Deep Cuts

by Holly Brickley

“Is an earworm ever terrible, though, if it’s truly an earworm?” “Yes.” “But it’s doing what it set out to do,” he said. “It’s effective. It’s catchy.” “Dick Cheney is effective,” I said. “Nazis were catchy.” The grin spread again.

With my Dickies bag full of PowerBars, ripe bananas, and a Vitaminwater bottle that possessed a seemingly endless power to infuse dragonfruit essence into drinking fountain water, there was little reason to leave.

My mom isn’t like your mom. She hates almost everything: restaurants (“How do you know what they’re putting in the food?”), museums (“Art zoos!”), travel (“Bragging rights for sale”), camping (“Trying on homelessness”).

“That’s, like, the ninth dumb thing I’ve heard you say in twelve years of friendship,” she said. “Divided by four years, that means you’ll probably say three dumb things at college. Not enough to be statistically significant.”

I personally like to pretend the phrase “deep cut” has a totally different meaning, one that has nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion. How deep does it cut? How close to the bone? How long do you feel it?

She was always miffed when I didn’t get an A-plus, disappointed not in me but in the professor’s inability to recognize her daughter’s genius.

But maybe Joe saw me clearly, the way some people can look at an abstract painting and instantly discern the figure.

I loved these Craftsman homes of Berkeley, especially the undisturbed, unkempt ones. They were soulful and comfortable and had all the amenities that actually make people happy, like porches and window seats, and none of the things we believed to make us happy, like open-floor plans and living rooms optimized for Super Bowl viewing. They were built for reading and close conversation.

Just forgive yourself, it’s too exhausting not to.

I tried, but I could never remember the things she wanted me to remember. My own past was indecipherable to me, like some invisible forearm had smeared the ink before it finished drying.