Shawn worked long days cleaning, cutting and welding the raw materials for the granaries, and once construction began he was usually on-site in Malad. When he and Dad came home, hours after sunset, they were nearly always cussing. Shawn wanted to professionalize the operation, to invest the profits from the Malad job in new equipment; Dad wanted things to stay the same. Shawn said Dad didn’t understand that construction was more competitive than scrapping, and that if they wanted to land real contracts, they needed to spend real money on real equipment — specifically, a new welder and a man lift with a basket.
连日以来肖恩都在为仓库清洗、切割和焊接原材料，一旦工程开工，他几乎常驻马拉德。日落几小时后他和爸爸回到家时，两人几乎总是骂骂咧咧的。肖恩希望操作更专业，想用马拉德项目的利润投资购买新设备；爸爸则希望一切维持现状。肖恩说爸爸不明白搞建筑比拆废品更有竞争力，如果他们想签下真正的合同，就要舍得花实实在在的钱购买真正的设备——具体说来，就是一台新焊机和一台带篮子的乘用升降机。
Shawn wouldn’t let Dad take shortcuts. Half the time I passed the shop, I’d hear the two of them shouting at each other, Dad saying Shawn was wasting time, Shawn screaming that Dad had damned near taken someone’s head off.
肖恩不让爸爸走捷径。经过工作间门口时，有一半时间我听见两人互相叫嚷，爸爸说肖恩在浪费时间，肖恩尖叫着说爸爸差点把某人的头削掉。
In October Dad won a contract to build industrial granaries in Malad City, the dusty farm town on the other side of Buck’s Peak. It was a big job for a small outfit — the crew was just Dad, Shawn, Luke, and Audrey’s husband, Benjamin — but Shawn was a good foreman, and with him in charge Dad had acquired a reputation for fast, reliable work.
十月，父亲赢得一份在马拉德城建造工业仓库的合同。马拉德城是一个尘土飞扬的农业小镇，位于巴克峰另一侧。对一个小团队来说——小队只有爸爸、肖恩、卢克和奥黛丽的丈夫本杰明——这是个大工程，但肖恩是一名优秀的工头，在他的带领下，爸爸获得了干活麻利可靠的名声。
Dad laughed out loud at the idea of a man basket. He’d been using a forklift and pallet for twenty years.
想到用带篮子的升降机，爸爸放声大笑。叉车和托盘他已经用了二十年了。
“You’ve got money,” Tyler said. “Buy books and learn it.”
“你有钱，”泰勒说，“去买书自学。”
“We can’t keep using a forklift and an old cheese pallet,” Shawn said. “It looks like shit, and it’s dangerous besides.”
“我们不能一直用叉车和破干酪托盘。”肖恩说，“看上去像坨屎，而且很危险。”
Tyler called one night just as I was getting home from work. He asked if I was studying for the ACT. “I can’t take the test,” I said. “I don’t know any math.”
一天晚上，就在我正要下班回家时，泰勒打来电话。他问我是否在为大学入学考试做准备。“我不能参加考试，”我说，“数学我一窍不通。”
I worked late most nights. Randy planned to take a big road trip to find new accounts, and he’d asked me to manage the business while he was gone. He taught me how to use his computer to keep the books, process orders, maintain inventory. It was from Randy that I first heard of the Internet. He showed me how to get online, how to visit a webpage, how to write an email. The day he left, he gave me a cellphone so he could reach me at all hours.
大多数晚上我都工作到很晚。兰迪计划驱车进行一趟长途旅行来招揽新客户，让我在他不在时帮忙打理生意。他教会我如何使用电脑记账、处理订单、维持库存。我从兰迪那里第一次听说了因特网。他教我上网、浏览网页、写电子邮件。出发那天，他给我留下一部手机，以便随时与我保持联系。
I said nothing. College was irrelevant to me. I knew how my life would play out: when I was eighteen or nineteen, I would get married. Dad would give me a corner of the farm, and my husband would put a house on it. Mother would teach me about herbs, and also about midwifery, which she’d gone back to now the migraines were less frequent. When I had children, Mother would deliver them, and one day, I supposed, I would be the Midwife. I didn’t see where college fit in.
