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  Potato Chips: Ambitious, successful, high achiever

  Nuts: Easygoing, empathetic, understanding

  Popcorn: Takes charge, smart, self-confident

  I head into the living room and there is Ben, blithely eating cashews.

  * * *

  …

  Sunday morning. The dog has found a baby bunny in the grass. She closed her mouth around it once, then released it. Now we are trying to save it. Someone at the community garden has given us a box lined with a soft cloth. But it is trembling violently. There is no blood anywhere, but there are small indents in the fur that show where her teeth have been. We try to put it back in the garden but it has already died. Of fright, I think.

  That night, Eli calls to us hysterically from the kitchen. There’s a mouse skull under the sink, he says. I give Ben a dark look. We are killing them secretly, I thought. Heavily, he rises to go in there. He gets down on his knees to look under the sink. But it is only a knob of ginger and we are saved.

  * * *

  …

  I don’t know what to do about this car service man. He told me business is down; no one is calling anymore. He had to let all his drivers go and is down to one car. He sleeps at work now so as to never miss a call. His wife has said she is going to leave him.

  Mr. Jimmy. That’s the name on the card he gave me. I try to use only his service now, not the better, faster one. Sometimes when I call his voice is groggy. He says always that he will be there in seven minutes, but it is much longer now.

  I used to take a car service only if I was going to be late, but now I find I am building in double the amount of travel time. A bus would be the same or faster. Also, I could afford it. But what if I am the only customer he has left?

  I’m late for the lecture now. And I was wrong about which building it’s in. By the time I get there, Sylvia is almost through speaking. There’s a big crowd. Behind her is a graph shaped like a hockey stick.

  “What it means to be a good person, a moral person, is calculated differently in times of crisis than in ordinary circumstances,” she says. She pulls up a slide of people having a picnic by a lake. Blue skies, green trees, white people.

  “Suppose you go with some friends to the park to have a picnic. This act is, of course, morally neutral, but if you witness a group of children drowning in the lake and you continue to eat and chat, you have become monstrous.”

  The moderator makes a gesture to show it is time to wrap up. A line of men is forming behind the microphone. “I have both a question and a comment,” they say. A young woman stands up to wait in line. I watch as she inches forward. Finally, she makes it to the front to ask her question.

  “How do you maintain your optimism?”

  I can’t get to Sylvia afterward. There are too many people. I walk to the subway, trying to think about the world.

  Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?

  Old person worry: What if everything I do does?

  * * *

  …

  For almost two years, I have managed not to run into this mother from the old preschool. At times, it takes some doing. I definitely have to be eagle-eyed if I venture into the fancy bakery or the co-op. Her name is Nicola and her son’s name, inexplicably, is Kasper.

  She had this way that she would talk about our zoned elementary school, in one breath praising the immigrant kids who went there and in the next talking about the tutors she’d hired to get her son out of it. Strivers, she called them. Like they were all cleaning chimneys or selling papers hot off the press.

  Nicola used to carry flash cards with her, and she’d greet her son at pickup with a snack that she said the name of in another language. Pomme. Banane.

  Eli was enamored with her. He wanted me to wear nicer clothes. He wanted me to teach him the foreign names of fruit. One day I brought him an orange (in French: orange). I told him he could take the test if he wanted, but that there would be, of course, no pricey tutors.

  A few days later, I yelled at him for losing his new lunch box, and he turned to me and said, Are you sure you’re my mother? Sometimes you don’t seem like a good enough person.

  He was just a kid, so I let it go. And now, years later, I probably only think of it, I don’t know, once or twice a day.

  * * *

  …

  I finally tried the meditation class. My knee was hurting so I sat on a chair. The mostly enlightened woman was there on a cushion. I’d wondered what happened to her. At the end, she asked Margot a question or what she seemed to think was a question.

  “I have been fortunate enough to spend a great deal of time in the melted ego world. But I find I have trouble coming back to the differentiated world, the one you were just talking about where you have to wash the dishes and take out the garbage.”

  She was very pregnant, six months maybe. Oh, don’t worry, I thought, the differentiated world is coming for your ass.

  * * *

  …

  As it turned out, Eli did fine on that test. Not well enough for the citywide schools, but well enough to be placed in something the district called EAGLE. (They never said what it stood for, but who cares, because, duh, eagles soar!) For Nicola, though, all of this was the culmination of a year’s work. I remember how she came in beaming the day after the results. We’ve had quite a week, she told me. We’ve just learned that Kasper is gifted and talented.

  Oh my, I said.

  Soon after that he came over to our house for a playdate. The boys played Legos, then ran around jumping on and off different things. They were soldiers, ninjas, nothing particularly surprising or revealing of hidden depths. But then Eli took out his favorite toy, which was a set of plastic ice-cream cones and scoops. He asked his friend if he wanted to play ice-cream truck, but Kasper crouched under the table and played his own game. It was called Time, he said.

