Wrong Place Wrong Time

by Gillian McAllister

The way families sometimes bear resemblances that aren’t obvious. Bone structure, the shape of their foreheads, the way they stand: the way they seem to hold potential in their bodies, like runners on the starting blocks.

very specific feeling settles over Jen when she comes here. A kind of just-out-of-reach nostalgia, covered in a fine film of dust, as though she might be able to grasp hold of the past if only she could try hard enough.

This banter of theirs . . . perhaps it does more than it purports to. Perhaps it evades the deeper issues, somehow. Jen thinks sometimes that Kelly is so busy laughing that he never does anything else. Like show how he feels. What’s the bedrock, underneath the banter? Their family has always been so full of charm, exactly what she wanted after her repressed upbringing. But isn’t humor a different kind of repression?

We only think of the bad things that happen, rather than those that, through fortune, pass us by.

Thinking about how we never see the near misses that slide past us, just missing us, arrows just grazing our skin.