我什么也没说。大学与我无关。我知道自己未来的人生将会如何：十八九岁时，我会结婚。爸爸将分给我农场的一个角落，我丈夫会在那里盖间房子。母亲会教我草药和助产的知识。现在她偏头痛发作不那么频繁了，又去给人接生了。我生孩子时，母亲会来接生。我猜有一天，我也将成为一名助产士。我不知道未来哪里有大学的影子。
“She studied,” Tyler said. “Did you know you can get a degree in music? If you had one, you could give lessons, you could direct the church choir. Even Dad won’t argue with that, not much anyway.”
“她去学的，”泰勒说，“你知道吗，你可以去拿个音乐学位。有了音乐学位，你就可以教课，可以指挥教堂唱诗班。即使是爸爸对此也不会有很大意见，不会说什么。”
Tyler seemed to read my thoughts. “You know Sister Sears?” he said. Sister Sears was the church choir director. “How do you think she knows how to lead a choir?”
泰勒似乎看穿了我的心思。“你知道西尔斯修女吗？”他说。西尔斯修女是教堂唱诗班的指挥。“你猜她是怎么学会指挥唱诗班的？”
Mother had recently purchased a trial version of AOL. I’d only ever used the Internet at Randy’s, for work, but after Tyler hung up I turned on our computer and waited for the modem to dial. Tyler had said something about BYU’s webpage. It only took a few minutes to find it. Then the screen was full of pictures — of neat brick buildings the color of sunstone surrounded by emerald trees, of beautiful people walking and laughing, with books tucked under their arms and backpacks slung over their shoulders. It looked like something from a movie. A happy movie.
母亲最近买了美国在线[22]网络的试用版。我只在兰迪的店里为了工作上的事上过网，但泰勒挂了电话后，我打开电脑，等着调制解调器拨号。泰勒提到杨百翰大学的官网。只花了几分钟我便找到了它。屏幕上满是照片——整齐的、颜色如太阳石般的砖砌大楼，周围绿树成荫，美丽的人们边走边笑，胳膊下夹着书，肩上挎着背包，看上去就像电影里的画面。一部欢快的电影。【注：[22]AOL（American On—Line），一家因特网服务供应商。】
I’d always admired Sister Sears, and been jealous of her knowledge of music. I’d never thought about how she’d learned it.
我一直崇拜西尔斯修女，也羡慕她的音乐知识。我从没想过她是怎么学会的。
“Then where are the numbers?”
“那么数字在哪儿呢？”
I took the test to Mother. “What’s this?” I asked.
我拿着测验题找母亲。“这是什么？”我问。
“Math,” she said.
“数学。”她说。
The next day, I drove forty miles to the nearest bookstore and bought a glossy ACT study guide. I sat on my bed and turned to the mathematics practice test. I scanned the first page. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to solve the equations; I didn’t recognize the symbols. It was the same on the second page, and the third.
第二天，我驱车四十英里来到最近的书店，买了一本崭新的大学入学考试学习指南。我坐在床上，翻开数学练习测验。我浏览了第一页。并不是我不会解方程，而是我压根儿不认识那些符号。第二页，第三页，全都一样。
“It’s algebra. The letters stand in for numbers.”
“这是代数。字母就代表数字。”
The next day I drove the same forty miles, eighty round-trip, and returned home with a large algebra textbook.
第二天我又驱车四十英里，来回八十英里，带着一本厚厚的代数课本回到了家。
“How do I do it?”
“怎么做呢？”
Mother fiddled with a pen and paper for several minutes, but she wasn’t able to solve any of the first five equations.
母亲拿来纸和笔，摆弄了几分钟，前五个方程没解出一个。
Every evening, as the crew was leaving Malad, Dad would phone the house so Mother could have dinner waiting when the truck bumped up the hill. I listened for that call, and when it came I would get in Mother’s car and drive away. I didn’t know why. I would go to Worm Creek, where I’d sit in the balcony and watch rehearsals, my feet on the ledge, a math book open in front of me. I hadn’t studied math since long division, and the concepts were unfamiliar. I understood the theory of fractions but struggled to manipulate them, and seeing a decimal on the page made my heart race. Every night for a month I sat in the opera house, in a chair of red velvet, and practiced the most basic operations — how to multiply fractions, how to use a reciprocal, how to add and multiply and divide with decimals — while on the stage, characters recited their lines.
