“May I join you?”
Mrs. McCall stood at the threshold, wearing a cream-colored sweater over a blue collared shirt, pearl bulbs in her ears. She carried a slender book in one hand and a large Styrofoam tumbler of coffee in the other, the handle of a spoon poking out. I would have given anything to trade her my dainty porcelain cup, which had one last cold sip remaining.
I stood formally. “Good morning, Mrs. McCall.”
She flapped the book at me. Sit. “Did you sleep?”
“I did,” I said, though my head was pounding with the distinct lack of it. “The room is very comfortable. Thank you for your hospitality.”
“You’re good at that.” She lowered herself into the rocking chair. “Instilling confidence in people that what you are saying is true even when it’s not. Some people call that lying.”
I held my breath, wondering if I was about to get my wrist slapped in the very singular way Southern women have. With a wink and a lash.
“Those people ought to examine their diction.” She stirred her coffee with the spoon, arched an eyebrow—didn’t I agree?
I exhaled. “You asked if I had slept, not if I slept well.”
Mrs. McCall raised her Styrofoam cup to that. For a moment, we listened to the song of a shorebird we could not see.
“I thought about you all last night,” she said, gazing out at the sun-blanched scrubland. “About what advice I have to offer you.” She handed me the book. A Statistician’s Guide to Black Swan Events. “Do you know what that is?” she asked while I traced the simple font with my thumb.
I had only ever heard of the term black swan in connection with the ballet. I shook my head.
“A black swan event is a highly improbable event but also one that, upon closer examination, was predictable. The sinking of the Titanic is an example of one; so is World War One. These are outcomes that are referred to as outliers on an economist’s model.”
I studied the cover of the book sadly and remembered Mrs. McCall’s sigh from the night before, when she first saw us on her front stoop. I’d thought I detected a measure of inevitability. That something was happening out there in the world, a force hurtling with Newtonian aim toward the object of us.
“But not all black swan events are bad,” Mrs. McCall added. “Some people use the models to play the stock market and get filthy rich.” She blew the surface of her coffee with pursed peach lips, took a slow, careful sip. “The point is that nothing can be predicted, really, and so you want to be sure to expose yourself to luck too. Things can go catastrophically wrong, but they can also go so right as to be profoundly transformative.”
I thanked her for the book and told her I couldn’t wait to read it, though I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less than more profound transformation.
* * *
Tallahassee Memorial Hospital didn’t look like a place where sick people went. The exterior facade was edged in aquatic shades, and a new neurological wing led the way in treating traumatic brain injuries and dementia. It gutted me to think about Denise, blue-lipped in the basement of a building that already looked like the future.
“That’s Mrs. Neilson,” I said to Bernadette and the other girls as we approached a prim woman wringing the silk scarf around her neck. Her timid, hopeful smile made my heart twist in my chest. I knew Eileen had always felt like a bit of a misfit in The House, that her mother had likely advised her to put herself out there more.
“Eileen’s favorite color,” Mrs. Neilson said, a hand cupping her cheek. We had come bearing a yellow blanket and yellow tulips. She hugged us, smelling of cigarettes and all the perfume she had used to try and cover them up. Then she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial register. “I need to chat with all of you before you see Eileen.” She gestured for us to follow her a little ways down the hall, so that Eileen wouldn’t hear what we’d be asked to do.
“I told Eileen you were all coming today, and she’s very excited to see you,” Mrs. Neilson said. “She’s a little embarrassed about her hair, so please don’t stare or comment on it.”
“Of course, Mrs. Neilson,” I said.
“But that’s not all. See—” Mrs. Neilson paused to center the knot in her scarf and collect her thoughts. She was a more angular, anxious version of her daughter. More than once I’d heard Eileen on the phone with her, insisting that she stop worrying already. She was making friends, going on dates. She was having fun living in The House. “Eileen doesn’t have any memory of Saturday night. She thinks she’s been in a car accident.”