Meant to Be

‘I wish people meant what they say.’

I say this because my brother has just promised our mother he will visit on Sunday, and he won’t. Bram hasn’t visited our mother on a Sunday in fourteen months, though he has promised to on eleven separate occasions; I know the number because Mum marks his visits on the kitchen calendar before they happen. BRAM — LUNCH is written this Sunday in blue ink, beneath a small drawing of a chicken.

“You don’t know that,” she says. I tell her I absolutely do.

“He might come,” she says. I tell her he won’t. She looks at the chicken for a while, then says she’ll get a small one.

This is how Bram’s promises work. He makes them; Mum shops for them; I dispose of the evidence.

The woman sitting opposite us clears her throat, and until that moment I had genuinely forgotten she was there. Her name is Celia Mertens, and according to the card she gave me twenty minutes ago, she works for the Department of Exceptional Statistical Events.

She has spent those twenty minutes explaining why three laboratories, two insurance companies and an algorithm belonging to the Belgian National Lottery have concluded that I am temporarily capable of influencing probability — not enough to fly or cure cancer or make Bram less of an arsehole by force, but apparently enough for one limited preferential adjustment.

I had assumed she was selling insurance. Mum offered her tea; she declined it and offered me a wish instead.

“You should formulate carefully,” she says.

“I just did.”

“I assumed that was conversational.”

“It wasn’t. That’s my wish.”

Celia studies me the way people study a stain they can’t quite place. Mum studies me too. When I ask what, Mum says nothing; she’d just thought I might wish for something useful. Like her hip, it turns out, though she’d told me only that morning her hip was fine. Celia raises one finger and informs us, gently, that the adjustment cannot compel sincerity, alter thoughts or emotions or free will, or determine what a speaker means — it can only favour circumstances in which a voluntarily expressed statement remains consistent with the speaker’s intended meaning.

I tell her that’s perfect.

She tells me it really isn’t.

I ask where I sign.

Nothing happens. No thunder, no flickering lights. The kettle clicks off behind me. Bram’s name remains on Sunday. When I ask if it worked, Celia says that depends on whether the registration was accepted. I ask if she doesn’t know. She says they monitor outcomes, not causes. There’s a department for causes, apparently.

She hands me her card and leaves. Mum watches her go through the window, calling her a strange woman, as if she hadn’t been the one to let her in because she had identification — the same way she once let a man clean her gutters because he arrived with a ladder. He did do a lovely job, she reminds me.

My phone rings. Bram. I answer on speaker. He’s just calling to say Sunday might be difficult — Anke’s parents are coming; he’d forgotten. Mum closes her eyes while I ask how he managed to forget in the twenty minutes since he promised her lunch. He says he’ll make it up to her. From the kitchen comes a small, entirely unsupernatural sound: Mum opening the fridge. Then Bram says he’ll come tonight instead. Something in his voice has changed. I remind him he hates driving after work, has the kids, lives ninety kilometres away. He says he knows. He’s coming anyway.

He arrives at seven forty-three with both children asleep in the back of the car. I enjoy this more than I should.

For the first week I enjoy almost everything. My manager tells me he’ll look at my proposal that afternoon and sends comments at 4:52. The plumber promises between eight and ten and appears at 9:12. Jonas ends a call with “See you soon” and rings back twelve minutes later to negotiate what soon means.

We settle, gratefully, on Wednesday. People begin to grow careful around me. Bram stops saying definitely. My manager develops a fondness for possibly. Mum, who has always understood the danger of language better than the rest of us, changes almost nothing.

Then she falls. It happens on a Thursday morning while I am at work.

By the time I reach the hospital she is awake, furious about the state of her hair, waiting for a scan. Bram is already there, which I hadn’t expected. She called him first, he says, because I panic. I deny this. He reminds me I reorganised her spice rack the day Dad had his biopsy. I point out there was oregano from 2009 in there and Mum doesn’t even cook. He smiles. For ten minutes we are children again, sitting outside a room where an adult decides what happens next.

