Kalila by Rosemary Nixon Page A

waves that build and rush, bowling these perfect-postured doctors over. They’re trying to keep the focus, keep things within their control. Well, there’s not enough room for everyone on this stage. It’s the doctors’ turn to get off.
    Dr. Vanioc says again, quite gently, Parents’ memories depend on the final outcome. You must use common sense.
    When has common sense been a reliable guide to understanding the universe? Light cracks the small window. We will take our daughter home.

You have a field of view, you tell your grade ten science class in your sun-dappled winter classroom. The sounds of shouts and a smacked volleyball resonate from the gym. You can measure this field with a microscope.
    The students gather their rulers and crowd in. The smell of teenagers. The smell of gum and salami sandwiches, sweat and hair gel.
    We start off on low power, you say. This is magnified forty times. Put your rulers under your microscopes. Your students comply. See the millimetre lines? Your job is to determine your circle of vision. How many millimetres it is from one side of the circle to the other?
    The students measure.
    Now increase the power by ten times to four hundred. What’s your field of vision compared to what it used to be?
    One-tenth the size it was before.
    What does this mean?
    Your students look at you.
    The more power you use — ?
    â€” the more detailed the observation of your specimen.
    The more power you have, the narrower your field of vision.
    Exactly, you say. The more power you have, my friends, the less you see of the whole.



A dinner invitation. Dinah Engagement , Brodie calls it. A British couple twice our age from church. We barely know them. A sympathy invite, clearly, but what the hell. They invited us months ago, again just before Christmas, though they hadn’t in the four years we knew of them before Kalila’s birth, so we politely and firmly turned them down. But suddenly, I’m up for anything. A chinook has blustered in this Friday afternoon, the air is heady, teasing, gusty, defying anybody not to feel flirtatious. Our first outing since Brodie’s school dance. Celebration in the air. Children, pumped on the wind’s energy, race, chasing caps, laughing, pushing each other down Calgary’s melting streets. A chinook brings “miracle” into the realm of belief: There’s a chinook out there. Anything can happen.
    Brodie steps in the door as I’m slipping into my black brocade pants, a dark blue silk blouse, my blue-black sapphire earrings. Shit! I snag a cuticle on my blouse. It’s palpable: something in the air that disallows unhappiness. An energy zapping between us that we can’t ignore. Brodie takes my face in his hands, entangles himself against me, says, Maggie, you’re so pretty.
    My pants are too big.
    Last Christmas, pre-pregnancy, these were new; now they hang across my hips. Just to verify this, Brodie sticks his hand down the front, says, Good Lord! So they are! I laugh, wiggle away. It’s our Before Life. The one we were nonchalantly living when this one came along and whammed us broadside, knocking us onto another track, heading god knows where. But our world has shifted: it’s veering back in the right direction.
    What are their names again? Brodie asks.
    Brodie! For God’s sake! Irvin and Virginia. Try to remember!
    Grinning, Brodie splashes cologne on his face. I know what he’s thinking: Maggie’s old voice, her irritated voice. Her the-worst-thing-in-my-life-right-now-is-your-lack-of-memory voice. Brodie hasn’t a care. Virginia and Irvin. Irvin and Virginia. The baby’s coming home! Brodie practises conversation openers. So I hear you British like to conquer. I slap his hand.
    Half an hour later we spin out the door under a sky of rolled-back blue. Gusts whirl what little snow there is, scoop leaves from shining streets and hurl them at the car. Brodie has to grab tight to