The Invention of Solitude

lampposts, in shop windows, on blank brick walls), headlined by the words: LOST CHILD. Because the face of this child did not differ drastically from the face of his own child (and even if it had, it might not have mattered), every time he saw the photograph of this face he was made to think of his own son—and in precisely these terms: lost child. Etan Patz had been sent downstairs one morning by his mother to wait for the school bus (the first day following a long bus driver strike, and the boy had been eager to this one little thing on his own, to make this small gesture of indepen dence), and then was not seen again. Whatever it was that hap pened to him, it happened without a trace. He could have been kid napped, he could have been murdered, or perhaps he simply wandered off and came to his death in a place where no one could see him. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that he vanished—as if from the face of the earth. The newspapers made much of this story (interviews with the parents, interviews with the detectives assigned to the case, articles about the boy ’ s personality: what games he liked to play, what foods he liked to eat), and A. began to realize that the presence of this disaster—superimposed on his own and admittedly much smaller disaster—was inescapable. Each thing that fell before his eyes seemed to be no more than an image of what was inside him. The days went by, and each day a lit tle more of the pain inside him was dragged out into the open. A sense of loss took hold of him, and it would not let go. And there were times when this loss was so great, and so suffocating, that he thought it would never let go.
     
    Some weeks later, at the beginning of summer. A radiant New York June: clarity of the light falling on the bricks; blue, transparent skies, zeroing to an azure that would have charmed even Mallarme.
    A. ’ s grandfather (on his mother ’ s side) was slowly beginning to die. Only a year before he had performed magic tricks at A. ’ s son ’ s first birthday party, but now, at eighty-five, he was so weak that he could no longer stand without support, could no longer move without an effort of will so intense that merely to think of moving was enough to exhaust him. There was a family conference at the doctor ’ s office, and the decision was made to send him to Doctor ’ s Hospital on East End Avenue and Eighty-eighth Street (the same hospital in which his wife had died of amniotropic lateral sclerosis—Lou Gehrig ’ s disease—eleven years earlier). A. was at that conference, as were his mother and his mother ’ s sister, his grandfather ’ s two children. Because neither of the women could remain in New York, it was agreed that A. would be responsible for every thing. A. ’ s mother had to return home to California to take care of her own gravely ill husband, while A. ’ s aunt was about to go to Paris to visit her first grandchild, the recently born daughter of her only son. Everything, it seemed, had quite literally become a matter of life and death. At which point, A. suddenly found himself thinking (perhaps because his grandfather had always reminded him of W.C. Fields) of a scene from the 1932 Fields film, Million Dollar Legs: Jack Oakey runs frantically to catch up with a departing stage coach and beseeches the driver to stop; “ It ’ s a matter of life and death! ” he shouts. And the driver calmly and cynically replies: “ What isn ’ t? ”
    During this family conference A. could see the fear on his grand father ’ s face. At one point the old man caught his eye and gestured up to the wall beside the doctor ’ s desk, which was covered with laminated plaques, framed certificates, awards, degrees, and testimonials, and gave a knowing nod, as if to say, “ Pretty impressive, eh? This guy will take good care of me. ” The old man had always been taken in by pomp of this sort. “ I ’ ve just received a letter from the president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, ” he would say, when in fact it was nothing more than a form letter. That day in the doc tor ’ s office, however, it was painful for A. to see it: the old man ’ s refusal to recognize the thing that was looking him straight in the eyes. “ I feel good about all this, doctor, ” his grandfather said. “ I know you ’ re going to get me better again. ’’ And yet, almost against his will, A. found himself admiring this capacity for blindness. Later that day, he