would look at things and she would talk about them in her low voice, in her gentle, wondering way. How do the ants know to run for their lives when you come near them? How do the bees tell each other when to swarm and when to fly off? How did anyone ever imagine they could make flour out of wheat or bread out of flour? Then sometimes, in the middle of all this wondering, she would drift away, drift like a leaf on the surface of a slow stream into a silent, distant dream state, gazing. I would climb up over the front of her and touch her cheeks and put my fingers to her lips and press my face up close to hers, but she'd be gone.
As it turned out, those little dazes of hers—they were a kind of seizure, a sort of low-grade epileptic fit. Every time she had one, they did damage to her brain, to a part of her brain called the amygdala. The way I understand it, the amygdala makes emotional
connections for you. You see an angry face, and your amygdala tells you to be afraid. You see a chocolate bar, and it tells you to be happy. When your amygdala goes wonky, like my mother's did, you start making all kinds of connections you shouldn't. You start to see a lot of coincidences everywhere, and every coincidence seems amazing and meaningful. It's like one long "Aha!" A cartoon lightbulb over your head that can't be turned off.
The doctors said the condition wasn't usually genetic, but they couldn't be sure in her case. Usually, they said, it was brought on by a trauma of some kind, a concussion, a fever, something like that. But with my mother, no one could figure out where it had come from. So it might've been inherited and it might've been passed on, in turn, to my brother and me. The doctors just didn't know.
So I worried. Whenever I found myself gazing into space that way, the way I was doing that evening in the television room, I'd come back to myself and get worried that what happened to my mother was happening to me. Sometimes when I'd notice a coincidence, or when I'd feel a fact or an event was particularly significant or important, I wouldn't trust myself. I'd think: Is this the start of it? Is it happening to me, too?
I came out of it now. Sitting there on the couch, I blinked and looked around. I thought of my mother, and a small clutch of anxiety tightened my chest.
I forced myself to focus on the TV.
There was a beautiful woman on the screen now. The sight of her reached through my troubled thoughts and touched off a small soothing cloud of desire in my loins. It was a soft-focus montage of a movie actress I recognized: Juliette Lovesey. There was Juliette stepping out of a car, Juliette walking down a red carpet, Juliette adjusting her bathing suit at the beach, all in slow motion. She was small and slender but shapely with a wonderful cleavage she
kept on display. She had a face of fabulous fragility and yearning framed in achingly limp brown hair.
Now there were images of another actress, Angelica Eden. I felt the stirring of lust again and again it comforted me. Angelica was gorgeous, too, but in a different way. She had sensuous, dark, animalistic features, night black hair, and blood red lips. She had breasts you could drown in, aggressive, engulfing. She was walking along a sidewalk somewhere next to the actor Todd Bingham, a skinny, pretty boy with a wispy little beard.
"As these three mega-stars prepare for the opening of their new film—the first ever in holographic Real 3-D—the question is being asked all over Hollywood: Is this the end of civilization as we know it for Juliette and Todd?" So said the narrator, a perky female—maybe that same Sally Sterling girl, I don't know. "Rumors of an on-set romance between Todd and Angelica have sparked speculation that Todd's fairy-tale engagement to Juliette may be over."
She droned on. The same old thing. The usual celebrity game of pegs and holes. Todd, Juliette, Angelica. A peg with a pretty-boy head attached, and two holes with pretty-girl heads and
As it turned out, those little dazes of hers—they were a kind of seizure, a sort of low-grade epileptic fit. Every time she had one, they did damage to her brain, to a part of her brain called the amygdala. The way I understand it, the amygdala makes emotional
connections for you. You see an angry face, and your amygdala tells you to be afraid. You see a chocolate bar, and it tells you to be happy. When your amygdala goes wonky, like my mother's did, you start making all kinds of connections you shouldn't. You start to see a lot of coincidences everywhere, and every coincidence seems amazing and meaningful. It's like one long "Aha!" A cartoon lightbulb over your head that can't be turned off.
The doctors said the condition wasn't usually genetic, but they couldn't be sure in her case. Usually, they said, it was brought on by a trauma of some kind, a concussion, a fever, something like that. But with my mother, no one could figure out where it had come from. So it might've been inherited and it might've been passed on, in turn, to my brother and me. The doctors just didn't know.
So I worried. Whenever I found myself gazing into space that way, the way I was doing that evening in the television room, I'd come back to myself and get worried that what happened to my mother was happening to me. Sometimes when I'd notice a coincidence, or when I'd feel a fact or an event was particularly significant or important, I wouldn't trust myself. I'd think: Is this the start of it? Is it happening to me, too?
I came out of it now. Sitting there on the couch, I blinked and looked around. I thought of my mother, and a small clutch of anxiety tightened my chest.
I forced myself to focus on the TV.
There was a beautiful woman on the screen now. The sight of her reached through my troubled thoughts and touched off a small soothing cloud of desire in my loins. It was a soft-focus montage of a movie actress I recognized: Juliette Lovesey. There was Juliette stepping out of a car, Juliette walking down a red carpet, Juliette adjusting her bathing suit at the beach, all in slow motion. She was small and slender but shapely with a wonderful cleavage she
kept on display. She had a face of fabulous fragility and yearning framed in achingly limp brown hair.
Now there were images of another actress, Angelica Eden. I felt the stirring of lust again and again it comforted me. Angelica was gorgeous, too, but in a different way. She had sensuous, dark, animalistic features, night black hair, and blood red lips. She had breasts you could drown in, aggressive, engulfing. She was walking along a sidewalk somewhere next to the actor Todd Bingham, a skinny, pretty boy with a wispy little beard.
"As these three mega-stars prepare for the opening of their new film—the first ever in holographic Real 3-D—the question is being asked all over Hollywood: Is this the end of civilization as we know it for Juliette and Todd?" So said the narrator, a perky female—maybe that same Sally Sterling girl, I don't know. "Rumors of an on-set romance between Todd and Angelica have sparked speculation that Todd's fairy-tale engagement to Juliette may be over."
She droned on. The same old thing. The usual celebrity game of pegs and holes. Todd, Juliette, Angelica. A peg with a pretty-boy head attached, and two holes with pretty-girl heads and
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