Lance Olsen: Girl Imagined by Chance

Everything will be devoted to the mouth.

This is not a good sign for Andi.

The toddler squats so low its butt almost contacts the gray institutional carpet.

Your mother, on the other hand, died peacefully.

More or less.

You and Andi went to visit her at the assisted-living center shortly after dinner to relieve the nurse who was watching over her.

As peacefully as one can die under the circumstances, obviously.

She was in a coma.

Your mother was in a coma.

What does this sentence mean?

One you never thought you would be in a position to write back when you were, say, thirteen.

You were talking to her, holding her hand, Andi rubbing her shoulder.

She was in a coma and then it seemed like a charge of electricity passed through her, like someone had applied cardiac paddles to her chest.

She bucked and she stopped and her mouth opened slightly.

The cancer having spread from her breast into her spinal column into her brain.

Science fiction being a redundant genre, of course, given the real world.

Children, it strikes you, are walking petri dishes active with germs.

Real perhaps being too strong a word.

The drill sounds like a hornet stuck in a particle accelerator.

The receptionist says I’m like, major social faux-pop .

In another magazine you begin an article about William James Sidis, the arithmetical prodigy who lived from 1898 to 1944. By the time he was two he could spell. Eight, and he was inventing a new table of logarithms. Eleven, and he was enrolled at Harvard, delivering lectures on mathematics to the faculty.

Your mother was a person.

Your mother is a memory.

This is how people change tenses.

The toddler rocks and bobs, its face red and shiny with eagerness.

William’s father was an awful man. He drove his child mercilessly. He let the media hound him. William himself grew embittered and resentful. By the time he graduated Harvard at sixteen, he had lost all interest in mathematics.

The toddler rocks and bobs, its face sweaty and violet with anticipation.

A group of crows is called a murder , you recall for no particular reason.

Growing old isn’t for sissies, someone once said.

Someone besides you, that is.

William spent the rest of his life in mindless clerical jobs. His interests turned in on themselves. Twenty-eight, and he was writing a comprehensive book on the classification of streetcar transfer slips.

You like William.

You like the idea of William, at any rate.

Then you remember for no particular reason your mother standing on the porch of your house in the jungle compound in Venezuela, chopping up a black snake into one-inch pieces with a hoe.

The snake having wrapped itself around an empty Coke bottle in a carton of Coke bottles to stay cool, presumably.

How the pieces wiggled independently of each other.

Forty-six, and William was dead of a brain hemorrhage.

How your mother wore khaki shorts and a light pink blouse and a matching scarf and chopped as though she were chopping at earth in a garden.

You do not know why you remember her like that.

You have no context for the memory.

But there it is.

A group of crows is called a murder , and a group of finches is called a charm .

Growing middle-aged is not for sissies, either.

You jerk your head up.

Caught off guard, the toddler topples back onto his derrière in a pratfall.

At the same instant, a minimally stiff Andi appears in the doorway leading back into the complex of dental cubicles. She is just in time to witness how parents are immune to the howls of their offspring in public places.

The toddler’s mouth seems to grow to match the circumference of its whole face.

The toddler’s mouth actually seems to become larger than its head.

Its mother continues talking to the receptionist.

The receptionist looks over at the toddler, then back at the mother, and pronounces the words Mary Kay Cosmetics .

You think the reason there are stereotypes in the world is because there are people to fill them.

The toddler’s shrieks run up and down an imaginary graph in your mind.

Other people take note of the situation but pretend they do not.

A group of crows is called a murder , and a group of ravens is called an unkindness .

The toddler shakily rises and wobbles through the room, howling.

You stand and join Andi at the receptionist’s desk and listen to Andi spell out that she has received a temporary filling and would like to set up an appointment for the root canal as soon as possible.

The Why? questions tending to start at the end of the third year.

Let’s see, says the receptionist, checking her computer screen. This is Friday. We have an opening next Thursday…

Sooner, Andi says.

The receptionist’s eyes flick up to her, gauging, then back to her screen.

Tuesday?

The temporary will hold till Tuesday? Andi asks.

Oh sure. Three o’clock?

What a cutie, you tell the mother of the toddler who is staggering through the waiting room, weeping and hiccupping like a miniature Shakespearean king on a stormy heath.

Whatever, she replies.

When you dial Grannam’s number that evening, you try to make your brain go blank as a computer screen after you have punched off the power. When she answers and tells you how excited she is, how she knows she will not be able to sleep tonight because she is so thrilled about meeting Gen tomorrow, you look at Andi sitting at the kitchen table, eyes closed, head lowered, wrists pressed against her ears, and you push on. That is what this conversation is all about, after all: pushing on. When you start explaining how that sniffle was not the sniffle of an allergy or cold but the sniffle of flu’s first announcement, you do not expect anyone else to understand. This conversation is not about understanding. When you start explaining how the fever continues to climb, how the doctor said what doctors are expected to say, how you are terribly sorry and would of course do something if you could, you are not sure you understand it yourself. When you hear her voice go numb, when you hear it take an escalator down several floors of emotion, when you hear it return to your level to say you are doing what any good parent would do, you try to make your brain go still as an unplugged modem. When you promise her that as soon as Gen is feeling better you can all think about rescheduling your visit, and Grannam says that would be wonderful, and then she thanks you for calling and hangs up, leaves you standing there holding the phone in your hand, waiting, because this conversation is about not knowing, and Andi barely squints open her eyes to see if the coast is clear, and you nod that it is, the flow chart having run its course, the flow chart having apparently run its course, and she slowly lowers her wrists from her ears and takes a deep breath, and you exchange looks, like sometimes very old or very young couples do, passing data back and forth with your eyes and with your eyes only, you do not expect anyone to get this.

That is not what this conversation is about.

You do not expect anyone to figure out what just took place.

Why would they?

They are not here.

They are not you.

You are not you either, presumably.

You do not feel like yourself.

It is easy to do some things in your head, you stand there thinking, holding the phone in your hand, speaking to Andi with your eyes.

It is easy to imagine yourself making certain gestures and uttering certain sentences when you are not really making those gestures and uttering those sentences.

It is easy to arrange simple plans in your head right up to the second you have to take them out of your head and put them into the universe.