  What is better when you are older?

  Picnics.

  Picnics?

  People bring better things.

  * * *

  …

  Sylvia comes by the library. “I have a proposal for you,” she says. She wants to pay me to answer her email. There’s a lot of it these days because of the podcast. She’s been answering it herself, but she can’t keep up anymore.

  I ask her what sorts of things she gets. All kinds, she tells me, but everyone who writes her is either crazy or depressed. We need the money for sure, but I tell her I have to think about it. Because it’s possible my life is already filled with these people.

  * * *

  …

  It’s the first day of spring, weird clouds, hazy sun. Henry is doing that looping thing he does. He’s always been like this, but he’s good at hiding it from other people. He saves up everything until we’re together, then he starts in with the confessions.

  “I keep having this thought, Lizzie.”

  “What thought?”

  “What if I sold my soul to the devil when I was a kid?”

  “You didn’t sell your soul to the devil.”

  “What if I did but I don’t remember it?”

  “You didn’t sell your soul to the devil.”

  “But what if I did?”

  “Okay, but think, Henry, what did you get for it?”

  * * *

  …

  A few days later, Sylvia decides to improve her offer. She says I could travel with her too, keep track of things, help her through the boring bits. One caveat: the mail has been skewing evangelical lately. Lots of questions about the Rapture mixed in with the ones about wind turbines and carbon taxes. “No problem,” I tell her. “Trip down memory lane.” Her mistake was calling her show Hell and High Water. Guaranteed to attract the end-timers.

  I flip through a folder full of questions people have sent her. She has printed them out
like an old person, which I guess is what she is.

  Is the Insectothopter like the AlphaCheetah? Does extinction matter since we know how the Bible ends? Who invented contrails? How will the last generation know it is the last generation?

  She looks tired, I think, a little blurred around the edges. She’s been on this never-ending speaking tour. I should help her. I say yes, okay, why not, sure.

  * * *

  …

  The problem with Eli’s school is it’s not on a human scale. Five stories tall. A dozen first grade classes. When the bell rings, the teachers march the kids out in strict little lines. The playground is big, but it backs out onto the avenue. There is a hole in the fence where the wire is bent, and every time I see it I feel a jolt of dread. All year, I’ve been on some soul-crushing committee where we talk about getting it fixed. I’m not a joiner, but believe me, I work less than these immigrant parents.

  So I wrote letter after letter to the board of ed. It has come to our attention…Nothing happened. I heard there was one committee that spent an entire year trying to get seedlings into the kindergarten classrooms. In the end, no. Denied. A safety issue, they said.

  * * *

  …

  Lately, I’ve observed that I dress like the kids on campus or maybe they dress like me. I have dressed the same way a long time, but somehow it has cycled in again. I’m old enough now that I sometimes think about how I am making a fool of myself by doing something that would not have attracted notice when I was younger. So at the beginning of the year I went out and bought some new, plainer things. Henry says I’m dressing like a little dun bird.

  Q: How is the goodness of God manifested even in the clothing of birds and beasts?

  A: Small birds, which are the most delicate, have more feathers than those that are hardier. Beasts that live in the icy regions have thicker, coarser coats than those that dwell in the tropical heat.

  I need to pack for this trip, but there’s something buzzing around the room. I can’t see it, but I can hear it hurling itself against the glass. A bee maybe, or a wasp. Over there, on the blinds, I think. I capture it with the aid of a cup and an index card.

  Quiet in the cup. Hard to believe that isn’t joy, the way it flies away when I fling it out the window.

  * * *

  …

  Still light when we come out of the theater. Henry’s off to see Catherine. He’s meeting her friends from the ad agency. The Creatives, she calls them, because she’s not one; she’s one of the Suits. I like the sound of it. Like there might be a rumble later.

  But I can tell Henry’s nervous. “Just remember, don’t be yourself,” I say. He laughs a little. I watch him walk off, hands in his pockets, slumped over. Stick together, you two. That’s what my mother used to say.

  I remember the first time I made him dinner. I took the chicken from the fridge and peeled off the disgusting, filmy wrapper. Pink juice got everywhere, but I wiped it up with a sponge. Then I put the chicken in a pan and poured a bottle of soy sauce over it. Fifteen minutes later, we ate it.

  I listen to Hell and High Water on the way home. This one is about Deep Time. The geologist being interviewed speaks quickly, sweeping through millions and millions of years in a moment. The Age of Birds has passed, he says. Also of Reptiles. Also of Flowering Plants. Holocene was the name of our age. Holocene, which meant “now.”

  * * *

  …

  First conference with Sylvia. One thing I’ll say about it: lots of people who are not Native Americans talking about Native Americans.

