Nobody much noticed her as a child. Nobody’s supposed to notice a small a. Born an athlete, she grew up on long, slender legs to her point, becoming a capital of quiet beauty. Now A was pregnant, ascending the Alps with her husband THE on their very last climb for a while—since even A-1 members of the Alpine Club never mountaineer in the third trimester.
THE threw her a rope. She caught it as auras of auroras sky-skipped around her, and THE sang out possible names for their little one, while the mountains echoed back: “Alpenglow—glow-glow?”
“Apogee—gee-gee?”
“Something so …”—the altitude made it almost too hard for A to talk—“… so commonplace it’s … extraordinary.”
“An audacious appellation,” her husband announced as she approached him. “That’s what we need! How about Acrophile?”
For the apple of our amour? No! A didn’t say.
As a little girl she couldn’t wait to jump into things, to somersault behind an e to make an eagle fly, or pirouette before twin ps to make an apple pie. Oh, for the chance to leap three times and make an aardvark!
When she got a little older, she loved nothing better than to arrange an assortment of letters and cap them with herself, climbing up an I, then a D, then an E to send an idea into the world. But now she was shy to anticipate. She was expecting—but she tried to avoid expectation. Naming a first child, she despaired, it’s one of the most original acts of a lifetime.
When they reached the crest at last, they perched and ate their snack of almonds and dried apricots. “How about Artichoke?” THE said blithely as he chewed. “Or Argyle?”
A tucked her point under the broad shoulders of his crossbar. “We need something almost invisible,” she mused, “for our little anonymouse.”
THE always napped at the summit, but A felt awakened to the child inside her. Aware of the one to come, she also remembered the child she’d been. It was a slow, slow avalanche of realizations.
She’d proceeded through her early years almost invisibly, except in the eyes of her Aunt AN. It was she who came to recognize wee a’s abilities. “My acrobat,” she would say to her niece, “my tiny mouse.” AN, who was solitary, childless (and quite a bit older than A’s astrologically mismatched, acrimonious parents) trained little a for her roles in life. She taught her the arabesque, the front and back attitudes, the boost. AN’S affection warmed A like a beloved angora sweater. The girl learned her bridge, her cannonball, her handstand, her headspring, her twirl.
But as the old woman became even older, her A began to lose its firm slant. Absorbed with tumbling lessons, her young apprentice hardly noticed. Eventually the valiant elderly article suffered such ague that the legs of her first letter collapsed. She was rushed to St. Anne’s hospital, her surprised niece hovering at her side.
“Will I,” A asked her ailing aunt, “collapse, too?”
“Highly unlikely. Remember, you’re special, you have two jobs to do, unlike the rest of us. You’re a letter, but you’re an article as well. You make words, but like me you introduce them, too. You’ve got to learn to pace yourself. It’s a long life.”
A quaked at the prospect. Two roles—she’d never realized. She’d just pirouetted her way, protected by her elder.
“Put one foot in front of the other,” ancient AN continued, nearly out of breath. “That’s how to live.”
As a child interprets adult wisdom, A decided then and there to be careful always, calculating each and every tumble. She would try her hardest never again to anticipate or leap.
Aunt AN went on for a while but began to lose her point. “You’ll have to do it for me …” she whispered. “You can, you know … You’re the genuine article.”
After hearing those last words, young A descended in the battered hospital elevator to a life in the absence of the anchor of her world. Her parents were so absorbed in arguments she barely saw them. Her friends were uniting with vowels and locking themselves into the interiors of words. She found herself alone.
In anguish A joined the Alpine Club, to refresh herself in the mountain air. Everybody at the club went about their business, and nobody really noticed her—except THE.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said. “You’re the genuine article.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
Suddenly she leapt into his arms.
“That was unanticipated!”
“I know, I gave up anticipation,” A answered. If you give up hope, you give up agony.
“Gave it up?” THE was incredulous. “But that’s what articles do. We go before any person, place, or thing that needs an introduction.”
“Well, I’m not only an article,” A explained. “I’m also a letter. I prefer letter work, actually.”
And so they began climbing together. A was in peak shape, THE certainly didn’t have to be told.
One thing led to another …
Now, while THE slept, A let her legs stretch, her point perk. Her aspirations, if she could admit she had them, glowed like ascending horizons. Aunt AN, A thought, she had aplomb. A felt a fizz of excitement and didn’t quash it. She heard the merest suggestion of applause, and she smelled something, too. The perfume of her aunt’s affection seemed to waft toward her.
Approval seemed to wrap around A, and just as she was relaxing, an outline appeared in the air. Gradually the outline filled in—it was the ghost of Aunt AN materializing, and her robust voice declared: A NAMER AS WELL AS A BEARER BE.
Just as A was about to call “Aunt AN!” the ghost smiled a beneficent smile, and waved, sailing off into the alpine mist.
When she heard him say, “Careful!” A realized THE had woken and, in the haze of her epiphany, he’d already helped her begin the downward slope.
“Whatever will we call our little appaloosa?” he worried again. A just concentrated on her footing.
At last, on the bench at the foot of the mountain, THE moaned, “I’ve never had to name anything before, let alone a child! I precede things. I’m a readiness …”
Slowly A said, “At the apex I—” could she bring it into being? “—apprehended … an apparition.”
“Oh, what of?” THE asked, helping her off with her climbing gear, as if she encountered an apparition every day.
“The ghost of my Aunt AN appeared,” she said, “and the sun was ablaze—this seems absurd, I know—and she said: A NAMER AS WELL AS A BEARER BE.”
“Easy for an apparition to say,” THE sighed.
“But we don’t have to be specific!” A whispered. “We can name our little acorn something as elemental as our own names.” The name could introduce each fresh thing as it rises into the air, could help each reach its apex …
And so she anticipated an advent necessary but not apparent, the sound that’s uttered before an arrival—and taken by all as an article of faith.
“Let’s call our little one AN,” she said.
“Amen,” THE happily breathed.