The doctor tells us Mum has fractured her pelvis. No surgery probably, but rehabilitation with recovery that will take time — how much time, hard to say, which means, apparently, exactly that.

I dislike him immediately.

Mum looks tiny under the blanket. She tells me she’s ruined Sunday, on account of the chicken, free-range. Bram laughs; I don’t. I tell her to forget the bloody chicken. She looks at me, frightened. Because I need her to stop looking that way, I take her hand and tell her that whatever happens, I’ll stay with her.

The room goes very quiet. Not actually quiet — a machine keeps beeping, a trolley goes past, Bram is opening a packet of biscuits — but I hear the sentence after I’ve said it. So does he. His hand stops inside the packet. “Elise,” he says. I ask what. He only looks at me. I say oh, for God’s sake. Mum frowns and asks what; I tell her nothing, though she says you said — and I tell her I know what I said.

The first test comes that evening. A nurse tells me visiting hours ended twenty minutes ago; I kiss Mum and start for the door. At that exact moment the fire alarm goes off. Nobody panics, apparently this happens often. Eight minutes later, the alarm stops. I try again. Mum is sick. I stay. At half past eleven, once she’s finally asleep, I pick up my coat. The woman in the next bed goes into cardiac arrest. I stay while the room fills with people. At six minutes past one they move Mum to a small observation room because the other patient’s family needs privacy. There is a recliner beside the bed. I say, for fuck’s sake. The nurse smiles and tells me I can sleep there if I like.

I call Celia. She answers on the fourth ring and asks if I know what time it is. I say I said something. She says that happens. When I tell her what — that I’d stay with my mother whatever happens — there is a silence, then, “Ah,” and I hate how much information is contained in that syllable. I want to clarify. She tells me you can’t retroactively clarify a registered semantic event: I registered everything the moment I made the adjustment; she gave me the terms — a link, eighty-four pages — and what matters now is what I actually meant when I said it. I look at Mum, asleep, mouth slightly open, and tell Celia I meant I wouldn’t abandon her. Then you’re fine, she says. I can’t leave the hospital, I tell her. Have you tried? Three times. Then apparently, she says, you meant something more literal. Probability doesn’t parse grammar, Elise. It preserves intention.

And I don’t answer, because I know. I meant: I will be the one who stays. Not Bram. Me. The dependable one, the one who remembers medication and appointments and whether there’s milk in the fridge. The good daughter.

Mum comes home twelve days later. So do I — not to my own home, to hers. Every attempt to resume my life fails with a statistical creativity I begin, despite myself, to admire. The first morning I try to leave for work, the home-care nurse gets food poisoning. The next day the walker loses a wheel. On Friday I make it all the way to the office before Mum calls to say she smells gas. There is no leak, but there is a dead mouse behind the fridge; an electrician finds a melted socket while looking for the smell. Celia, when I call her, sounds pleased. I tell her I see an elderly woman with a dead mouse; she tells me she’s documenting.

Bram offers to take over for the weekend and arrives Friday evening with a suitcase. By 8:15 his daughter has a fever; by 8:40 his wife has called; by 9:03 he’s gone. He stands in the doorway looking genuinely ashamed, saying he tried. I tell him I know — and that’s the worst part. Before the wish I could have blamed him. Now I know exactly when he means something. It turns out he means almost everything. He simply doesn’t always manage it. The distinction, I’m learning, is enormous.

Weeks pass. Mum improves. I don’t. My manager stops pretending the remote work is temporary. Friends stop asking after I cancel a fourth time. Jonas — whom I’ve been seeing for six months and have carefully avoided making any promises to — starts coming to Mum’s house every Wednesday. One night he finds me crying in the utility room, because it’s the only room with a lock. You can’t keep doing this, he says. I know. Then stop. I can’t. You literally can.

No — literally is the problem. So I tell him everything: the department, Celia, the wish, Bram, the hospital, the sentence. He listens without interrupting. When I finish, he tells me it’s the stupidest wish he’s ever heard. I thank him. He asks whether I could genuinely have asked for anything. Within limits, I say. That’s an insane amount of power to hand an annoyed person, he says. I agree. He sits on the washing machine and asks what happens if my mother dies. Don’t, I tell him. You said whatever happens, he says. Stop. He does, because he means to.