每天晚上，小工队正要收工离开马拉德时，爸爸会给家里打电话，以便母亲在卡车开到山上时备好晚饭。我留心听着那个电话，电话一打过来，我就开母亲的车离开。我不明白为什么。我会到虫溪剧场，坐在包厢看排练，把脚放在窗台上，在面前摊开一本数学书。自从学完除法，我就没再学过数学，对概念也不熟悉。我能理解分数的理论，但做起来很费劲，而且一看到页面上的小数，我就心跳加速。连续一个月，每天晚上我都坐在剧场的红丝绒椅子上，在舞台上的演员背诵台词时，练习最基本的运算——如何做分数乘法，如何运用倒数，如何将小数加减乘除。
The misery began when I moved beyond the Pythagorean theorem to sine, cosine and tangent. I couldn’t grasp such abstractions. I could feel the logic in them, could sense their power to bestow order and symmetry, but I couldn’t unlock it. They kept their secrets, becoming a kind of gateway beyond which I believed there was a world of law and reason. But I could not pass through the gate.
我从勾股定理转向学习正弦、余弦和正切时，痛苦开始了。我无法理解如此抽象的概念。我能感知其中的逻辑，能感觉到它们赋予秩序和对称的力量，但我无法限免其中的奥秘。它们严守秘密，成为一扇大门。我相信这扇门外是一个规则而理性的世界，但是我无法通过那扇门。
I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations. I was drawn to the Pythagorean theorem and its promise of a universal — the ability to predict the nature of any three points containing a right angle, anywhere, always. What I knew of physics I had learned in the junkyard, where the physical world often seemed unstable, capricious. But here was a principle through which the dimensions of life could be defined, captured. Perhaps reality was not wholly volatile. Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense.
我开始学习三角学。奇怪的公式和方程让人安心。我被勾股定理及其通用性深深吸引——它始终能预测任意一个直角三角形三边的关系。我对物理的认知全部来自废料场，那里的物质世界似乎极不稳定、反复无常。但有一个原理可以定义和捕捉生命的维度。也许现实并非完全变化无常。也许它能被解释和预测。也许它能用常理理解。
Mother said that if I wanted to learn trigonometry, it was her responsibility to teach me. She set aside an evening, and the two of us sat at the kitchen table, scratching at bits of paper and tugging our hair. We spent three hours on a single problem, and every answer we produced was wrong.
母亲说如果我想学习三角学，她有责任教我。她预留出一个晚上，我们俩坐在厨房的桌子旁，扯着头发在纸片上乱涂乱写。我们花了三个小时才解答出一道题，但解出的所有答案都是错误的。
When I’d told Dad that I planned to go to college, he’d said a woman’s place was in the home, that I should be learning about herbs –“God’s pharmacy” he’d called it, smiling to himself — so I could take over for Mother. He’d said a lot more, of course, about how I was whoring after man’s knowledge instead of God’s, but still I decided to ask him about trigonometry. Here was a sliver of man’s knowledge I was certain he possessed.
我对爸爸说过我想去上大学，他当时说，一个女人的位置在家里，因此我应该学习有关草药的知识——他笑着称之为“上帝的药房”——以便将来接替母亲。当然，他还说了很多，质问为何我放着上帝的知识不学，反而去追求人类的知识。但我仍决定向他询问三角学的题。这点儿人类的知识，我确信他肯定拥有。
“I wasn’t any good at trig in high school,” Mother moaned, slamming the book shut. “And I’ve forgotten what little I knew.”
“我高中时一点儿也不擅长解三角，”母亲砰的一声合上书，抱怨道，“我学的那点儿知识全都忘了个一干二净。”
I scribbled the problem on a fresh sheet of paper. Dad didn’t look up as I approached, so gently, slowly, I slid the paper over the blueprints. “Dad, can you solve this?”
我草草将题写在一张新纸上。我走近时爸爸没有抬头，我小心翼翼地把纸放在他的设计图上。“爸爸，你能解答这道题吗？”
Dad was in the living room, shuffling through blueprints for the granaries and mumbling to himself. I’d watched him sketch those blueprints, watched him perform the calculations, altering this angle or lengthening that beam. Dad had little formal education in mathematics but it was impossible to doubt his aptitude: somehow I knew that if I put the equation before my father, he would be able to solve it.
