Told from the perspective of an enigmatic “we” that embraces just as quickly as it repels, David Hansen’s “Our Philosophy” insistently redraws the boundaries between us and them, generating an uncomfortable and uncanny sense of allegiance that plunges the reader into the complexities of identity and belonging.—The Editors and the Fiction Staff
David Hansen
Our Philosophy
There was a man in our town whom we were very worried about. He came to teach philosophy at the college. We still do not know what his philosophy was. Whatever it was, it was no philosophy of ours.
Let us put it to you this way: he often used French words on occasions where we feel English words would have sufficed.
Now, imagine a man like this, in your town, looking at your town’s nice buildings, at your town’s nice policemen, at your town’s nice church house. Imagine this and you will perhaps feel what we felt when he looked at us.
Around that time, we saw that over the years our town had fallen into some squalor. So, we had the mortuary on Main Street repainted. Afterward, the mortuary looked nice enough, but it no longer looked quite how we remembered it, and we remembered it looking just how we like it. We wondered, “Perhaps our town has not fallen into squalor after all. Perhaps he simply tricked us into thinking it has.” We still wonder that. That would have been just like him.
Suffice it to say we did not want to send our children to him. But we knew if we did not send them, they would only send themselves. So, we sent them.
When they came back, they were not quite our children anymore, in just the way the mortuary was not quite our mortuary anymore. In our children’s eyes, we saw his eyes, heard in their voices his voice, and they looked at us the way he sometimes did if we passed him on the street—which is, by squinting at us, as if looking at us very closely, or from a great distance.
“Tell us,” we said, as if it were no big deal to us, “are you taking his classes?”
“Whose classes?” they said.
“You know whose classes,” we said.
“Maybe we are and maybe we aren’t,” they said.
They were of the opinion that it was none of our business. We were of the opinion that it was our signatures on the tuition checks.
Our children visited us less often after that. We talked to them less and less, and we talked to ourselves in their stead more and more.
“Our town is nice,” we said, “and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t.”
We made no reply to this but only looked back at ourselves with those narrow eyes of his.
“Fine,” we said, “perhaps our town is no nicer than any other town. But it is nicer than New York City, or wherever it is he’s from, we can promise you that.”
To this, we also made no reply. After that, we stopped talking to ourselves.
You can imagine how we felt when word went around that he had seduced one of our daughters.
Well, we were mortified!
By then, we had given up all our power over him, what little power we had. For a weapon against him, we had only shame. But he himself was unashamed. It is not easy to shame someone who is not already ashamed.
Truthfully, if he seemed to be anything he had not always been, he seemed to be in love with our daughter, and she with him. This we could not abide. Seduction is one thing. Love is quite another.
One night, we saw them together on the street. We asked him to excuse her for a moment. When we had her to ourselves, we said, “Why are you doing this to us?”
If we had this to do over again, we would say, simply, “Why are you doing this?” We would leave ourselves out of it.
She saw our distress and tried to embrace us. We did not want to be embraced. Well, we did. But we wanted more to look at her. We knew she would soon leave us, and we would not have her to look at anymore. So, we looked at her. She was very tall, with big feet and long brown hair. If we are honest, she had never been our favorite. We had never been sure what he saw in her. But now, we tried to see her as he saw her. We suppose we saw a little something.
Soon, she left our town for New Haven, Connecticut, where she studied philosophy. She is still there, teaching philosophy.
He did not go with her. He did not want her to go to New Haven but to stay in our town, with him, if you can believe that. She broke off the engagement. We did not know quite how to feel about all this.
The last time we saw her was at our airport. We had come to see her off, all of us, by which we mean us and him.
She embraced us, but she did not say anything to us. To her, we said her name several times, looking into her eyes, holding her face in our hands, as if she might forget her name if we did not say it to her.
Then we said, “We are sorry, we are so, so sorry.”
We did not see her get on the plane. Our laws forbid us going too far into the airport, unless we have a ticket. But we saw her go down the concourse, and then we saw a plane take off a little later.
Now, we were alone with him. He, like us, was heartbroken.
He looked much older than he’d looked when he’d first come to our town. Though he had not been here all that long, he looked like a man who had stayed much longer than he’d planned to. His hair was no particular color. His clothes, usually very fine, were in bad condition. He looked up into the sky, where we ourselves had just been looking, at the spot where the plane had gone into the clouds. We felt a little bad for him.
This was many years ago. Lately, we have been thinking about this time, and thinking about this time makes us think of many other things. We wonder, “When we told her we were sorry, what did we mean?” We still feel sorry, but we cannot see anything to be sorry for.
One thing we have not been thinking of is him. He is no longer here. Things went poorly for him after she left. Eventually, he left, too. He did not say goodbye to us. One day, he simply wasn’t here. We have not worried about him since.