母親毫不猶豫地從書和報(bào)刊中剪下自己鐘愛的文字，大大方方地貼滿整個(gè)廚房的墻壁；可是面對(duì)自己的女兒，她卻從未說(shuō)將“我愛你”三個(gè)字說(shuō)出口……

By Polly Furth

吳凡 選注

When I read a book from my mother’s shelves, it’s not unusual to come across a gap[2] in the text. A paragraph, or maybe just a sentence, has been sliced out, leaving a window in its place, with words from the next page peeping through.[3] The chopped up page looks like a nearly complete jigsaw puzzle waiting for its missing piece.[4] But the piece isn’t lost, and I always know where to find it. Dozens of quotations, clipped from newspapers, magazines—and books—plaster one wall of my mother’s kitchen.[5] What means the most to my mother in her books she excises[6] and displays.

I’ve never told her, but those literary amputations appall me.[7] She picks extracts that startle me, too: “Put your worst foot forward, because then if people can still stand you, you can be yourself.” Sometimes I stand reading the wall of quotations, holding a scissors-victim novel[8] in my hand, puzzling over what draws my mother to these particular words.

My own quotation collection is more hidden and delicate. I copy favorite lines into a spiral-bound journal[9] —a Christmas present from my mother, actually—in soft, gray No. 2 pencil. This means my books remain whole. The labor required makes selection a cutthroat process: Do I really love these two pages of On Chesil Beach enough to transcribe them, word by finger-cramping word? (The answer was yes, the pages were that exquisite.)[10]

My mother doesn’t know any of this. She doesn’t know I prefer copying out to cutting out. I’ve never told her that I compile[11] quotations at all.

There’s nothing very shocking about that; for all our chatting, we don’t have the words to begin certain conversations. My mother and I talk on the phone at least once a week, and in some ways, we are each other’s most dedicated listener. She tells me about teaching English to those old Russian ladies at the library where she volunteers; I tell her about job applications, cover letters, a grant I’d like to win. We talk about my siblings[12], her siblings, the president, and movies. We make each other laugh so hard that I choke[13] and she cries. But what we don’t say could fill up rooms. Fights with my father. Small failures in school. Anything, really, that pierces[14] us.

I like to say that my mother has never told me “I love you.” There’s something reassuring in its self-pitying simplicity[15] —as if the three-word absence explains who I am and wins me sympathy—so I carry it with me, like a label on my back. I synthesize our cumbersome relationship with an easy shorthand[16]: my mother never said “I love you.” The last time my mother almost spoke the words was two years ago, when she called to tell me that a friend had been hospitalized[17].

I said, “I love you, Mom.”

She said, “Thank you.”

I haven’t said it since, but I’ve thought about it, and I’ve wondered why my mother doesn’t. A couple of years ago, I found a poem by Robert Hershon called “Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?” that supplied words for the blank spaces I try to understand in our conversations:[18]

Don’t fill up on bread[19]
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge[20]

My son, whose hair may be
receding[21] a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn’t know
is that when we’re walking
together, when we get
to the curb[22]
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

It’s a humble poem, small in scope, not the stuff of epic heartbreak, yet poignant.[23] After copying it down in my quotation journal, my wrist smudging the pencil into a gray haze as I wrote, I opened an e-mail I had begun to my mother, and added a postscript: “This poem made me think of you,” with the 13 lines cut and pasted below.[24] My mother doesn’t read poetry—or at least, she doesn’t tell me that she reads poetry—and I felt nervous clicking, “Send.”

She never mentioned the poem. But the next time I went home for vacation, I noticed something new in the kitchen. Not on her quotation wall, but across the room, fixed to an antique magnetic board: Robert Hershon’s poem, printed on a scrap of white paper in the old-fashioned font of a typewriter.[25] The board hung above the radiator, where we drape wet rags and mittens dripping with snow, in the warmest spot in the kitchen.[26] The poem still hangs there. Neither my mother nor I have ever spoken about it.

Vocabulary

1. oblique: 轉(zhuǎn)彎抹角的，不直截了當(dāng)?shù)摹?/p>

2. gap: 裂口，缺口。

3. slice out: 此處指“挖剪”；peep through: 從……中隱現(xiàn)。

4. chop up: 剁碎，此處指被挖剪的紙頁(yè)支零破碎；jigsaw puzzle: 拼圖玩具。

5. clip: 從報(bào)紙（或雜志等）上剪下；plaster: 粘貼。

6. excise: 切除。

7. amputation: 切斷，此處喻指文字片段；appall: 使驚駭。

8. scissors-victim: 剪刀的犧牲者，指被剪過的書。

9. spiral-bound journal: 螺旋圈記事本。

10. cutthroat: 嚴(yán)酷無(wú)情的；On Chesil Beach: 《在切瑟爾海灘上》，是英國(guó)作家Ian Mcewan的作品，其代表作還有《贖罪》（Atonement）；transcribe: 抄寫，謄寫；finger-cramping: 讓手指疼痛的，此處形容謄抄作品很不容易；exquisite: 優(yōu)美的，精致的。

11. compile: 匯編，收集。

12. sibling: 兄弟或姊妹。

13. choke: （因感情激動(dòng)而）哏得說(shuō)不出話來(lái)。

14. pierce: （寒冷、憂傷等）強(qiáng)烈地影響，深深地打動(dòng)。

15. reassuring: 安慰的，鼓勵(lì)的；self-pitying: 自憐的，自哀的。

16. 我用一句簡(jiǎn)短且含蓄的話來(lái)概括我們之間不那么輕松的關(guān)系。

17. hospitalize: 送……進(jìn)醫(yī)院治療。

18. Robert Hershon: 美國(guó)當(dāng)代詩(shī)人，曾出版過11部詩(shī)集，他的這首詩(shī)《傷感的一刻或者為什么法國(guó)面包曾過馬路？》描述了一位疼愛孩子的父親有那么一刻會(huì)忘了自己的兒子早已長(zhǎng)大成人。

19. fill up on bread: 吃餐前面包把自己填飽。大部分西餐餐館都會(huì)提供餐前的免費(fèi)面包，供顧客在等候上菜或點(diǎn)餐時(shí)享用。

20. 這里的菜份量很大。serving: （食物或飲料的）一份（或一客）。

21. recede: （男子頭發(fā)）開始從前額向后脫落，此處形容兒子年紀(jì)已不小。

22. curb: 〈美〉（由路緣石砌成的街道或人行道的）路緣。

23. epic: 宏大的，極大規(guī)模的；poignant: 強(qiáng)烈的，深深打動(dòng)人的。

24. wrist: 腕，腕關(guān)節(jié)；smudge: 把……擦模糊；haze: 煙霧，此處形容筆跡被擦成模糊的灰色陰影；postscript: （信末簽名后的）附言，又及（縮寫P.S.）。

25. antique magnetic board: 古舊的磁鐵板；a scrap of: 一小片（紙）；font: 字體。

26. 磁鐵板掛在暖氣片上方，這是（冬天）我們擱放滴著雪水的濕抹布和手套的地方，也是廚房里最溫暖的地方。

（來(lái)源：英語(yǔ)學(xué)習(xí)雜志）