Shannon Connor Winward
Art: Siobhan McDonald
Abby (I.)
A human being is not like a bullet. We don’t begin with a single act—a finger on a trigger. Our existence depends on the confluence of choice, desire, factors far more complex than angle, range, wind. Even if, in hindsight, our outcome seems inevitable, the trajectory of a life is not so easily calculated.
So, how to avoid an undesired outcome? Where do you start? Not at the end. You have to go back. You have to unravel. But how far? To the bottom of the stairs, the beginning of the breakdown? Further. Before he buys the gun, before he becomes addicted, before the marriage dissolves, before the army. Before the child. Before the first confluence is even crossed. You have to go back to where the lines are clean.
Back to when life was simple.
Jesse
While his mother had her hands stuck inside the turkey, Jesse slipped outside to spark a joint.
The neighborhood was quiet, full of fireplace scents and white chimney smoke. Clearing a thin layer of snow off the backyard swing, Jesse settled on the bench and rocked, enjoying the familiar, rhythmic squeak of the chain.
Then Abigail came around the corner of the house, red sneakers crunching over snow. Thirteen years old now, she seemed to have aged years instead of months since Jesse went away to college. Black New Moon t-shirt but no coat, blonde hair dyed black and swept up in a severe ponytail. She stopped when she saw him and put a hand on her hip. “What are you smoking?”
“I’m not.”
Abby looked at him with that odd, fierce gaze that had been unnerving him all week. “That’s weed. Give me some.”
Jesse coughed into his glove. “I’m not giving weed to my baby sis—”
“I’ll tell Mom you have it. M-oooom!”
“Shut up! Fine! Jesus.”
Jesse felt a qualm as he handed her the joint. He could still picture Abby dancing in pink footie pajamas, brandishing her first lost tooth. “Just take a little. A puff. Not too much.”
Blue eyes twinkling, Abby pinched the roach between black sparkly fingernails and sucked it like a straw.
Jesse gaped. “How long have you been smoking?”
“Oh,” she said, and held her breath. Exhale. Handed it back to him. “A while.”
“Jesus.” Jesse took another hit. When he went to pass it back, Abby shook her head.
“I don’t have much tolerance in this b—…” She smiled goofily and shook her head. “Mm. Hey. Do you have any cigarettes?”
Jesse pulled the packet of Reds from his coat and handed her one. The lesser of two evils, he figured. Abby smoked the cigarette like a death-row inmate, head thrown back. When she coughed, she giggled, which made Jesse giggle.
Abby brushed off a patch of snow and sat next to him on the swing. “I want to ask you a question,” she said. “It’s… for a story I’m writing.”
“Okay.”
She stared at the house as if searching for words in the grooves of the aluminum siding. A sudden breeze blew snow from the roof, a starburst of particles and light.
“Say you had a kid.”
“Oh…kay?”
“And… say you found out you were going to die. But. Say someone could make it so that you didn’t. Have to die. Maybe.”
“What, like… they found a cure?”
“No. I mean… well. I just mean what if someone could fix things? Fix… your life.”
“Abs, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about second chances, Jess.”
Jesse shrugged. “Whatever. Sounds great.”
“But…” Abby took a deep breath. “If someone could give you another chance, to do things differently… so that maybe bad things wouldn’t happen… it might mean she wouldn’t ever be born.”
“She who?”
Jesse caught a flash of Abby’s eyes, and then she was examining her nails on either side of the still-burning cigarette. “Your daughter.” She put her nail in her mouth and chewed it off. Spat, took a drag from the cigarette. Looked at him. “Would you do it?”
Jess laughed. “I’m confused.”
“Damn it, listen. If you could live your life differently so that you might not die, but it meant your daughter might not be born, would you do it?”
“I don’t know. No.”
