Lessons

by Ian McEwan

He could see the bad place on the page before he reached it, it was happening before it happened, the mistake was coming towards him, arms outstretched like a mother, ready to scoop him up, always the same mistake coming to collect him without the promise of a kiss.

Her fingers found his inside leg, just at the hem of his grey shorts, and pinched him hard.

Disaster was certain and knowing that confirmed it as his idiot thumb went down when it should have stayed still.

He was the baby’s bed and his god. The long letting go could be the essence of parenthood and from here was impossible to conceive.

She loved him, so the blame must be his and it was sweet of her to tell him in her note that it was not. He didn’t know which defective part of himself to indict, so it must be all of him.

But everything else you tried, you wanted to be the best in the world. Piano, tennis, journalism, now poetry. And these are only the ones I happen to know about. As soon as you discover you’re not the best, you throw it in and hate yourself. Same with relationships.

One of the discoveries of middle life—how soon you came to tolerate the shit of the one you loved. A general rule.

This was how most messes were cleared up, smoothed thin to invisibility. Tiredness turned everything to metaphor.