“No. All I know is it's supposed to be funny.”
        “Good.” She arches her back and releases a deep sigh. “I'm ready for something light.”
        “Hush,” David scolds from the row of seats immediately in front of our own. Michael and Daniel sit on either side of him in the nearly empty theater, staring at the white screen in respectful silence.
        The date is April 30, 1996. In two days you will join the rest of us in the wide, white world, where another long journey awaits us all.

        I thought I made myself perfectly clear.
        You did, you made yourself perfectly clear, but something's come up.
        What?
        Well, it's something kinda small, but it might be a big problem. I'm pregnant.
        Huh?
        I'm pregnant. I've got a doctor's test, I've got a certificate, and there's no doubt about it: I'm gonna have your baby.

        You're right: That doesn't sound like your mother and me—and it isn't. It's dialogue from a TV soap opera one of the kidnappers is watching in Fargo, a scene even hardcore Coen brothers fans might not immediately recognize. What you need to understand, my long-awaited one, is the simple fact that in my mind the story of your first summer is inextricably linked with the film I pictured for you when you were still swimming in the lightless world of your mother's womb. I don't know why, but the scenes I recall most vividly are moments when the characters are watching television. In my mind's eye I can picture almost perfectly the tall, blond kidnapper whose trademark phrase is “Pancakes House” as he leans forward on the ratty sofa in the lakeside cabin where Mrs. Lundegaard is held hostage, bound and gagged with a bag over her head. I see him gaping at the snowy black and white TV, his lips parted in astonishment as the soap star delivers the stunning news of her pregnancy.
        When your mother told me she was pregnant with what turned out to be your oldest brother, the news produced no such surprise. After all, we'd been trying, finally, after eight years of talking about it. If talk alone did the job, your mother and I could have replenished the human race all by ourselves. I was the one who'd dragged his feet, the one with doubts, the one who “didn't understand what it means to have children.” Conventional middle class life didn't interest me. I was going to be a writer, I proclaimed with funereal gravity, and go wherever the writing life took me. Which turned out to be Manhattan, Kansas, where you were born.
        For eight years your mother listened and argued. Then, finally, demanded.

                                2