  The Shuswap region was considered by the local tribes to be a beautiful and plentiful land. There were salmon and game in the warm months and tubers and roots in the cold ones. The tribes that lived there developed various technologies to help them make use of all of their resources. For many years, in this way, they prospered beautifully on their land. But the elders saw that the tribes’ world had become too predictable and the challenge had gone out of life. Without challenge, they counseled, life had no meaning. So after a few decades, their custom was to advise that the entire village be moved to another place. All of them went to a different part of the Shuswap territory and by starting over life regained its meaning. There were new streams to figure out, new game trails to learn. Everyone felt rejuvenated.

  This person has done something similar. For a long time, she lived in San Francisco, and now she has moved to Portland.

  * * *

  …

  Sometimes I like to ask my boss about little patterns I notice at the library. She has worked here for twenty years. She sees everyone and everything. So how come three different people came in today and wanted to put up flyers about beekeeping? But this time Lorraine just shrugs. “Some things are in the air, they float around,” she says, and I think of leaves, of something falling and accumulating without notice.

  Also in the air: a coworker who has taken to carrying X-rays around in her purse. Some kind of medical mistake. It can’t be undone, but it can be recounted.

  Then there’s that professor who was always golden, the one who got tenure right away. Suddenly he’s not a drinker but a drunk. Last week, he had to be carried out of his own birthday party and put into a taxi. They had to pay the driver in advance or he wouldn’t have taken him. It wasn’t the first time either, Lorraine said. And soon the party is for me.

  I do have one bookish superstition about my birthday. I like to see what Virginia Woolf said about an age in her diaries before I reach it. Usually it’s inspiring.

  Other times…

  Life is as I’ve said since I was 10, awfully interesting—if anything, quicker, keener at 44 than 24—more desperate I suppose, as the river shoots to Niagara—my new vision of death; active, positive, like all the rest, exciting; & of great importance—as an experience.

  * * *

  …

  I buy a telescope because I want to see. I buy running shoes because I want to run. This block smells like garbage. Turn left for greener streets. Yes, better. I try to run all the way to the park, but these shoes don’t work.

  * * *

  …

  I don’t tell Ben much about these letters. He would not be pleased by the nature of these questions. He’s already worried the evangelicals are trying to take over everything. In cahoots, of course, with the Jews for Jesus.

  There’s that one who parks himself by the Dunkin’ Donuts on weekends. “Excuse me, did you know that Jesus Christ was Jewish?” he asks us when we pass. “Yup,” we tell him.

  Also, we have heard the Good News. As has everyone on the whole planet, including those hunter-gatherers who live deep in the rain forest and were trying for no contact. Just once I wish someone would say that and the Good News would turn out to be something else.

  * * *

  …

  There’s a note on the fridge saying we are out of milk, cheese, bread, and toilet paper. I tell Eli I will take him out to eat at the diner. NO ANIMALS ALLOWED, the sign outside the restaurant reads. “But we are animals, right?” “Don’t be a stickler,” I tell him.

  Eli announces that he has decided to have two children; no, he corrects himself, one, because it is easier. We order grilled cheese sandwiches and eavesdrop on the people at the next table. “Is he your soul mate?” the woman asks her friend. “Hard to tell,” she says.

  * * *

  …

  When are the Days of Tribulation? Did Noah’s flood cover the whole earth or just the places where people lived? Can pets be saved in Christ and go to heaven? If not, what will happen to them?

  We used to worry most about the last one. We had a cat that my mother allowed us to name jointly. Stacy Stormbringer was the result, and we were devoted to her. But then we saw that movie at Bible camp. The father was raptured up and all that was left behind was his electric razor buzzing. Our mothe
r was definitely saved, but were we really? What if we came home and the house was empty? Would we at least have Stacy Stormbringer?

  Swept up, they called it. As if God were a broom.

  * * *

  …

  Henry and Catherine come over for dinner. She brings giant sunflowers and I try to find a vase to hold them. She seems unnerved by all the books. “Have you read all of these?” she asks me. Later, she starts a conversation based on the idea that we’re living in unprecedented times.

  I can see Ben hesitate. He has a complicated relationship to modern things. On the one hand, he makes educational video games. On the other, he has a PhD in classics. Two bad years on the job market and then he quit and learned to code.

  I decide to comment for him. I recount some half-baked story about Lucretius. This guy lived in the first century BCE but claimed that in his time there was too much bored rushing around. Terrible fears one minute! Apathy the next! Catherine looks at Henry and then at me. “I just meant politics,” she says.

  * * *

  …

  Sometimes Mr. Jimmy speaks in little bursts. Today he tells me about how he’d taken his son’s old car across the river to a junkyard, where giant machines crushed it. “You should have seen it,” he says. He told me he tried to lift up the little bit of the metal that was left, but it was too heavy and it wouldn’t move an inch. “But these things lifted it up like it was nothing!” I tell him one day those machines are going to come and crush all of us. He likes that. Smiles a little. “It’ll just be like a big claw coming,” he says.