爸爸正在起居室里一边翻着仓库设计图，一边喃喃自语。我见过他亲手画设计图，亲自做计算，修改这个角度或增加那根大梁的长度。爸爸几乎没接受过正规的数学教育，但他的天赋不容置疑：不知怎的，我知道如果我将方程式摆在爸爸面前，他肯定能解出来。
I studied trigonometry for a month. I sometimes dreamed about sine, cosine and tangent, about mysterious angles and concussed computations, but for all this I made no real progress. I could not self-teach trigonometry. But I knew someone who had.
我学习了一个月的三角学。我有时会梦见正弦、余弦和正切，梦见神秘的角度和让我绞尽脑汁的计算，尽管如此，我并未取得任何实质性进展。我无法自学三角学，但我认识一个自学成功的人。
He looked at me harshly, then his eyes softened. He rotated the paper, gazed at it for a moment, and began to scrawl, numbers and circles and great, arcing lines that doubled back on themselves. His solution didn’t look like anything in my textbook. It didn’t look like anything I had ever seen. His mustache twitched; he mumbled. Then he stopped scribbling, looked up and gave the correct answer.
他严厉地瞪了我一眼，接着目光变得柔和起来。他将那张纸转了一圈，盯着看了一会儿，便开始潦草地画起数字、圆圈和巨大的弧线。他的解题方法与课本上的完全不同。我从没见过这样的方法。他咕哝着，脸上的小胡子也跟着抖动。最后他不写了，抬起头说出了正确的答案。
I asked how he’d solved it. “I don’t know how to solve it,” he said, handing me the paper. “All I know is, that’s the answer.”
我问他是怎么解的。“我不知道怎么解，”他边说边把那张纸递给我，“我只知道，这就是答案。”
I walked back to the kitchen, comparing the clean, balanced equation to the mayhem of unfinished computations and dizzying sketches. I was struck by the strangeness of that page: Dad could command this science, could decipher its language, decrypt its logic, could bend and twist and squeeze from it the truth. But as it passed through him, it turned to chaos.
我走回厨房，将干净平衡的等式与凌乱的草稿上令人眼花缭乱的计算过程做了一番比较。我被这张奇特的纸所震撼：爸爸可以掌握这门科学，可以破译其语言和逻辑，可以从中弯转、扭曲、挤压出真相，但他的解答过程却呈现出一片混乱。
Tyler had gone, and Debbie was pushing a plate of casserole into my hands, when the phone rang. It was Mother.
泰勒走了，黛比正把一盘砂锅菜递到我手里，这时电话响了。是母亲打来的。
Tyler answered the door. We settled in the living room while Debbie prepared a casserole. Tyler solved the equations easily, writing out orderly explanations for every step. He was studying mechanical engineering, set to graduate near the top of his class, and soon after would start a PhD at Purdue. My trig equations were far beneath his abilities, but if he was bored he didn’t show it; he just explained the principles patiently, over and over. The gate opened a little, and I peeked through it.
泰勒开了门。我们到起居室坐下，黛比正在准备砂锅菜。泰勒轻而易举解出了方程，每一个解答步骤都整齐有序。他当时在学习机械工程，即将以名列前茅的成绩毕业，不久将去普渡大学攻读博士学位。三角方程对他来说是小菜一碟，但他并没有表现出对此不耐烦，只是耐心地、一遍又一遍地解释这些原理。那扇门开了一道缝，我透过门缝往外看。
“There’s been an accident in Malad,” she said.
“马拉德出事了。”她说。
Mother had little information. Shawn had fallen. He’d landed on his head. Someone had called 911, and he’d been airlifted to a hospital in Pocatello. The doctors weren’t sure if he would live. That was all she knew.
母亲知道的信息不多。肖恩头着地摔了下来。有人打了911，他已被空运到波卡特洛的一家医院。医生不确定他能否活下来。她知道的就这些。
Tyler told me to meet him at our aunt Debbie’s house, because she lived near Brigham Young University. The drive was three hours. I felt uncomfortable knocking on my aunt’s door. She was Mother’s sister, and Tyler had lived with her during his first year at BYU, but that was all I knew of her.
