Oliver Hasp was born impatient. Procrastination, impatience with oneself, haunted him from birth. He didn’t turn his head down until well after the surgical removal from his mother’s womb, and was disappointed in himself for it.
Mrs. Hasp held a diminutive statue of Saint Caesarius of Terracina during the procedure. In her other hand, she held the gurney’s edge. Her journey did not admit disappointment; Mark Hannover was not at the birth and this, as usual, was unremarkable.
Belief was idolized in every book and cranny of the large St. Charles house. Each member was faithful to the fault lines. Bethany Hasp was not willful, and yet she did all that was necessary. Her husband forcibly expressed his will outside the house, the place his morality and position allowed it. Oliver, with his mother’ surname, came to believe in both his maternal and paternal inheritance: competing definitions of perfection.
Learning to walk under one tutor was a matter of balance, tendency, and attention. Under an occasional other, Oliver was to pull himself up and move himself around – each tiny, socked foot should be an instrument of the upstairs conductor.
All in good time and on time at all costs; the essential yin and yang of the Hasp-Hannover household. Guilt as a matter of sin’s certainty and failure of self-control.
Language was an early battle, a power struggle fought on uneven ground. Would the perfect recitation or the casual experimentation win the pedagogical day? At five, small Oliver twisted into knots whenever called to read, as if at an early Bar mitzvah, to his father. On the contrary, as Bethany cross-stitched halos onto cherubs in the background, Oliver made calligraphic copies of whole pages of the Latin Vulgate Bible.
Early contrived confidence before judgmental adults had its benefits. The small market-grocery down the street was filled with Oliver’s admirers, often offering a secret extra cookie should he give a dramatic reading of the nutrition facts from another cereal box.
Roman Ryan 