse in the viola player’s tiny flat at the top of an old building with long windows looking out across Covent Garden. If I lie on the floor and rest my chin on my hands, my eyes reach just over the narrow skirting board and I can pretend I’m in a balloon, floating high above London. I took