泰勒让我到黛比姨妈家和他碰头，因为那里距杨百翰大学不远。车程三个小时。敲响姨妈家的门时我感到不安。她是母亲的妹妹，泰勒在杨百翰大学上学的第一年住在她家，关于她我就知道这么多。
Mother said I should come to the hospital. I imagined Shawn on a white gurney, the life leaking out of him. I felt such a wave of loss that my knees nearly buckled, but in the next moment I felt something else. Relief.
母亲说我该去趟医院。我想象肖恩躺在一张白色的轮床上，生命正从他身上一点点流逝。我感到一阵失落，膝盖一弯差点瘫倒，但接下来的一刻，我感觉到了别的东西：解脱。
I wanted more, some statement of the odds, even if it was just so I could reason against them. I wanted her to say, “They think he’ll be fine” or even “They expect we’ll lose him.” Anything but what she was saying, which was, “They don’t know.”
我想知道更多，一些关于概率的陈述，即使只为找个否定它们的理由。我希望她说“他们认为他会没事的”，甚至是“他们觉得我们会失去他”。什么说法都可以，而不是“他们不知道”。
The story of how Shawn fell would come to me in bits and pieces, thin lines of narrative from Luke and Benjamin, who were there. It was a frigid afternoon and the wind was fierce, whipping the fine dust up in soft clouds. Shawn was standing on a wooden pallet, twenty feet in the air. Twelve feet below him was a half-finished concrete wall, with rebar jutting outward like blunt skewers. I don’t know for certain what Shawn was doing on the pallet, but he was probably fitting posts or welding, because that was the kind of work he did. Dad was driving the forklift.
通过当时在场的卢克和本杰明的详细讲述，我零零碎碎地了解了肖恩坠落的经过。那是一个寒冷的下午，狂风呼啸，细细的尘土在柔软的云中飞扬。肖恩当时正站在一个离地二十英尺高的木托盘上。他下方十二英尺是尚未完工的混凝土墙，钢筋像不太锋利的烤肉叉一般向外突出。我不确定当时肖恩在托盘上干什么，他很可能是在安装支架或焊接，因为这类工作由他负责。爸爸在开叉车。
There was a storm coming, set to lay three feet of snow over Sardine Canyon, which guarded the entrance to our valley. Mother’s car, which I had driven to Debbie’s, had bald tires. I told Mother I couldn’t get through.
一场暴雪即将来临，到时沙丁峡谷会铺上三英尺厚的雪，那里是守卫着我们的山谷的入口。我开去黛比姨妈家的是母亲的车，轮胎被磨平了。我告诉母亲我去不了了。
This is how the fall was described to me, but my mind sketches it differently — on a white page with evenly spaced lines. He ascends, falls at a slope, strikes the rebar and returns to the ground. I perceive a triangle. The event makes sense when I think of it in these terms. Then the logic of the page yields to my father.
这是别人向我描述的坠落经过，但与我脑海中勾勒的情况不同——一张白纸上，等距的平行线。他上升，落到斜坡，撞上钢筋，又回到地面。我把整个过程理解为一个三角形。当我用这些术语去思考整个事件时，一切就说得通了。然后这页纸上的逻辑在我父亲面前败下阵来。
Dad looked Shawn over. Shawn was disoriented. One of his pupils was dilated and the other wasn’t, but no one knew what that meant. No one knew it meant there was a bleed inside his brain.
爸爸查看了一下肖恩。肖恩晕头转向，一只眼睛瞳孔放大，另一只没有，但没人知道这意味着什么。没人知道这意味着他颅内出血了。
I’ve heard conflicting accounts of why Shawn fell. Someone said Dad moved the boom unexpectedly and Shawn pitched over the edge. But the general consensus is that Shawn was standing near the brink, and for no reason at all stepped backward and lost his footing. He plunged twelve feet, his body revolving slowly in the air, so that when he struck the concrete wall with its outcropping of rebar, he hit headfirst, then tumbled the last eight feet to the dirt.
