By the end, it was like this.
Q: How did we end up here?
A: We can, if need be, ransack the whole globe, penetrate into the bowels of the earth, descend to the bottom of the deep, travel to the farthest regions of this world, to acquire wealth, to increase our knowledge, or even only to please our eye and fancy.
(William Derham, 1711)
* * *
…
“How do you sleep at night knowing all this?”
“I’ve known it for a long, long time,” she says.
It affects her in other ways, I think. Sylvia always wants to go see things, some nearby, some far away. The requirement is that they are disappearing faster than expected. The going, going, gone trips, I call them. She picks me up early, then we drive and drive until we reach the designated place. Then we walk around and look at things and I try to feel what she does. Once I took Eli. We stood and looked at some kind of meadowland. He waited patiently until we could go back to the car.
Children cannot abide a vista, Sylvia said.
* * *
…
There are little signs everywhere in the library now that say BREATHE! BREATHE! How did everyone get so good at this breathing thing? I feel like it all happened while I was away.
Also, why has my mother sent me this box of old papers? She sent some to Henry too. Catherine went through them and promptly sent this to me. It’s from high school, when my brother tried, inexplicably, to join the model UN club.
During the preparation for this trip, Henry was surely one of the most disappointing students I have dealt with in the field trip situation. When shown his duties, his apparent reaction was incredulity proceeded by levity. Also subject to discussion was his lack of thoughtfulness in letting others do his work.
Toward the end of the trip, however, he began to show an awareness and sensitivity to this impression and began to do his job seriously and enthusiastically. He was able to overcome his preoccupation with self and to participate in the duties and pleasures of the trip. If he can become more sensitive to other people’s needs, he will be a welcomed addition to any group.
* * *
…
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t seem to stop making bad decisions. The weird thing is they don’t sneak up on me. I can see them coming all the way down the pike.
My main bad decision is spending too much time traveling or being a fake shrink while ignoring the people I live with. Lately, it’s my mother whom I’m on the phone with every evening. Lizzie, she says when she calls. Lizzie, can you spare a minute?
Everything is about the new baby. She is excited to come when she is born, but fears she is not really wanted, that they have asked her to visit only out of politeness. I don’t know if this is true. My mother can be very good at helping out when help is needed. Once she gave away our Thanksgiving turkey in the parking lot because she spied a needier family. “Come,” I tell my mother. “Everyone is looking forward to it.”
By the time I get off the phone, everybody’s pissed. Eli wanted me to play War with him and has flung the cards all over his bed. Ben was going to show me this new game he made about The Odyssey.
I’m too tired for any of it. The compromise is that we all eat ice cream and watch videos of goats screaming like women.
* * *
…
Even more mail than usual. I’m really hoping all these people who write to Sylvia are crazy, not depressed.
Some Jews saw walls being built around the ghetto and thought they still had time. Don’t be fooled by everyone else’s calm. Get out even when nobody is even considering it yet. When you look at 2060, southern Argentina might be a good place for your children since it’s close to the Antarctic peninsula, the place where the survivor colonies will be built.
* * *
…
This morning I was forced to learn about something called “climate departure,” and later, at bedtime, when he was half asleep, I was forced to tell Ben about it. I only believe in math, he mumbled. Show me the math, okay?
But you don’t want to look at the math again; you’re never going back to that website where you put in the year Eli was born and then watched the numbers go up, up, up. No. Never.
“What’s new with you guys?”
“Lizzie’s become a crazy doomer.”
In 1934, Churchill gave a speech to the Commons, attempting to describe the ruinous effects an air raid would have on the city of London. He was hoping such images of devastation would force even the most optimistic among them to consider what would happen if bombs rained down from the sky. The details were provided to him, he said, by persons who are acquainted with the science.
* * *
…
Someone has put spikes on the fence around the playground. Not here, not here, not there either is the message to the pigeons. Feathered rats, the planners probably called them.
Catherine and I make small talk about the neighborhood. What’s closing, what’s opening. Are the Pakistani restaurants taking over the Indian ones? Are the Orthodox finally renting to the Tibetans? There’s a new place that is half guitar shop, half bar. “Where did all these hipsters come from?” says my brother in his fleece-lined trucker’s jacket.
* * *
…
There’s a hopped-up guy inside the bodega saying, “I got lots and lots and lots and lots.” Mohan turns to him. “My brother, tell me, what do you need?”
Last week, we ran into Amira and her mother here. Her name is Na’ila. I invited them over for tea and they came the next day along with her two older sisters. The sisters sat in a row on the couch and politely answered the questions I addressed to them all.
How is it different from where you used to live?
We never had milk in a bottle before.
Amira and Eli played quietly at their feet. The Legos weren’t working, so he went for the plastic ice cream. She seemed delighted by it. Later, when they were leaving, she touched my arm delicately. Until we meet again, she said, in the manner of someone who learned English from television.
* * *
…
Catherine’s birth plan keeps getting longer and longer. There are so many things on it. One of them is Eye pillow (organic lavender). Henry told me last night he needs to get one ASAP.