The Girl

She came through the greeting line. She was a beautiful teenager. Long blond hair. Blue eyes. Cowboy boots. There were stylish holes in her jeans, a flower tattoo on her shoulder, and she wore a perpetual smile.

I was shaking hands, signing books, kissing babies. Soon, it was the young woman’s turn in line, her mother introduced her to me.

“This is my daughter.” Let’s call her Laura.

I hugged Laura’s neck.

The young woman hugged me tightly. It was not your run-of-the-mill hug. It was the kind of hug someone gives you when they really want you to know they care. I felt my ribs creak.

It was hard not to notice how lovely Laura was. She looked like a homecoming queen minus the tiara.

Sadly, I cannot relate to nice-looking teenagers. I was a teenager with a wide waistline, pale skin, buck teeth, moderate-to-severe pimple coverage, obscenely red hair, buckshot freckles, and a crippling affinity for the accordion.

“Do you remember me?” young Laura asked.

I looked at her. I tried to put it together. But nothing was coming to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re going to have to help me remember who you are.”

“I’m Laura.”

“And I’m senile,” said I.

So the girl told me a story to help me remember.

Her story took place eight years ago. She was in the oncology ward. She was 10 years old. She had bone cancer. There wasn’t much to do in the hospital but read. So that’s what she did. She read books.

Somehow she found one author she particularly liked. He wrote short columns. He was a dork. She read his stuff in books at first. She liked him. Which only shows you how bad off she was.

Then she looked up the author online and began reading his column daily.

One summer day, her mother took a chance. The woman reached out and sent the no-’count author a message online.

“Dear Sean, I don’t know why my daughter likes you…” the mother’s flattering message began.

The mother asked whether the author might consider coming to visit her daughter in the hospital. The doctors were not giving her child a good prognosis, Mom told him. Her daughter was expected to be cashing in her chips any day now, so could he come visit?

The author came for a visit. It was only a quick meeting, mind you. He sat beside the little bald girl’s bed for precisely an hour. Which wasn’t long.

But in that time the author figured out that the girl was smart and sweet and funny and charming and happy and optimistic and wonderful. And those were perhaps the best 60 minutes of the author’s life.

But time marches on. Authors get older, and stupider, and forgetful. I’ve heard it said that, with time, men becomes wiser. Sometimes I look back and wonder how I became an exception to the rule.

But no matter how decrepit and forgetful I am, I still remember this kid. I remember the way her little hand held mine before we parted ways in the hospital.

I remember her mother’s tears when she said the girl likely would not see her next birthday. And I remember how, eight years ago, before leaving the hospital, I said “Maybe we’ll see each other again sometime, Laura.”

“Probably not,” Laura said with a smile. “But you never know.”

No. You never do.