关于肖恩坠落的原因我听过互相矛盾的说法。有人说爸爸意外地移动了吊杆，肖恩从边缘仰面摔了下去。但普遍的共识是肖恩站在托盘边缘，不知为何后退一步，失足了。他的身体在空中慢慢旋转，往下跌落了十二英尺，于是当他碰到钢筋裸露的混凝土墙时，头先撞了一下，然后继续下落八英尺才摔到地上。
Dad told Shawn to take a break. Luke and Benjamin helped him prop himself against the pickup, then went back to work.
爸爸叫肖恩休息一会儿。卢克和本杰明扶着他靠在皮卡旁，接着回去干活。
The story I heard was that fifteen minutes later Shawn wandered onto the site. Dad thought he was ready to work and told him to climb onto the pallet, and Shawn, who never liked being told what to do, started screaming at Dad about everything — the equipment, the granary designs, his pay. He screamed himself hoarse, then just when Dad thought he had calmed down, he gripped Dad around the waist and flung him like a sack of grain. Before Dad could scramble to his feet Shawn took off, leaping and howling and laughing, and Luke and Benjamin, now sure something was very wrong, chased after him. Luke reached him first but couldn’t hold him; then Benjamin added his weight and Shawn slowed a little. But it wasn’t until all three men tackled him — throwing his body to the ground, where, because he was resisting, his head hit hard — that he finally lay still.
我听到的版本是十五分钟后肖恩又漫步回到了工地。爸爸以为他准备好继续工作了，便让他爬上托盘，而从不喜欢别人指手画脚的肖恩开始针对周围的一切朝爸爸尖叫——从设备，到仓库设计，再到他的工资。他喊得嗓子都哑了，就在爸爸以为他已经平静下来时，他一把抱住爸爸的腰，像扔一袋粮食一样把他扔了出去。爸爸还没来得及爬起来，肖恩就跑了，边跑边咆哮和大笑。卢克和本杰明这才意识到事情有点儿不对头，于是追了上去。卢克先追上他，但逮不住他；后来加上本杰明的力量，肖恩才稍微放慢了速度。直到三个男人一起抓住他——将他放倒在地，由于他一味反抗，头部又重重碰了一下——他才终于一动不动了。
No one has ever described to me what happened when Shawn’s head struck that second time. Whether he had a seizure, or vomited, or lost consciousness, I’m not sure. But it was so chilling that someone — maybe Dad, probably Benjamin — dialed 911, which no member of my family had ever done before.
没人向我描述过肖恩头部第二次被撞时发生了什么。我不确定他是否癫痫发作，呕吐，或是失去了知觉。但令人寒心的是，有人——也许是爸爸，很可能是本杰明——拨打了911，之前我的家人从没这么做过。
The facts after this point are even more hazy.
之后的事实更加扑朔迷离。
I struggle to imagine the scene while they waited for the chopper. Dad said that when the paramedics arrived, Shawn was sobbing, begging for Mother. By the time he reached the hospital, his state of mind had shifted. He stood naked on the gurney, eyes bulging, bloodshot, screaming that he would rip out the eyes of the next bastard who came near him. Then he collapsed into sobs and finally lost consciousness.
我难以想象他们等待直升机时的情景。爸爸说医护人员赶到时，肖恩正抽泣着找母亲。等到了医院，他的精神状态已经改变了。他赤身裸体站在轮床上，双眼鼓出、充血，尖叫着要把下一个走近他的浑蛋的眼睛挖出来。接着他瘫倒在地，呜咽起来，终于失去了知觉。
They were told a helicopter would arrive in minutes. Later the doctors would speculate that when Dad, Luke and Benjamin had wrestled Shawn to the ground — and he’d sustained a concussion — he was already in critical condition. They said it was a miracle he hadn’t died the moment his head hit the ground.
他们被告知直升机几分钟内将到达。后来医生们会推测，爸爸、卢克和本杰明在扭打中让肖恩摔倒在地时——他已经遭受过一次脑震荡——他已情况危急。他们说他头部撞地没有当场死亡堪称一个奇迹。
Shawn lived through the night.
肖恩挺过了那一晚。
“He’s asking for you,” she said.
“他点名要你去。”她说。
In the morning I drove to Buck’s Peak. I couldn’t explain why I wasn’t rushing to my brother’s bedside. I told Mother I had to work.
