How I Met Charmaine
by Harrison Kim
As a child in 1982, I’d lost my grandmother’s engagement ring. It looked so shiny! I’d accidentally dropped it out the window, and it vanished down the sewer drain. In December 2021, to my surprise, I opened a can of cat food and discovered Grandma’s distinct gold band floating on top of the tuna water.
“I found your ring, Grandma,” I called.
Unfortunately, she had passed away in 1995, and the only one within hearing distance was my old Siamese cat, Stumpy, who was more interested in eating his dinner.
A few months later, I poured milk on my puffed rice cereal. Out from the carton popped a copper-coloured key. It disappeared into the puffed rice, but I fished it clear with a finger and held it to the light. I was sure that two years before, it had dropped from my pocket when I leaned back too far in a 3D movie theater, surprised by the phantasm of a lion leaping out of the screen. I tried the key in my front door, and it opened perfectly.
“Lucky a thief never got hold of it,” I thought,
I didn’t call it a pattern until I washed my clothes at the Tikki Poo laundry at the cusp of the New Year 2020, wanting to make a fresh clean start, and after I recovered all my duds from the dryer, I noticed an odd pair of underwear, red and white like the Canadian flag and upon the back were stitched blue words that read “The Joker.”
This underwear was a dead ringer for a pair I’d accidentally dropped down a pit toilet ten years before, while camping in a forestry site north of Lone Butte, B.C.
I’ve always had a feeling that I had a guardian angel. Who else could find and gather these lost items together and place them in these random places for me to pick up? On the other hand, why would a guardian angel do this?
In the case of the key, the angel would have had to search behind that theatre seat that very afternoon, pick up the item, and keep it on his or her person until an opportune time presented itself at the milk factory. Then he or she would have to drop the key in the very carton I was going to buy.
How would anybody know it was this carton, even a guardian angel, unless of course all events are preordained? In that case, the angel would be acting automatically, without intent, randomly tossing the key. It wouldn’t matter in which opening it landed, that carton would be destined to reach me, like puberty or old age.
It did strike me for a moment that perhaps the entire universe operated around me personally, that these events occurred because I was at its centre. Then again, these were only three items out of the dozens I’d lost. In particular, the underwear seemed an odd one for the universe to return.
The strangest and best finding happened about six months ago. Back in high-school math class, around 1995, Charmaine, this rather frumpy girl with a high-pitched voice, kept asking to borrow my pencil. A brainy person, she’d often requested a game of chess at lunch hour. She always chose me, maybe because she usually won, or it could have been she found my style amusing; she constantly laughed at my moves.
After graduation, I passed her on the street. She heaved a big backpack over her shoulders and called out for two dollars in spare change. I gave her ten.
“Thanks, I’ll get lost now,” she said.
In April 2021 I went up to my bedroom as usual. And there Charmaine lay, sprawled on top of the sheets, a sheaf of blank paper in front of her and a pencil in her mouth... wearing only what very clearly resembled a second pair of my joker underwear. Unlike the last time I’d seen her, she appeared svelte and well-toned, and I didn’t recognize her right away, but when I asked how she’d invaded my bedroom, her soprano voice gave her away.
“It doesn’t matter how, what matters is I’m here.”
“I’ll bring the chess set from the cupboard,” I told her, knowing I’d lost that set five years before while playing my cousin on the back of a speedboat in the middle of Shuswap Lake. The driver had accelerated quickly, just as I put my cousin’s Queen in check, and all the pieces and the board itself had flown off the back deck.
I was certain, considering past events, that when I opened the cupboard door I’d find that set, but instead stood an old guitar I couldn’t remember whether I’d lost or not. I played it at an all-night stag party back in 2003, and I think it might have ended up under a chainsaw. But now it presented all in one piece. When I lifted it out, the strings sounded in perfect tune.
I took the guitar to the bedroom and began to play “Morning Has Broken.”
It turned out Charmaine was also a big fan of Cat Stevens. We hit it off on the music front and then in romance. She’s still with me now. Yesterday I proposed, using my grandmother’s ring as the engagement token.
This morning I lost my credit card. I’m not sure if I should cancel it, because maybe it’ll show up in a couple of years inside a birthday balloon, but as Charmaine tells me, I think about things too much and maybe I should just let them happen and be grateful.
It’s not about being the center of the universe or having a guardian angel.
“As long as you don’t lose your mind, you’ll be fine,” Charmaine says.
Copyright © 2022 by Harrison Kim
