When I was a young child they thought I was born blind or crazy. I cried and screamed almost endlessly. When I was old enough to walk I stumbled, put my hands over my eyes, and seemed to trip and fall over unseen obstacles. My misery, the visits to doctors, the many theories about what was wrong with me, the utter failure to fix me, it all drove my parents into a deep grief. Then, as I’ve been told, when I was about three years old, my difficulties slowly lessened and life became almost normal. I could walk and talk and play with other children. My hearing and vision were tested and I was given a clean bill of health. My mother declared it a miracle, and my father could play catch with me just like a normal child.
But the other children could tell I was not right. They could see it in the way I watched them, watched things, how I paid attention to things that weren’t there. In the neighborhood, there was a place where the main road curved around a low hill and then came into our street. Sometimes we played at the base of the hill because it was flat and grassy and we kicked a ball around and ran into each other. We were children, we didn’t know the road had a blind spot right there. On a sunny day in late spring, one of my friends, a wiry kid named Mario, dived after the ball and ran into the street, and just as he crossed the curb I caught up to him and tackled him to the hard concrete and broke his arm. As the rest of the children yelled at us, a candy-apple red ’68 Mustang roared past, just inches from Mario’s head as he stared at me in pain and shock. One of the girls came up and pulled me off of him. I stared at nothing and muttered, “I saw him die.” I shook all over and fell back down. My parents put me to bed for three days.
You know, I thought everybody could see the edges, I thought I was like all the other children, like all the other people. I thought it was normal to see the edges. But nobody else can, I guess. Nobody I know, anyway. It’s like you see everything in overlaps, and it makes everything have sharp edges. I see a dog on the street, I see the dog in four or five places, and a blur of movement where he might have but probably didn’t go, the four or five most likely places, and two or three overlapping dogs… all the same dog, but they are are all the maybe dogs. Maybe he lifted his snout, maybe he didn’t but turned his head a bit. I can see both maybe dogs and the edge is sharp where they overlap. Everything is edges, except stuff that’s solid and in one piece forever, like the ground and buildings.
The rest is maybe cars, and maybe people and they are all edges. I see my teacher in the hall and I see him take a step and I can see him stumble or not stumble and maybe stop or maybe keep on going, and if he’s indecisive there are maybe four or five of him and where a couple overlaps the edges, the edges are sharp.
See, as a kid, I eventually grew into it, it became normal to me. I thought everyone saw the edges like I do. I can see you in the chair right now, and one of you closed the notepad, another is still scribbling and one of you is holding your pen and chewing on it and where you overlap the edges are sharp enough to cut me.
I only see a second or so apart, so I don’t see a hundred maybe yous or a hundred maybe dogs or a hundred maybe cars when I’m looking at the street. But a few maybe candy-apple red Mustangs came around the corner one second before most of them did and I broke Mario’s arm. You’re giving me that funny look, most of you.
Okay, reach into your desk drawer, and just take a hold of something, think about taking it out. Big blue eraser. Ha! Do it again. Staple remover. Knife, I see you did take that one out. No, it’s not a trick, it’s not a joke. The joke was played on me when I was born. Seeing stuff this way is not often useful, but it is frustrating and often depressing.
I try not to watch live television anymore. I don’t go to sporting events. I tried going to a casino once and playing roulette. It’s not before long enough, with the ball, I can’t quite get it. But I see bad things and good things just before they happen. But sometimes I’m wrong, or I changed the maybes, and that’s why we’re talking, of course.
I had to kill him, most of the maybe hims were pushing me in front of the train, so I grabbed him and let his momentum carry him over the edge in my place. It only took a second, not enough time to think, just react, and I saw all of the maybe hims, almost all, die, four or five times. The edges where his face came together and then when he was torn apart… I’m tired of seeing it all. You can put me to death. I’ll see it half a dozen times and that might be a form of atonement.