早上我开车回到巴克峰。我无法解释为什么没有急着赶到哥哥的病床前。我告诉母亲我得上班。
“You said he doesn’t recognize anyone.”
“你说过他都不认人了。”
“He doesn’t,” she said. “But the nurse just asked me if he knows someone named Tara. He said your name over and over this morning, when he was asleep and when he was awake. I told them Tara is his sister, and now they’re saying it would be good if you came. He might recognize you, and that would be something. Yours is the only name he’s said since he got to the hospital.”
“是的，”她说，“但是护士刚刚问我他是否认识一个叫塔拉的人。整个早上他一遍又一遍地喊你的名字，不管是睡着还是醒着。我告诉护士塔拉是他的妹妹，现在他们说要是你能来就好了。他可能会认出你，那可很了不起。他到医院后只提到一个人的名字，那就是你。”
“I’ll pay for the gas,” Mother said. She thought I wouldn’t come because of the thirty dollars it would cost in fuel. I was embarrassed that she thought that, but then, if it wasn’t the money, I had no reason at all.
“油钱我来付。”母亲说。她以为我不去是因为要花三十美元的汽油费。她这么想让我很尴尬，但如果不是因为钱，我就没有任何理由不去了。
“I’m leaving now,” I said.
“我现在就走。”我说。
I was silent.
我沉默了。
I remember strangely little of the hospital, or of how my brother looked. I vaguely recall that his head was wrapped in gauze, and that when I asked why, Mother said the doctors had performed a surgery, cutting into his skull to relieve some pressure, or stop a bleed, or repair something — actually, I can’t remember what she said. Shawn was tossing and turning like a child with a fever. I sat with him for an hour. A few times his eyes opened, but if he was conscious, he didn’t recognize me.
很奇怪，我对医院几乎没什么印象，也不记得我哥哥的样子。我依稀记得，他头上裹着纱布，我问为什么，母亲说医生做了开颅手术，为了缓解压力、止血或修复什么的——实际上，我不记得她说了什么。肖恩像个发烧的孩子一样辗转反侧。我在他身边坐了一小时。有几次他眼睛睁开了，但意识不清，没有认出我。
“You came,” he said. “I didn’t think you would.” He took my hand and then fell asleep.
“你来了，”他说，“我没想到你会来。”他握住我的手，然后睡着了。
When I came the next day, he was awake. I walked into the room and he blinked and looked at Mother, as if to check that she was seeing me, too.
第二天我再去时，他醒着。我走进房间，他眨了眨眼睛，看着母亲，似乎想确认一下她是不是也看见了我。
I stared at his face, at the bandages wrapped around his forehead and over his ears, and was bled of my bitterness. Then I understood why I hadn’t come sooner. I’d been afraid of how I would feel, afraid that if he died, I might be glad.
我盯着他的脸，看着缠在他额头和耳朵上的绷带，我的怨恨在滴血。接着我明白了自己为什么不想早点儿来。因为我一直害怕自己的感受，害怕如果他死了，我可能会为此高兴。
He lived on the sofa in the front room for two months. He was physically weak — it was all he had in him to make it to the bathroom and back. He’d lost his hearing completely in one ear and had trouble hearing with the other, so he often turned his head when people spoke to him, orienting his better ear toward them, rather than his eyes. Except for this strange movement and the bandages from the surgery, he looked normal, no swelling, no bruises. According to the doctors, this was because the damage was very serious: a lack of external injuries meant the damage was all internal.
他在起居室沙发上待了两个月。他身体仍然虚弱——去趟卫生间便能耗尽所有力气。他一只耳朵完全失聪，另一只耳朵听力受损，所以有人对他说话时，他常常把头转过来，将能听见的那只耳朵对准那人，而不是用眼睛看着对方。除了这个奇怪的举动和手术后的绷带，他看上去很正常，没有肿胀，也没有瘀青。根据医生的说法，这是因为受伤极为严重：外部未见损伤，意味着损伤都在内里。
I’m sure the doctors wanted to keep him in the hospital, but we didn’t have insurance, and the bill was already so large that Shawn would be making payments a decade later. The moment he was stable enough to travel, we took him home.
