an entry on the “update” and a classmate’s current state of happiness? The more words a person uses to describe what’s happened to him or her since high school, the more happy he or she is? Or do fewer words constitute less of an effort to embellish and therefore translate into greater happiness? How many words does it take to become totally happy?
At least you hope Carmen is happy now. Despite her 4.0 GPA, she certainly wasn’t happy in high school. Not that you didn’t like her—you did—she was part of your clique and taught you the meaning of wit and sharp sarcasm and, come to think of it, cynicism too. Which is perhaps why it took you a couple of months to post something on the website—so people didn’t think you were unreachable, unapproachable or, worse, dead. You posted your email address and one of your favorite photos of you and your son. The picture is almost a year old but it’s a happy one. You are in a swimming pool and he is lying on an inner tube with his index finger pointing up at the sky. You’re looking at him in admiration: After teaching him for months to look at the billowy clouds, he’s finally seen his first animal. “Rahhhr,” he growls, and not even bothering to look up, you tell him you see the lion too. The smile on his face is a horizon line you could walk along forever. At least that’s what you said to your wife when she printed the first copy of the photo. She was always taking and printing photos, and would stay up for hours, downloading, retouching, cropping, printing, and then indexing them into albums. It became her obsession (you made the tally just last month: 13 albums of printed photos; 5,738 digital images; 16 videos) and this obsession took away time you and she might have spent together after Owen went to bed each evening. She, downstairs with the computer and printer; you, upstairs with your laptop, sometimes grading papers, sometimes looking at porn. You could have been talking about your day, about things other than Owen, or you could have been making love. Now of course it’s bittersweet—you’re glad you have the photos to spark memories, but they also are place markers for the time that is now no time.
The plane hums along punctuated every so often by turbulence. Instead of clutching the armrests, you’ve learned over the years that it’s better to wedge the tops of your shoes underneath the supports of the seat in front of you; this attracts less attention from fellow passengers. It’s irrational of course: everyone knows that a plane nearly never goes down mid-flight. But then you recall that one Korean airliner accident you read about years ago where part of the plane’s body suddenly ripped off at 35,000 feet and eight passengers were sucked into the engine.
Everything is fine until there’s a loud thud followed by a knocking sound. You look around. One of the beverage carts has lost a shelf.
But then the “Fasten Seatbelt” sign lights up, and it grows dark gray outside the windows. The plane banks hard left, right, and then dips. Nobody else seems to notice. Then another shake. You can feel and hear the plane adjust its speed and direction, back and forth as if it’s trying to outmaneuver God. Do you even believe in God? If not, then who are you always talking to?
You tear out a blank page from your book. With a felt-tip pen, you draw little squiggle heads for twenty or thirty minutes until the plane finds smooth air. The whole time Owen has been enraptured by the TV. You never used to let him watch a lot of TV. Oh well, things change. Planes crash. People die. You open up the laptop and realize after a couple of minutes that you’re staring and not blinking. Things certainly change. Sleep deprivation, constant colds, etc. You begin seeing faces in the computer screen. Not in the actual photos of your classmates, but there in the spots of the screen where there are minute scratches and scrims of dust. Is that face Alex Mueller’s, you wonder? Of course you’re doing a lot of wondering these days. You hate the phrase “these days” but what else are you supposed to call them—nowadays? post-wife days? Daze. You wonder, what if you’d taken the Alex Mueller route—stayed in Europe as an expat, not come back to the States for grad school. There was that option a decade ago to go to Slovenia, maybe even find some distant relatives, with the Peace Corps. You could have been of some use to someone somewhere, not merely another middle-class suburban kid who has done some grad work. At least in Europe you could have married a European, gained access to all those countries, and your kids could have had European Union passports. So now each time you look at that yearbook photo of Alex Mueller (and apparently even in the dust motes), you think of the women of the European Union, the might-have-beens, and of one particular Irish-Spanish lass, a petite, fair-skinned, jet-black haired, and naked Camino O’Reilly who once performed less-than-dazzling fellatio on you on the floor of your flat in Brussels on a random Tuesday afternoon. Alex Mueller—though probably once would have given you a decent blowjob—now stands in for passports of many kinds.
Late one night last week, you got on the computer with the idea of updating your profile. Under “Hobbies & Interests,” you typed “European women, monster trucks, Buddhist meditation, and bukkake.” You were only fooling around and maybe a little drunk, but a large part of you wanted to click Submit. You are and you are not the same person you were in high school, and there is no way you could relate this on a fucking website.
How would you relate, for example, the story of your mother-in-law? The first time your wife (then girlfriend) told you about her mother (Little Ma) and her mother’s fourteen-year struggle with colon cancer, you started taking notes on the meaty part of your hand: Her entire adult life has been under the shadow of mother’s cancer. This was during your writerly phase. In any case, your-wife-to-be became irate, called you an incorrigible ass, and stewed for a couple of days. The next time you started taking notes she just called you obnoxious. People can get used to anything—as is evidenced by the great donut hunt. You can’t look at a donut anymore without thinking about dying. Little Ma couldn’t eat anything but sweets by a certain point in her disease, and a glazed chocolate donut was required. Little Ma, your wife, and you combed the city for just such a donut. The only two Dunkin’ Donuts were sold out, and there were other donut shops but no glazed chocolate. The last chance was the largest grocery store in the area. Surely, they would have a fine Saturday evening selection of donuts in preparation for the early Sunday morning donut stampede—the rush of young husbands buying their young wives Sunday newspapers, nonfat yogurt, low-carb croissants, and egg whites, and French crullers for themselves to eat on the way home.
When the three of you arrived at the store, you were certain that you’d find the donut before they would. This would make you appear useful, even valuable. Husband Locates Elusive Donut, Saves Woman From Grave Disease. Pushing on ahead of them, knocking down a small child and a stand of cherry, pumpkin, and mincemeat pies, you turned a corner and there they were—two stalls of donuts. One on the right and one of the left, but which one do you search first? By pure instinct you headed left—plain, powdered white, blueberry filled, donut holes, éclair-like gooey things—but no chocolate. You stopped an employee. What kind of stock is this? I know there are others, where are they? You shook him by the shoulders. You’re going to tell me! He fessed up: Aisle 9, right side, all the way at the end. You ran, zipping past the hordes, in and out, cutting back and forth like a champion skier. Amazing because you’d never skied before. There was an intricate spin move you were thinking of trying, between an old lady and her husband who was bent over comparing cans of corn—but no, Don’t be a goddamn fool, you said to yourself, It’s too risky. You headed down Aisle 8 because it had lighter traffic, only a young couple strolling hand-in-hand, you zoomed by full-tilt, unnoticed. But in order to manage, with any kind of efficiency, the hairpin turn around the end of Aisle 8 into Aisle 9, you were going to have to grab on to something. There was a large man who might just be able to help. Yes, he was fat enough. And that long mantel he was wearing would probably withstand the centrifugal force. It was either him or a kiosk of new sparkling wines—not even a close decision. The man didn’t perceive at first that he was being of great use to you, but you got hold of his pant leg instead of his coat sleeve, as you’d planned, and you pulled around the end of the aisle, tucking right leg underneath in slide-tackle position, right shin and left hamstring burning along the polished cement floor, you completed the hairpin, and as if in afterthought the fat man screamed as if he were on fire. No matter. You saw them. They were chocolate and they were glazed. You clutched two boxes of twelve to your chest and ran back to find Little Ma and your wife. They were in the cookie aisle, contemplating a package of vanilla wafers. “Here,” you gasped, “look what I happened to find.”