The next morning I call Celia and ask her exactly that. This time she doesn’t pretend not to understand. We don’t know, she says. Has this happened before? Not precisely. What does the model predict? A continuing preference for circumstances consistent with your intended statement. In English, I say. You intended not to leave her, she says. My stomach turns. Mum would be dead. I ask what circumstances would keep me with a dead person. Celia goes quiet in a way that tells me she knows and doesn’t want to say. I imagine funerals cancelled by administrative error, coffins delayed, crematoriums closed, death certificates misplaced — a universe bending itself around my determination to remain the daughter who stays. Fix it, I tell her. I can’t. Then find someone who can.

There is, it turns out, one procedure. Celia arrives that afternoon with a grey folder marked FORM 22-C — VOLUNTARY SUSPENSION OF SEMANTIC INTEGRITY, and I laugh for almost a minute before asking whether it makes me a liar. Legally, no, she says. Metaphysically? We don’t use that term. What term do you use? Non-binding speaker. That’s worse. She explains that the wish can be neutralised if I permanently exempt myself from it — everyone else’s sincere statements will go on receiving their quiet favour, mine won’t, ever. My promises will have no adjustment behind them, no invisible correction, just words, the way everyone else’s have always been. There’s another condition, of course. To suspend it, I have to first deliberately break the statement that created the conflict. I have to leave Mum. She still needs me, I say. Yes. For how long? Long enough that leaving is true, which strikes me as spectacularly vague, though apparently they’ve appealed the wording.

Through the kitchen doorway I can see Mum at the table doing a crossword, Bram beside her. He’s started coming every Tuesday and Saturday now, not because he has to. I know because he’s stopped promising and simply arrives instead. I can’t, I tell Celia. Then don’t, she says, closing the folder. It annoys me, mostly because she means it.

The next morning I pack a bag. Mum watches from the hallway and asks where I’m going. Home. For how long? I don’t know. She nods, no accusation, no fear, which somehow makes it worse. I tell her Bram’s coming at ten, the nurse has my number, her tablets are in the blue container, don’t use the stairs. If anything happens — I stop there. She smiles and says, if anything happens, something happens. I hate this philosophy of hers. I pick up the bag. At the front door my hand won’t turn the key — not physically, nothing supernatural holding it. I simply don’t want to. Then I understand: the universe was never trapping me. It was agreeing with me. Every missed nurse, every broken walker, every convenient emergency had given me exactly what I wanted: proof that I was necessary.

Behind me Mum says my name, and when I turn she says one word — go — so I do.

Nothing happens. No alarm, no phone call, no collapsing ceiling. I walk to my car. It starts. At the end of the street I begin laughing, then crying, then laughing again, which is dangerous while driving, so I pull over. Celia is waiting outside my flat when I get there. I tell her that people like her are creepy. She calls it an occupational requirement, holds out the folder, and I sign Form 22-C on the bonnet of my car. That’s it? That’s it. How will I know? You won’t.

That evening Bram calls to say Mum’s fine, they had dinner, he fixed the cupboard under the sink, which wasn’t broken, he admits, though it’s now significantly less broken than it was. I smile. He says he’ll call me tomorrow, then goes quiet, and we both wait. Do you mean that, I ask. Yes. Okay.

He doesn’t call the next day. At 11:47 p.m. I notice, and for a few seconds I am furious, and then I start laughing.

Two weeks later I visit Mum. There’s a chicken in the oven and Bram is supposed to come. At one o’clock he isn’t there. At quarter past, Mum carves the chicken anyway. At twenty-three minutes past, the doorbell rings, and Bram stands outside soaked from the rain, holding flowers from a petrol station, apologising for the traffic. Mum lets him in. Nobody asks whether he meant to be late.

After lunch I wash the dishes while he dries. Same time next week? he says. Maybe, I tell him. He looks at me. Maybe? I say yes. It is the first promise I’ve made in months. And for once, the universe has the good sense to mind its own business.