20 Questions

Have you played with that little round 20Q electronic game? It promises to guess what you’re thinking of in twenty questions. You can answer yes, no, sometimes or unknown. It’ll go up to twenty-five questions if it doesn’t get it in twenty. But if you answer the questions honestly, it usually guesses right. So far I’ve tried bats, the Eiffel Tower, and martinis. I can’t really figure what that combination says about me. But anyway, it did fine on those, though it said “monument” for the Eiffel Tower, and “vodka” for martinis, which seems close enough, though I prefer gin.

So now I turn on the 20Q, which fits neatly in my palm, it says I know what you’re thinking! Then it says Ready?

Sure, I’m ready. (Yes.)

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral or Other?

Other.

Do you hold it when you use it?

No.

Is it larger than a microwave oven?

Unknown.

Does it get wet?

No.

Is it round?

No.

Does it break if dropped?

No.

Can you touch it?

No.

Do you know any songs about it?

Sure do. (Yes.)

You’re not just choosing answers at random are you?

No.

Do you love it?

No

Is it useful?

I guess so. (Yes.)

Have you seen one in real life?

Yes.

Is it colorful?

Unknown.

Would you be lost without it?

Unknown.

Is it an abstract concept?

Yes.

Is it spontaneous?

What the hell is that supposed to mean? (Sometimes.)

Does it communicate?

No.

Really? So much for that idea. Is it used in a game?

No.

Is it colorless?

Unknown.

Does it bring joy to people?

No.

Was it invented?

No.

I’m thinking…It’s Pi (the number)?

No.

Does it move?

No.

Is it a specific color?

Unknown.

Was it used over 100 years ago?

Yes.

Is it larger than a pound of butter?

Unknown.

Is it smaller than a loaf of bread?

Unknown.

I will guess again…It’s a dream?

Actually I was thinking of death, but close enough, I hope.

So I tell 20Q “yes” because I hope that’s the answer and because I hate to have to tell it I finally beat it.

And why am I thinking of death on this lovely, breezy spring day? Because there’s so much of it to go around. Also there’s this thing happening to me and maybe it’s because I’ve been reading Anne Lamott again with my classes, and she’s a self-proclaimed hypochondriac, so the other day I wondered if chapped lips were a sign of cancer and now I’m worried about this other thing.

Here’s what’s been happening. Lately I’ve been noticing lint balls on the carpets, or huddled in corners like small animals. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal; in fact it might be helpful to notice them since we’re getting our house spruced up for sale and probably we should step up the vacuuming and dusting a bit. But what happens is that I think the lint is something else, like a bug, usually. I mean, not just a bug but maybe one of those jumpy things—not a cricket, but you know what I mean? Those brown, jumpy things that come out when it rains and it you hit them too hard and squash them they make a yucky splat?

(Please don’t report me to the Bug Foster Rescue Program or PETA or something. I understand bugs have a right to live in the world, but I also know that if I ended up in their house—huge nightmare material here—they’d kill me. So fair’s fair.)

The problem is I see lint out of the corner or my eye and think it’s one of those jumpy things or—please help me—a roach even, and then I look and it’s just some lint or dog hair, and then finally I have to pick it up so I won’t keep getting fooled by it. I don’t have the time or inclination to haul out the vacuum, so I pinch the lint off the floor and drop it in the nearest trashcan.

And this makes me wonder how many steps I am away from becoming my sweet wonderful grandmother who forgot who I was when I was fourteen and spent the next few years wandering around her own house, which she’d always kept pristine, eyes on her carpets. When she found a piece of lint she bent gently, gently, and plucked it up and placed it in her cupped palm. She made the circuit in one room and then went on to the next before going to the trash can because she was efficient. She’d been a teacher and later, after her three kids were born, a substitute teacher. She was in the habit of getting a lot done, and this stayed with her long after her memories peeled away.

I still miss her, but the truth is, she outlived me by twelve years. Why do I say this? Because after I was fourteen, she didn’t know me anymore. She smiled at me pleasantly enough until she stopped smiling altogether. By then she was in a nursing home. And she hated, hated, specks of anything on the floor. Apparently this is a feature of the dementia that afflicts Alzheimer’s patients.

Once she forgot me, I was in the room with her, but not in the room. Dead and not dead. A dream.

Here is what I think will happen. A boy you dated will die. Your favorite actor. The singer who performed the song you first made love to. The connections will fall away.

Years after he’s gone, you’ll think about that boy. He had cancer. When you kissed him all those years ago, the cells were already warring. Warring and deciding. Defining themselves—this, or this? All of it going on while you were examining his fingers, because he was a musician, and his hands were like a sculptor’s dream of hands.

He was a dream. Is one now. He doesn’t deserve to be shoehorned into a story. Maybe I could conjure him into existence again, question by question.

Was he spontaneous?
Did he bring you joy?
Did you love him?

Knowing the right questions, people say, is the important thing. But I think the answers are, even the simplest ones. Yes or no. Alive or not. Remembered or forgotten, piece by piece.

So reassuring though, to have so many questions, and sometimes the answers, in a small plastic ball. I’d like to program myself in there, so maybe someone might trip across me when trying to get the thing to guess “nuthouse” or “pain” or “hopscotch.” It’s a shot at immortality, however slim.

If only 20Q could guess the future. But then again, that’s what the writers are supposed to do. Write all these lives, and keep ourselves alive, even after no one in the room knows who we are. We have the story, after all.

Would you be lost without it?

Yes.

Quinn Dalton is the author of a novel, High Strung, and two story collections, Bulletproof Girl and Stories from the Afterlife.