Ignorance

Aden and his father are beginning to feel the effects...

Chapter Six: Ignorance

 

We knew that there was something different with Mother because she stopped reading.

 

We came to her bedside one day, after I came home from school. Do you have any extracurricular activities, Aden Wood? I do. It's very difficult, sometimes... sometimes I want to quit, quit this sport that gives me no joy and yet I continue. Why? Do I have a choice? There is never a choice. Not with my activity. Not with Taking Care of Mother.

 

That day we gave Mother Vehemence as she lay quietly on her bed. She was gloomier lately, more tired, unwilling to move. I wanted to give her the book to cheer her up but Father was afraid too. I was a little afraid to, too.

 

I think we were both afraid that doing anything with Mother would make the personality deficit start, which was stupid because we knew it would start anyways, maybe it already had. I think we just both hoped that maybe, maybe if we didn't do anything with her we wouldn't notice that it was starting or had already started, and she would die and we would never have felt the effects of her disease, and we could remember her as she had always been. Perhaps we should have done so.

---

"Is Ignorance on our side or Hate's side?"

 

"He could be on both."

 

"A traitor! Then--"

 

"I suggest you not banish him. Instead try to win him over. He could win us the war."

 

"And how so?"

 

"Ignorance is the greatest painkiller. With him Hate could cease to exist."

---

"Mother," I said. "We got you something. Vehemence."

 

She looked at Father and I, confused. "What?"

 

"Vehemence? By Aleksandr Vasiliev? Your favorite book?"

 

Mother looked even more puzzled. "I... I don't remember."

 

She didn't remember. My mother didn't remember. I felt tears beginning to well up in my eyes. Was this it? Was it beginning? Vehemence had been everything to Mother. If she didn't remember... she really was leaving. Or already gone.

 

"It... it's a good book," I managed. "You should try it."

 

She gave me a wan smile. "No thanks."

 

Don't cry in front of Mother. Don't let her see your tears. Don't let her know that it was she who drew them out and let them flood my eyes, be strong for your mother and you will never have to be strong again.

 

I pulled Father outside, and suddenly the tears began to spill and trace little rivers down my cheeks. Dribbles down the side of a salty well, worn and beat from the relentless lashing of Mother Nature. Father pulled me into a hug. I could see tears lining his cheeks as well. A thin droopiness to his eyes. "It's not over yet," he told me. "That's just memory deficit. It's not personality deficit, she just forgot a little thing, she's still herself. It's okay, Aden. It's okay."

 

He convinced me, but I don't think he convinced himself.

---

"No."

 

"What do you mean, 'No?'"

 

"I think you know what I mean. This is a bad idea. The promotion of Ignorance is inevitably going to lead to the demotion of Intelligence."

 

"Too bad for Intelligence, but we'll do what's necessary. Ignorance could much more easily win the war."

 

"That doesn't mean Intelligence won't be able to. He is called Intelligence for a reason. You know that Ignorance isn't very popular. Promoting him and demoting Intelligence--who is loved and looked up to by many--is going to cause a lot of unrest. Besides, Ignorance could cause just as much damage as he could help us. Intelligence is reliable. Ignorance is unpredictable."

 

Interpretation thought on that for a moment. "Fine. I see your point. So on with the original plan?"

 

"And the downfall of Hate."

---

"Read this," I hissed, pushing the page up into his face. "Read this page! Read the page, if you can't read I'll read it for you!"

 

"I know!" roared Father in reply. "I've read Vehemence, too, you know! But this is not a f*****g war! I am not trying to promote Ignorance! I am not trying to demote Intelligence! All I want," he wept, "is to remember my beloved wife as my beloved wife, and not the terrible monster that the doctors keep telling us she is going to be. I do want to see my wife again. I do. But I can't because she's already dead and I don't want to see that monster that she's turning into, do you understand? That is why I never want to go back. That's why. Okay?" Tears were streaming down his cheeks, and for the first time I saw how tired he look, how much it seemed he'd aged since my mother's diagnosis.

 

A single tear traced its way down my cheek. "Not seeing her ever again," I whispered, "will be betrayal. Leaving your 'beloved' wife..." I choked on the stream of tears that now flowed easily down my face, "to rot in that damnable hospital bed."

 

I wiped off a tear. "I don't care if you stay home, I will keep going to mother and helping her along because her own husband left her and she will need all the help she can get, and I will be there when she dies, and we know she's going to die so let's just stop f*****g kidding ourselves already, and I will not have to live on with the guilt of betrayal like you will, because I will be with her to the end."

 

"YOU WILL NOT BE WITH YOUR MOTHER!" hollered Father. "DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT HEAR THE DOCTORS? YOUR MOTHER. IS ALREADY. Dead."

 

"F**k this," he cried. "F**k this. The one disease she gets and it's the f*****g A*****e Tumor." He slammed his fists on the coffee table. "F**k." There was a brief silence. I couldn't will myself to speak. Father wasn't himself. Father never cried.

 

Then again, Father never had anything to cry about.

 

The only sound disturbing the air was his hiccuping cry, which shook him and painted the skin around his eyes a bloody shade of red. Then he seemed to come to a resolve, because his shoulders rolled a little back and he looked me in the eye. "Okay," he whispered. "Okay, Aden. I'll come with you."

 

I drew him into a grateful, pitying hug.

 

I was so naive. Sometimes, Past Aden, Ignorance is necessary. When Interpretation said that Ignorance was the greatest painkiller, he was not wrong. It would have been best to never see Mother again.

 

Author's Note

I would honestly rather be alternately ignorant and intelligent, whichever works out better, but the world doesn't work like that. Everyone is fortune's fool.

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A interesting chapter. The discussion was honest and direct. Some problems have no logical or good solution. Just a dead-end. Poor father and daughter hard in a hard place to be. Thank you for the excellent chapter.
Coyote

[Alice Locke]

Thank you. That's a new way of looking at it, the dead-end scenario never really occurred to me in my writing but I do see the truth in it and I quite agree. Before I begin to add new chapters, I think soon it my be necessary to tell you this: the narrarator is a guy. I must have made it unclear somewhere, sorry, I looked up most popular names of 2012 and Aden was a guy name, but, yeah, looking back on it I guess it is kind of unclear. Thank you for your reviews!