Life Expectancy

were simply glued shut by dust and tears. I knew this to be a lie, but I took comfort from it, anyway.
        Eventually someone said, "The leg can't be saved."
        I didn't know if he was a person in a dream or a real doctor, but I responded in a voice that sounded like me if I had been a frog prince:
        "I need both legs. I'm a storm chaser."
        Thereafter, I sank uncounted fathoms into an abyss where the dreams were too real to be dreams, where mysterious behemoths stood guard over me but always at the periphery of vision, and where the air smelled of cherry tart flambe.
        Six weeks later, Lorrie Lynn Hicks came to dinner. "She looked prettier than pom mes a la Sevillane. Never at any meal previously had I spent so little time admiring the food on my plate.
        Candles in ruby-red, cut-crystal chimneys cast soft trembling geometries on the silk moire walls and shimmering amber circles on the coffered mahogany ceiling.
        She outshone the candlelight.
        Over the appetizer-sesame-baked crab-my father said, "I've never known anyone whose mother is a snake handler."
        "A lot of women take it up because it sounds fun," Lorrie said, "but it's a lot harder than they think. Eventually they give it up."
        "But surely it's still fun," my mother said.
        "Oh, yes! Snakes are great. They don't bark, claw the furniture, and you'll never have a rodent problem."
        "And you don't have to walk them," Mom added.
        "Well, you can if you want, but it freaks out the neighbors. Maddy, this crab is fabulous."
        "How does a snake handler make money from it?" Dad wondered.
        "Mom has developed three primary revenue streams. She provides a variety of snakes to movie and TV productions. There for a while, it seemed every music video used snakes."
        My mother was delighted: "So she rents out the snakes."
        Dad asked, "By the hour, the day, the week?"
        "Usually by the day. Even a snake-heavy movie only needs them for maybe four, five days."
        "There isn't a movie these days that wouldn't be improved by a lively bunch of snakes," Grandma Rowena declared. "Especially that last Dustin Hoffman thing."
        "People who rent snakes by the hour," Lorrie said somberly, "are for the most part not reputable."
        This intrigued me. "I've never heard of a disreputable snake-rental company."
        "Oh, they're around, all right." Lorrie grimaced. "Very tacky outfits. They rent to individuals by the hour, no questions asked."
        Dad, Mom, and I exchanged baffled looks, but Weena knew the score: "For erotic purposes."
        Dad said, "Yuch," and Mom said, "Creepy," and I said, "Grandma, sometimes you scare me."
        Lorrie wanted to make one thing clear: "My mother never rents snakes to individuals."
        "When I was a child," Weena said, "Little Ned Yarnel, the boy next door, was bit by a rattlesnake."
        "A free snake or a rented one?" Dad asked.
        "Free. Little Ned didn't die but he got gangrene. They had to amputate-first a thumb and finger, then everything to the wrist."
        "Jimmy, dear," Mom said, "I'm so glad we didn't have to cut your leg off."
        "Me too."
        Dad raised his wineglass. "Let's drink to our Jimmy not being an amputee."
        After the toast, Weena said, "Little Ned grew up to be the only one-handed bow-and-arrow champion ever to compete in the Olympics."
        Amazed, Lorrie said, "That isn't possible."
        "Dear girl," Weena said, "if you think there were lots of one-handed Olympic bow-and-arrow champions, you can't know much about the sport."
        "Of course, he didn't win gold," Dad clarified.
        "A silver medal," Grandma admitted. "But he'd have won the gold if he'd had two eyes."
        Putting down her fork to punctuate her astonishment, Lorrie said, "He was a cyclops?"
        "No," my mother said, "he had two eyes. He just couldn't see out of one of them."
        "But don't you need depth perception to be good-at something like the bow and arrow?" Lorrie wondered.
        Proud of her childhood friend, Weena said, "Little Ned had something better than depth perception. He had spunk. Nothing could keep Little Ned down."
        Picking up her fork again, taking the last morsel of crab from her plate, Lorrie said, "I'm fascinated to know if Little Ned might also have been a dwarf."
        "What a peculiar but somehow