An idea? you say as you assist her to her feet and pat caked snow from your buttocks.
For our daughter’s name. Yes.
You work your way ten yards down the driveway.
It’s going to be a girl, then?
If that’s okay with you. I’m open to suggestions. This point should be taken for granted. If you’d rather, we could have a boy. A boy would be nice. There’s something strong and enduring about a boy.
Either a boy or a girl is good with me. As long as it’s healthy, as they say. Repeatedly.
And happy.
I’d hate to think that at some point in life it would become healthy yet unhappy.
A happy and healthy daughter.
You turn off the driveway onto what in milder seasons is a deer trail and strike into the forest.
Snow pellets spitball around you.
You travel single file, Andi following in the tracks you lay down.
Time loosening.
You discover how hard it is to push forward in fresh powder. It is like walking across the shallow end of a swimming pool.
Ahead, you catch a glimpse of a fox’s bushy black tail.
Vanishing.
It occurs to you history has not arrived here yet.
How you only think that snow is white, but how in reality it is innumerable shades of blue, gray, and pink.
The iron-colored clouds having moved closer to earth.
A muffled pause charging the afternoon.
With blue eyes, you say over your shoulder.
What?
I don’t know why, but I’ve always pictured little girls with blue eyes. Blue eyes and blond hair, it almost but not quite goes without saying. The shade that used to be referred to as dirty blond but is now referred to as honey or auburn blond.
Like her father.
I believe so. Yes.
Blond hair, blue eyes. I like it — in a classic sort of way. What about Genia, with a G that sounds like a J?
Genia with a G that sounds like a J…
You cover five more yards, considering.
As in photogenic? you ask.
I absolutely don’t want it to sound too weird or forced. If you think it sounds too weird or forced, just say the word and we can change it. But to me it sounds… what? To me it sounds more interestingly uncommon than weird or forced.
You take a gentle downhill and fall three yards into the descent.
Lying there puts you in mind of Zeno and his paradoxes.
Achilles running after the tortoise, drifting through an infinite number of halfway points — smaller and smaller, true, but always present, and therefore always almost there, but never quite.
You enjoy remembering this fact, lying there.
Your daughter remains always just out of reach.
Pleasingly out of reach, in one sense.
But out of reach nonetheless.
Andi gracefully misses you and then falls five feet farther down the trail. You both lie on your backs, skis pointing straight up, enjoying snow pellets pecking your cheeks, then melting, just like that, presto.
Andi opens her mouth and closes her eyes.
You listen to yourselves respiring, surprised at how warm you remain out here.
Your body teaches you a little more every day.
There’s a small genie in it, too, you point out after a while.
And, says Andi, the tiniest hint of genesis.
Huh, you say. Sure. And genes, too, of course. Don’t forget genes. Nothing overstated, mind you. Nothing overdone.
You think about this some more and then say:
I love it.
You can be honest, says Andi. If you don’t love it, you won’t hurt my feelings or anything. Just say the word. If you don’t love it, we can think of something else. It’s as easy as that.
Genia, you say, smiling up into the snowfall. Genia…
You experiment with the name, pressing your tongue against your forward pallet, letting it slip away and catch again behind your teeth, then retract and open the back of your throat slightly.
Sense your lips part for the final ah.
It still feels good the next morning.
It still feels good as you begin to reconceptualize your world with your daughter in it.
You do not simply write, needless to say.
You write and then you rewrite.
Often each line six or eight times, as difficult as that might at first be to believe.
Changing words. Changing punctuation. Changing order.
Traveling.
In order to get it right, presumably.
The language pulling things into clarity on your monitor.
The most expensive photograph having been sold for $400,000, and the longest negative on record measuring twenty-one feet.
Produced in 1992, it shows thirty-five hundred people gathered at a concert in Austin, Texas.
When you walk into the kitchen, you see your daughter sitting in her highchair, short plump arms wagging.
Bouncing in her bungee swing in the doorway.
You hear her agitating toward consciousness in the middle of the night.
For the first six weeks, you learn, she will not need much more than blankets, diapers, and water bottles.
That is it.
That is all.
Initially she will sleep in a crib in your room upstairs.
As she becomes older, you will move her into the loft, and then down into your guest bedroom.
What was once your guest bedroom.
Its walls covered with fresh light.
She coalesces in your imagination: a pink foot, a soft almost bald scalp.
Snapshots.
You see her head cradled in Andi’s elbow, eyes the color of Bahamian seawater.
Smell her barely sour breath.
Andi unbuttoning her shirt.
Visualizing Andi unbuttoning her shirt.
Extracting her left breast for your invisible daughter.
A week before Christmas, the second very large check from Grannam arrives.
Now:
This is Andi, Andi says.
Who? says Grannam.
Andi mans the wall phone.
You sit at the kitchen table, portable in hand.
You have not heard Grannam this disoriented before.
She has good days and she has bad days, but over the last six or seven months she has had more bad days than good days.
Andi, Andi repeats, voice bright and artificial.
And me, you add, equally contrived. How are you doing?
Sweethearts, she says. Is it Sunday?
It’s Tuesday, says Andi.
You call on Sunday.
Andi gives you a worried look.
You give Andi a worried look back.
We wanted to thank you for the check you sent, you say, picking up the ball. It’s such a generous gift. Thank you.
It’s for your daughter.
We know, Grannam, Andi says. It’s the most wonderful thing.
I want you to be happy.
We are happy, you say. We’re outrageously happy.
Did you see the thing on the news? A tiger attacked a little Korean girl in a park. She was playing with her friends.
A mountain lion, you say.
In Colorado, I think. We live in Idaho.
How are you feeling, sweetheart? she asks Andi.
I’m good, says Andi. Big as a water buffalo, but good.
Don’t let her fool you, you say proudly. She’s a trooper. You should see her. She has to sleep a certain way. She has to sit a certain way. She has to eat certain foods and not others.
I walk like a flat-footed rodeo star, Andi says.
When I carried your mother, says Grannam, all I wanted was potato salad.
Banana-nut ice cream, says Andi. For me it’s banana-nut ice cream.
Grannam laughs.
That’s nice, she says.