The Q

by Beth Brower

“It is one of the great arts of the human soul,” Ezekiel said to himself. Her hand on the door, Quincy shifted and looked back at her uncle’s profile. “What is?” “Staying with someone. Companionship is one of the great arts of the human soul.”

“The Student is an effort to dismiss the reality of love. Crandall wrote about our human obsession to turn into lasting mystery something that is only an illusion of the brain and the body. Love rises, overwhelms our decisions, and then, too late, we find we have been chasing a figment that we ourselves brought into existence, leaving us in sadness, denial, and despair.” “You said Crandall wrote this book of verses while still at the university?” “Yes.” “It takes most people years before they realize that truth,” said Quincy. “Some fools never do.”

“And Fisher says you don’t understand people.” “I don’t,” Quincy snapped, but it wasn’t at Arch, it was at the air before her. “They’re emotional, unpredictable, and erratic; I don’t like dealing with them. But words, once spoken, can be turned into an equation of sorts in my mind—each word receiving a value depending on its placement or emphasis—and then, I add it up and see what comes out.” “Your mind is amazing.” Arch shook his head. “There’s your obvious brilliance, but what you just said reveals more layers.

It’s one thing to understand the art of rhetoric, but to come at it the way you have, from a different discipline, yet work it into your own internal equations, it’s—well, it makes me wonder what else you can put through your lens and see clearly.”

“Only that I believe”—Arch lifted his shoulders, and the look on his face was so unguarded Quincy surprised herself by listening—“that each one of us has times when what we need most is someone who is willing to sit quietly by, waiting for us. Not interfering, just being.”

Quincy’s love for music came from the two things she held inside the tucks of her jacket beside her heart: mathematics and solitude. The benefits she reaped after an hour of playing Mozart or Bach, or whoever, were order and inhuman company. And this night, like on so many others, these were what she felt she needed above all.

That’s part of maintaining connections with people. You give yourself a little to what they give themselves to a lot. And they do the same for you.” “Sounds boring.” “I suppose it is, if you’re not focused on the person you’re doing it for,” Arch answered. Quincy pretended to be reading through an accountant’s report on her desk a while before saying, “I don’t care much for your view of the world.”

“Because the fall is when all good things are made manifest.” Arch waved his hand as if he were the beneficent spirit of the season. “The harvests are come on, rolling into the city, a message of bounty and abundance. The trees are turning, their color revealing their most beautiful intentions, kept to themselves all year long until now.”

“I always feel I might be my best self in the fall; I wish to pen my best essays, listen to the purest music, taste the best fruit I can find.”

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees— Quincy interrupted, “Is all poetry this long?”

Arch waved Quincy off. “You’ve made me lose my place. Let’s see—I—I’ll just begin at the next stanza.” “The next stanza?” Quincy replied with impatience. But Arch continued, undeterred: Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. He paused for a breath of the salt-woven, autumn-settled, soot-lined city air. “Oozings, is it?” said Quincy in the interim.

What happens when a set of imperfect people spend their time talking about becoming better? Chances are one or two of them might actually choose to become better. Unless we buy the hedonistic drivel of the day, what keeps us from it? Are we so scared of failing? We’re human! We fail. We fall.”

“We sin. And yet something calls us towards perfection. Do you know why? Because we’re good for it. We have the capacity to examine our lives and improve, to change. But we can’t do it just on our own. So, preach.

As much as Quincy had learned that Arch was willing to speak up and speak out, his external shows of loud anger were still rare enough that it was like watching a comet burn against the sky, and she couldn’t keep her eyes from his face.

What caught Quincy by surprise, as she decided to take Crow’s counsel to be brave, was that she found her sense of The Q felt stronger, more secure, as if being brave with people gave something to everything else you loved.

I don’t ask you to give your heart to everything the way I do. But I do want you to experience hints of beautiful things, bits of color and conversations, so that you might discover what you can love, even if they are not the things on the list I’ve set before you. The world will go on if you miss a board meeting; the world will not go on if you have not found people to give something for. Did you manage it, Quincy girl?