Fargo

For you, my long-awaited one, I observe the opening scene: A wide screen of solid black dissolves into infinite white. An opaque universe without boundaries, landmarks, features of any kind. A blank slate with no surface, nothing on which to carve the story that waits to be written. But the story wiU come. You know this, and it is aU you know. In the invisible depths ofyour own inner space, you have no choice but to believe that out ofnothing, something wiU emerge. Your mind's eye is blank. You see nothing, for there has never been anything to see. Your only memories are of sounds, though your ears have yet to discern a single clear note ringing through the great open stiUness that enfolds you. You recaU instead the feel of sounds: the murmuring caress of soft undulations, the sharp sting of staccato sounds, and, always, the slow shudder ofheavy waves tumbling over you like surf, though you have never felt surf. And the taste of sounds, their salty ebb and flow as they wash through you.You do not hear these sounds.You drink them, draw each rippling note into your smaU, perfectly formed mouth, down your throat into your stomach, and let its fulsome substance nourish you. You breathe sounds, fiU your lungs with their astonishing din, their labyrinthic structures, their invisible, incomprehensible forms. And now, breaking through the unending white I picture for you, a sound you don't remember: a soft, melancholy tone. Then another, and another. You cannot know these sounds emanate from the plucked strings of an instrument called a harp. Nor can you recognize the even lonelier strains of the violin that foUow. Nevertheless, you drink and breathe their slow, sad music until out of the unending white something finaUy does appear: two faint dots, whiter than the whiteness they penetrate. You might recognize their twin radiance, but you have never seen Ught. For you, I observe the twin dots grow and brighten in the briUiant gloom, until more 8 Fourth Genre shapes appear: a black bird, fluttering above a crystaUizing roadway. The bright dots expand like sweUing stars until the shimmering corona of an approaching automobUe materializes around them. A drum beat rises to a fuU-orchestra crescendo as the automobile, towing a second vehicle, plows directly toward us both through powder white, and the name of the white world before us is revealed: FARGO As the letters on the wide screen fade away, I think of your name: Rachael. Ofthe Book of Genesis. Rachael Lehualani, "blossom of the heavens ."You float beside me in your own dark universe, the universe of your mother's womb. I turn to my left to observe her beUy sweUing to its fuUest capacity beneath the gray bubble of the maternity dress whose true color cannot be discerned in the shadows ofthe oldVarsityTheater in Manhattan, Kansas. "Are you aU right?" I whisper as the opening credits fade in and out of the white. "I'm fine," your mother-to-be says. In the dim light reflecting off the screen, she looks exhausted, as if the effort of watching the white world materialize before us takes all her available energy. Like me, she's forty-six. "Do you know what this is about?" she asks. "No. AU I know is it's supposed to be funny." "Good." She arches her back and releases a deep sigh. "I'm ready for something light." "Hush," David, our oldest, scolds from the row of seats immediately in front ofour own. Michael and Daniel sit on either side ofhim in the nearly empty theater, staring at the white screen in respectful silence. The date is April 30, 1996. In two days you wiU join the rest ofus in the wide, white world, where a long journey awaits us aU. Two more days. I thought I made myselfperfectly clear. You did, you made yourselfperfectly clear, but something's come up. What? Well, it's something kinda small, but it might be a big problem. I'm pregnant. Huh? Steve Heller9 I'm pregnant. I've got a doctor's test, I've got a certificate, and there's no doubt...