arrogant or snobbish or disdainful? Not at all. It was obvious that he
was far too lost in his abstractions to feel such earthly pettiness. Was
he afraid then, embarrassed, shy? Some felt that was closer to the truth
(it was easy to make him turn red and lose his train of thought:
sometimes it would be something someone else said, sometimes it would be
something that he himself had said or thought). In those moments of
confusion he would appear lost, not sure whether to continue with what
he had been saying, or to apologize, or to give up. Certain kinds of
mild, external criticism had the same effect on him, but because most of
his interlocutors were sympathetic, they quickly learned not to say
things to hurt his feelings in that way.
So his aloofness was not lack of feelings, and it was not pride. Was it
just obsession then? Was "aloofness" the right word to describe it at
all? We don't (to pick an overdramatic example) say that a schizophrenic
is "aloof" or "cerebral" when he is listening to his inner voices. Then
why should Evan be so described when he is building or describing his
inner systems?
Yet it remained a fact that very few felt they could get close to him.
His mother, Freda, was very much like him, though less single-mindedly
so. She had managed to raise three children, after all, the older
sisters not at all aloof, on the contrary; and her devotion to Evan's
father, Theodor — often bed-ridden and on a dialysis machine since almost the
day they had met as newly graduated law clerks, both clerking for the
American Civil Liberties Union in Brooklyn -- could hardly be described
by anyone as aloof. But she too had her moments of abstraction and
revery. Perhaps the ACLU was an outgrowth of one of them; and linking
her fate with a brilliant but much older man -- suffering from a still
older-man's kidney ailment -- was another. Theodor had been very uncommunicative
about his family and his past, but inspired on any other topic. Rumor had it
that he had lived abroad and had done something either heroic or disreputable.
So Evan was close to his mother. And to his father too, although the
increasing uremia across the years, as the kidneys failed and
transplants did not succeed in reversing the process, made Theodor's
side of the intense bedside conversations he had been having with his
son ever since Evan had been old enough to speak, or rather listen, more
and more incoherent. Theodor was repeating himself more and more, and
making less and less sense. Evan still sat by his bedside (he still
lived at home), listening more than speaking, just as he always had, but
often the silence would be two-sided now, with Evan lost in a system he
was contemplating, and Theodor lost wherever high BNU levels transport you.
The girls were long married, having hastened out of what they found to
be the less and less hospitable -- because more and more hospital-like
-- atmosphere of the household, as the dialyses increased from monthly,
to weekly, to daily, and the abstractions of their mother and brother