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.