我清楚地记得医生想让他住院，但是我们没有医疗保险，况且已经开销巨大，肖恩得过十年才能付清。一等他病情稳定可以上路了，我们就把他带回了家。
It took some time for me to realize that although Shawn looked the same, he wasn’t. He seemed lucid, but if you listened carefully his stories didn’t make sense. They weren’t really stories at all, just one tangent after another.
过了一段时间我才意识到，尽管肖恩看起来和以前没什么两样，但事实并非如此。他看上去头脑清醒，但如果你仔细听他讲故事的话便会发现，它们毫无意义。它们根本算不上是故事，只不过是一个接一个的正切。
The real world, meanwhile, plunged into chaos. The doctors told Mother that Shawn’s injury might have altered his personality — that in the hospital, he had shown tendencies toward volatility, even violence, and that such changes might be permanent.
与此同时，现实世界陷入了混乱。医生告诉母亲，肖恩的伤病可能会改变他的性情——在医院里他就表现出反复无常，甚至是暴力的倾向，这种变化可能是永久性的。
I felt guilty that I hadn’t visited him immediately in the hospital, so to make it up to him I quit my job and tended him day and night. When he wanted water, I fetched it; if he was hungry, I cooked.
我为没有立即去医院看望他而深感内疚。为了补偿，我辞掉了工作，夜以继日地照顾他。他要喝水，我就去端来；他饿了，我就去做饭。
Sadie started coming around, and Shawn welcomed her. I looked forward to her visits because they gave me time to study. Mother thought it was important that I stay with Shawn, so no one interrupted me. For the first time in my life I had long stretches in which to learn — without having to scrap, or strain tinctures, or check inventory for Randy. I examined Tyler’s notes, read and reread his careful explanations. After a few weeks of this, by magic or miracle, the concepts took hold. I retook the practice test. The advanced algebra was still indecipherable — it came from a world beyond my ability to perceive — but the trigonometry had become intelligible, messages written in a language I could understand, from a world of logic and order that only existed in black ink and on white paper.
赛迪又开始来家里走动，肖恩表示欢迎。我期待她的来访，因为这为我争取了学习的时间。母亲觉得我陪着肖恩很重要，所以没有人来打扰我。平生第一次我有了大段的时间用来学习——不用去拆解废料、过滤酊剂，也不必为兰迪检查库存。我仔细研究泰勒的笔记，一遍又一遍阅读他详细的注解。这样过了几个星期，奇迹般地，概念形成了。我重新去做模拟测试题。高等代数仍无法限免——它来自一个超出我认知能力的世界——但三角学容易理解了，是用我可以理解的语言写下的信息，来自一个白纸黑字充满逻辑和秩序的世界。
He did succumb to rages, moments of blind anger when all he wanted was to hurt someone. He had an intuition for nastiness, for saying the single most devastating thing, that left Mother in tears more nights than not. These rages changed, and worsened, as his physical strength improved, and I found myself cleaning the toilet every morning, knowing my head might be inside it before lunch. Mother said I was the only one who could calm him, and I persuaded myself that that was true. Who better? I thought. He doesn’t affect me.
他的确屈服于愤怒，试图伤害某人时，他一次次陷入盲目的愤怒。他不受控制地说着污言秽语，会说最恶毒的话，常常让母亲在夜里哭泣。随着他体力的逐渐恢复，这些愤怒越变越糟。我每天早上都不自觉地去清洗马桶，因为我知道，说不定午饭前我的头就可能被按在里面。母亲说我是唯一可以使他平静下来的人，我说服自己这是真的。还有谁比我更好呢？我想，他不会影响到我。
Reflecting on it now, I’m not sure the injury changed him that much, but I convinced myself that it had, and that any cruelty on his part was entirely new. I can read my journals from this period and trace the evolution — of a young girl rewriting her history. In the reality she constructed for herself nothing had been wrong before her brother fell off that pallet. I wish I had my best friend back, she wrote. Before his injury, I never got hurt at all.
现在回想起来，我不确定是否是受伤让他有了如此大的改变，但我说服自己，他身上的一切残忍行为都是后来才有的。我可以从这段时期的日记中追溯到演变——一个年轻的女孩在重写她的历史。在她为自己重建的现实中，她哥哥从托盘摔下来之前生活一切如常，没有什么不对劲的。但愿我最好的朋友回来，她写道，他受伤之前，我从没受过伤害。
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