Go ahead, ask me what’s on my bedside table. The usual… assorted reading material, maybe not current but not quite ready for tossing … There’d be weeks of crossword puzzles from the N.Y. Times and the Dispatch in sad stages of completion, and I could never go to bed without their being there. I mean, C’mon! If you wake up at 2:30 to curse and slap a mosquito, you can’t simply lie back down, off the light, and be back in that blessed state of rest, comfort, and tranquility so rudely interrupted by that tiny, weightless, near invisible insect. (Or would be invisible but for that drop of my blood he/she hopes to abscond with … (Rather, ‘with which’ he/she hopes to abscond.) Don’t forget gender and grammatical correctness. End a sentence with a preposition and you stay after school to practice …. in which, for which, at which, about which — instead of which, you’d already be at that back booth at Roy’s Drug store, making a coke last till 4:15 when nobody has another nickel for the juke box.
So, when he/she has been spotted and swatted with a fold of obituaries from the paper of your choice, turn the page and snuggle down to pick up coverage of trade wars with Mexico, or rave notices for “To Kill a Mocking Bird” on Broadway. They say it’s not to be missed. I’ve read the book fifty times, but the new presentation is up to date, live on stage, even tear-jerking … a new take on our times and nominated for more Tony awards than there are Tonys to award!
But back to what’s on my bedside table. (Truth is, it’s not a table .. .It’s a bookcase that does double duty as the ‘headboard’ of my bed, on which sit a lamp, those papers and the clock. (See how that “on which” pops right in?) But hang on … There’s something new! “THE MUELLER REPORT” has come to claim a space beside The New York Times and The Commercial Dispatch. What a Triumvirate!
It’s a remarkable work but oh so HEAVY! Not conducive to bedtime reading unless sleeping in a chair. It slips, slides, falls as I struggle with the format … the Table of Contents versus Volume Numbers, versus Appendices as expected in any anticipated tome reflecting the historic times in which we’re living. And the weight! But random flipping shows familiar names, meetings, and those long black lines, reminders of still hidden sensitive material. Ummm. I stayed with it (under it) till yawns came and I could relax thinking, “Oh right, I knew about that Tower meeting, even the one in the Seychelles, I knew that from TV. I can cope with this …. tomorrow.” But…
That crucial, confounding, conclusion … I’ll sleep better if I look up that devilish word, ‘exonerate’. It’s here, according to AMERICAN HERITAGE: ‘exonerate … Verb … “to free from blame, to clear of wrong doing.” And that doubly confusing “double negative”. Ex: “no proof of crime, but no clear proof of innocence”? Sorry you asked what I’m reading? I may not finish the 440 pages plus footnotes, but I won’t lie. If called to testify, I can always resort to pleading the Fifth. But I pay my respects for the days of diligence that brought the report into being ….. The body of evidence! The organizing, editing, the proof-reading all these 1092 footnotes! And not one picture!
We’re no longer a nation of readers, I admit “me too,” but from that first night’s session, (interrupted around two, not by a mosquito but by heavy rain blowing in my open windows), I recognize it as a work of meticulous attention to the laws of our nation, to their preservation and practice, and to truth! I’m glad I rode four buses to find it and bring it home. Read, or partially read, it’s a crucial record of the historic era we’re in, and unlike TV, I can hold it in my hands, make marginal notes, and underline for emphasis! Then when “I’ve read it all” or it proves just too, too heavy, I’ll put it on the shelf next to “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and “Lonesome Dove.”
Marion Whitley lives in Manhattan where she reads, writes and remembers. Her email address is Whijmar8@aol.com.
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