Page 57 - WTP Vol. XI #6

a way, with big brown eyes that Caroline had inherited; other pictures over the years had shown her that she had
a girl-version of his face. There’s the Mom, pretty much over-smiling, because weren’t they such a happy family? She played to the camera because she was a musician,
and comfortable performing, and she laughed easily but she had a mean streak. There’s the older sister, Paulie, about twenty, with a Shag haircut very in-fashion then, and an expression that said, I know I am sexy, and a low- cut blouse that exposed some inches of cleavage. There’s the brother, Wally, looking all nerdish before he’d turned to dog-breeding. And there’s herself, awkward and self- consciously not photogenic, staring off to the left instead of into the camera, because she knows she is not like her sister or mother, not sexy, like Paulie, or trying to be (how Paulie would have made fun of her!), not performing Beauty because she was not much of a performer; besides, she was the one who had learned how to study, and that’s how she had made her life.
Then Caroline’s head began to ache, and what she didn’t know is that that knock on the head had been spreading crowds of disfunctions among her cerebral neurons. Seated at her desk, she leaned her head
on her hand and noticed how much dog hair was clinging to the edges of her keyboard and fuzzing
up the screen. Then she remembered Metonymy and that it worked like this: a dog hair—a part—meant a dog—a whole. Metonymy varied a bit from Indexical Representation, by which category you knew a dog had been by because of a smelly pile, for instance. So Ramón might be represented in that way, by a smelly pile. What about herself? What Metonym said she had been by, in the world, passing through? Like Ramón, she left hairs around, but her smelly piles went down the toilet. She puzzled over consequences. Did a
dog have a consequence if it wasn’t a breeding dog? Yes! She said aloud—Happiness! Did she have a consequence if she didn’t make a baby, etc.? Yes! She said aloud—quietly, meekly, trying to believe it was true. Unlike just about every other female creature on the planet, she had not made babies or consequences, and although this made her feel evolutionarily trivial, she was also relieved: She would leave no orphans when she died; she would not leave a very heavy footprint of her life, and this was consistent with recycling and general conservation practices.
~
Sent in a different box, it all might have been very funny. But the whole surrogate idea was not for saying that loudly on a box on the stoop where there was no
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T
ache, and what
she didn’t know is that that knock on the head had been spreading crowds of disfunctions among her cerebral neurons.
hen Caroline’s
head began to
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