“Here, come here, Loli.”
She does not come.
“Viola.”
Her daughter does not look at her face, but burrows into the side of her.
“I might not get better, my baby. My body isn’t working very well.”
She takes a deep breath and wonders how to say this. How to put mortality into words for a child.
“Are you going to die?” she asks. She looks at her directly, craving honesty, craving the truth. Her maddening, clever daughter.
“I don’t know,” she says. “We’re doing everything we can, me and your dad. But I just don’t know.”
“Dad’s doing everything he can?”
“We both are. But sweetie, if we can’t fix it, I don’t want you to blame anyone okay? It’s nobody’s fault.” She takes her child’s hands. “Let’s make a memory together, right now. A happy memory. Let’s make a wish.”
“I don’t want to remember this,” Viola says. “I want to remember the future. When you’re better.”
“Well, if you do remember this, just remember I’ll always love you. Love is the most important thing.”
Her daughter closes her eyes. “La la la la la la la la.”
“Viola.”
“I’m not remembering this.”
“Viola, please.”
Her daughter looks at her very seriously and says: “Tell me when you’re better. We can make a memory then.”
Susan is getting desperate. “You’re going to remember this whether or not you know it, Lola. It’s going to be in there. I promise. You silly thing. You’re going to remember when you least expect it.”
And she tries to kiss her, but she is scrambling out of the room, shouting for her father.
When her husband arrives, Susan is lying on her side, too tired to cry. Too tired to go to the fair.
“They’re never going to know me,” she says. “Not really.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
He is quiet for a minute. On the floor are the crumpled attempts at notes, insufficient, incoherent. How to explain herself? How to give them all she wants to give? She feels disappointed in herself. Like so many things, she left this too late.
“They’ll know people who loved you.”
She pulls herself up and he lies next to her, lets her curl her head into his lap. He traces his finger around the outside of her ear. She closes her eyes.
Maybe that’s enough.
2012
When you arrive, the gallery is full of strangers. A few people that you maybe knew in a past life, but all of them looking around in a curious state of wonder, running their fingers through scraps of paper, asking whether they can borrow a glue stick. Someone asks you if you’d like a drink and maybe you get chatting—How did you knowandIsn’t this a nice idea. You don’t have many anecdotes to share, or the ones you have are patchy now, have lost the rhythm they used to have, but you remember Susan Byrne, the warm feeling of spending time in her company. And when the daughter walks in, you can’t help but stare for a moment—caught in the bright delusion of a miracle you didn’t realize you still believed in.
Viola turns to a box of paper scraps. She thinks about her brother cutting all of it out, wonders what it was inside him that lit up so brightly when he felt her. Her hand passes over it like a defunct metal detector.
