Born Weird. Andrew Kaufman
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ON APRIL 7, 2010, eight and a half years after Kent scored his first and only touchdown, Angie Weird stood in a hallway on the fourth floor of the Vancouver and District General Hospital, eavesdropping on her grandmother as she dictated her epitaph. “Until you realize that coincidences don’t exist, your life will be filled with them,” Grandmother Weird said. “Everywhere you look there coincidences will be. Coincidence! Coincidence! Coincidence! But the moment you accept there is no such thing, they will disappear forever and you’ll never encounter another.”
Angie tried not to vomit. The corridor, in fact the whole hospital, smelled like artificial pine. But her grandmother’s ridiculous speech was as nausea-making as the smell of disinfectant. Hearing her grandmother’s words reminded Angie of everything she disliked about her family, and why she had avoided all contact with them for so many years. Even though she’d just flown from New York, five and a half hours in the air with a two-hour stopover in Toronto, Angie decided to head back to the airport.
She turned away from her grandmother’s hospital room and towards the elevators. It was at this exact moment that an orderly was checking his phone as he pushed a cart down the hall. He did not look up until his shoulder struck Angie’s. Knocked off balance, Angie was sent stumbling into her grandmother’s room.
Each of the four beds in Room 4-206 was occupied by an elderly lady. Grandmother Weird was in the bed closest to the door and Angie’s stumble concluded at the foot of it. She looked her grandmother over. Her cheeks were rosy. Her eyes were bright. No tubes were attached to her, not even an intravenous line. In no way did Grandmother Weird appear to be on her deathbed.
“That’s an awful lot of text,” said a male voice. It came from the speaker in the telephone.
“Then make the letters small,” Grandmother Weird said. She rolled her eyes. She saw Angie. She looked back at the telephone.
“No name? No date?” the speakerphone voice asked.
“Neither.”
“It’ll still be really small.”
“I’ll need it in thirteen days,” Grandmother Weird said. She reached out her tiny arm. She jabbed her index finger to the telephone, ending the call. Shuffling her body back into the middle of the bed she looked her granddaughter over.
“Does it have a father?” Grandmother Weird asked.
“Are you asking if this is the child of God?”
“How far along?”
“They looked at me funny in the airport.”
“But no ring …”
“Who am I to go against family tradition?” Angie asked. Grandmother Weird issued a small laugh. She hadn’t been married when she’d given birth to her only son, Besnard, Angie’s father. The laugh made Angie feel slightly safer. She attempted to sit on the corner of the bed. The mattress sagged. She slid off. She attempted this several more times. Then she noticed the chair in the corner. Pushing it towards the bed, Angie sat down.
“Are you done?”
“Yes.”
“No more wiggling?”
“Nope.”
“Okay then,” Grandmother said. She smoothed the wrinkles from the sheet. “I’m dying.”
“Again?”
“I will die at 7:39 p.m. on April 20. Not a second later or a moment earlier.”
“Who doesn’t love a countdown?”
“Thirteen days from today.”
“Is there something special about that day?”
“It’s my birthday. I guess it slipped your memory?”
“Death’s not much of a party.”
“I’ve asked you to come here because there are mistakes I’ve made. Mistakes I need your help correcting.”
“I plan on living until I’m at least a hundred. Maybe older.”
“Be quiet, Angelika!”
Grandmother Weird said these words in what Angie and her siblings called the Tone. They each had a pet theory to explain why it was so effective. Kent’s was that her voice became all bass. Abba thought it was the way she stressed each word, making them all sound capitalized. Lucy’s explanation was that her lung capacity allowed her to push out twice as much air; therefore her words came out twice as strongly. Angie liked all of these, but she felt that only Richard had gotten it right. His explanation was that she stripped all emotion from her voice, leaving only her harsh judgment.
However it worked, it made Angie comply. She sat still. She folded her hands in her lap. Grandmother Weird didn’t speak and more than a minute passed.
“You’ve always been impatient,” Grandmother Weird finally said. “Do you know that you were born in a hallway?”
“How could I forget?”
“You almost died in that hallway.”
“Yup.”
“With the cord wrapped so tight around your little throat.”
“Crazy,” Angie said. She’d stopped paying attention to her grandmother. The thought of giving birth in a hallway was so terrifying that she’d begun conjuring the scene in her mind, replaying it over and over. This was the way Angie often dealt with events she feared would happen.
“That’s why I gave it to you,” Grandmother Weird said.
“Of course.”
“The power to forgive.”
“I know. Wait. Gave me what?”
“It was your father’s fault. That idiotic car. Whoever heard of driving a Maserati in the city? I knew it would define you.”
“The car?”
“I knew you’d spend your whole life having to find it in yourself to forgive your parents for almost killing you before you were even born. With your very first breath you needed the power to forgive. It’s odd because forgiveness is not something I’m particularly good at. I didn’t even know I had it in me.”
“What are we talking about?”
“The ability to forgive!”
“… ”
“It’s my heart,” Grandmother Weird said. “My goddamn elephant heart.”
Grandmother Weird’s heart, while much smaller than an elephant’s, was unnaturally large. The average human heart weighs between 250 and 350 grams and is about the size of a fist. The weight of Annie Weird’s heart pushed 600 grams and it was the size of two fists together. She was convinced that its exaggerated dimensions were the source of all the drama that had ever befallen her. And she was well aware that Angie was her only grandchild who’d inherited this condition. Angie’s heart was even slightly bigger than her own.
“I held you in my arms,” Grandmother Weird continued. “I looked down and it came from me and tumbled into you. I gave to you the power to forgive anyone, anytime.”
Angie looked down at Grandmother Weird. She saw how loosely her rings fit on her fingers, the tremor in her right hand and the droop in her eyelids. “That’s so … it’s … it’s r … really b … eautiful,” Angie said. She’d started to cry.
“Maybe I should have given you the power not to be such a crybaby sap,” Grandmother Weird said.
Angie had a deserved reputation as the family’s crybaby. Yet her grandmother’s comment stung. “Couldn’t it have been invisibility?”