Table of Contents
For A.
(1977 – 2007)
Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions, decisions make us.
—All the Names
1.
Instead of where you are, imagine you’re at home sitting on the couch or in your office chair. This could be New York or New Orleans or New Delhi. In any case, try not to be so damn anxious. You’re still on Earth, aren’t you? But who is this you who is and isn’t you?
Oh Christ, calm down. Despite feeling out of character and more worried than usual, take a breath. In order to keep moving, to keep doing the things you’re supposed to be doing, you’re going to have to give yourself orders, imperatives.
Take a deeper breath and begin again with what your senses tell you.
The seat is uncomfortable, true, but you are warm and safe inside this shell. The plane is still on the ground.
It is a fine day out there for flying. And the aircraft does appear new and the latest in aerodynamic technology. Everything smells right—a mix of fresh black coffee, almond-scented hand soap, and artificial rose disinfectant. You’re not going to enjoy the next couple of hours, but it’s better than driving cross-country while a toddler alternates between screaming and fidgeting in the backseat. This is no way to travel—without a wife. Then again, you don’t have much of a choice.
After tearing off the cover of your magazine and a small but significant tantrum, your son finally falls asleep after you crush up a Benadryl and slip it into his bottle of orange juice. You know juice is bad for his eleven teeth, but they’re only baby teeth and you’ll be more careful when he gets older.
You lay him down in the empty seat next to you. Holding his hand, you begin to drift off and in that beautiful state between awake and asleep, you remember childhood insomnia. The only way you could fall asleep was to lie down next to your sister in your parents’ bed—because being scared of the dark or the night or a burglar or a house fire or whatever you were scared of, at least you knew that whatever happened you wouldn’t be alone. She would have to endure it too. Now with your son sitting next to you on take-off, you feel the same way. If this overgrown metal and plastic bird crashes, at least you’ll be together.
You wake up to Owen’s pinching your nose with his entire fist. It is not unpleasant. He wants something to eat; you offer him Cheerios, a Granny Smith apple, raisins, mini-bagels, a cheese stick, and half of a tuna fish sandwich. He shakes his head to all of them. To which you reply, “You just don’t know what good is,” and take a large bite of the sandwich. He says “cha-cha,” which means “chocolate.” When is he going to start speaking for real? He is almost two years old, and you’re a little worried there’s a problem. “Cha-cha,” he says again. You pretend not to understand and offer him the cheese stick again. He makes a face and then takes it.
It’s going to be a long weekend and you’re already exhausted.
But you had better rule out one thing first: No sleeping with other men’s wives or, for that matter, other men. No reason for this to become a soap opera or a weekend blowout; it is simply a twenty-year high school reunion. Relax. Two decades of forgotten memories or memorable forget-me-nots. Your body may feel different now but as The Professor says, “Mind don’t matter and matter don’t mind.” The Professor (his own moniker) teaches psychology at Tulane and specializes in why people commit suicide—but what the hell does he know, all day he admires the minds of coeds who wear bikini tops and no underwear to class. You’ve known The Professor since grad school and right now, despite his flaws or maybe your own, you should listen to an old friend.
Owen is well occupied with your headphones, the mini TV screen in front of him, and the chocolate bar he haggled from you. You take out the book you brought. It’s been billed as the new Great American Novel. A colleague suggested it to you as a replacement for The Catcher in the Rye for your Senior English class. You open it up and begin reading, but after a couple of pages you lose concentration. It’s probably not the book’s fault, you’re simply not in the mood for earnestness and depth.
Instead you look back over the reunion details. Julia, one of your closest friends in high school, and Jackie, the senior class president, set up a website. They scanned in everyone’s senior picture from the yearbook. Class members could post information about themselves—where they live, name of their partner, occupation, children, etc. Out of 352 class members, 241 posted information on the website and 127 RSVPed that they would attend the reunion. You know the exact numbers because you’ve been checking the website everyday for months, even downloading most of the pages to your laptop. It’s a pathetic but vital distraction.
You click “Classmate Profiles” and still can’t get over how immediately recognizable these names are, how most of their faces, and their whole bodies (at age 18) pop into your mind without any trouble. Take your old friend and class valedictorian Carmen Newberry’s entry:
After graduating from Michigan State, I worked in Detroit for a couple of years and then moved to Florida. I met my husband in 1993 and we married in 1999. We have one beautiful daughter (Fiona, 2) who we cherish. We own a barbecue restaurant (primarily takeout) that my husband runs. Life is good—we are blessed.
The English teacher in you examines this closely: Why did she include “who we cherish”? Don’t all parents cherish their little whelps? And why the parenthetical “primarily takeout”? Is that supposed to make more modest the success