Life After Truth
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About the Book
Fifteen years after graduating from Harvard, five close friends on the cusp of middle age are still pursuing an elusive happiness and wondering if they’ve wasted their youthful opportunities.
Jules, already a famous actor when she arrived on campus, is changing in mysterious ways but won’t share what is haunting her. Mariam and Rowan, who married young, are struggling with the demands of family life and starting to regret prioritising meaning over wealth in their careers. Eloise, now a professor who studies the psychology of happiness, is troubled by her younger wife’s radical politics. And Jomo, founder of a luxury jewellery company, has been carrying an engagement ring around for months, unsure whether his girlfriend is the one.
The soul searching begins in earnest at their much-anticipated college reunion weekend on the Harvard campus, when the most infamous member of their class, Frederick – senior advisor and son of the recently elected and loathed US president – turns up dead.
Old friends often think they know everything about one another, but time has a way of making us strangers to those we love – and to ourselves . . .
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Harvard Class of 2003 – Fifteenth Anniversary Report
Prologue: Mariam
Chapter 1: Jomo
Chapter 2: Eloise
Chapter 3: Rowan
Chapter 4: Mariam
Chapter 5: Jomo
Chapter 6: Mariam
Chapter 7: Eloise
Chapter 8: Rowan
Chapter 9: Mariam
Chapter 10: Eloise
Chapter 11: Rowan
Chapter 12: Jomo
Epilogue: Mariam
References
About the Author
Also by Ceridwen Dovey
Imprint
Read more at Penguin Books Australia
This is a work of fiction.
While certain events and longstanding institutions are mentioned, the novel’s story and characters are the product of the author’s imagination.
. . . the Love-god, golden-haired, stretches his charmed bow with twin arrows, and one is aimed at happiness, the other at life’s confusion.
— Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis
Harvard Class of 2003 – Fifteenth Anniversary Report
JOMO GÜNTER-RIEHL. Address: 200 Church Street, Apartment 7A, Tribeca, New York, New York 10013. Occupation: Founder & Director of Gem Acquisitions, House of Riehl Luxury Jewelers. Graduate Degrees: MBA, University of California, Berkeley ’13.
Last time I wrote one of these updates it was to brag about my life. I’d just finished my MBA and launched a lucrative jewelry start-up, creating bespoke pieces showcasing gemstones with weird names like jeremejevite and wulfenite. I was flying around the world on private jets, partying hard, barely sleeping.
Then my business partner bailed on me, my company almost went under, and my mom was diagnosed with cancer. The going got tough for a while.
Five years later, I’m through the worst. I’m back to living the good life but not the high life. My mom’s cancer is in remission. My company is doing great but not so great that I lose perspective or get too comfortable with success. I finally made the trip back to Dad’s homeland, Tanzania, where I swam in the clear seas off the island of Zanzibar and camped with my best friend at the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater.
The learning curve has been steep, and I’m not immune to falling back into bad habits – one of which is that I don’t always make as much time as I should for the people I care about. So I’m eager to catch up at the reunion with my blockmates and also my Spee Club brothers and, now, sisters. We were the first final club to admit African-Americans, and I couldn’t be more proud that we are now also the first to welcome women members.
JULIET HARTLEY. Address: c/o Jackson Greene Entertainment Associates, 4400 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California 90211.
ELOISE ABIGAIL McPHEE. Address: Kirkland House, 95 Dunster Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Occupation: Academic. Graduate Degrees: PhD, Harvard, ’08. Spouse/Partner: Binx Lazardi (AB, Harvard ’13), December 31, 2015.
It feels like just yesterday I was proposing to my wife, Binx, on the dance floor at our tenth reunion. On that mild spring evening, we were honored to have so many of you witness – and celebrate – our decision to commit ourselves to each other for life. (Thanks, also, to the kind soul who anonymously sent a magnum of champagne to our hotel room later that same night.)
In my professional life, after grueling years sprinting around the tenure track, I’ve been appointed as Professor of Hedonics, which is the science of happiness and pleasure, if you’re wondering. The epiphany that led me to where I am now took place in the basement laundry of Weld Hall in my freshman year. I was filled with a positive emotion I realized I had no proper vocabulary for – something to do with the smell of the fabric softener and the sense that my future was wide open. At every freshman orientation event, we had been educated in how to recognize the first symptoms of depression, and all the varieties of misery and anxiety we might expect to feel in the coming year as students. Nobody had prepared me for those early symptoms of great joy at being young, bright, and bursting with hope. Nothing had been said about the human capacity for happiness. Then I’d paged through the course catalog during Shopping Week and discovered – cue angels singing and sunlight piercing the gloom – an obscure class on positive psychology. And the rest, as they say, is history.
People generally ask me, when they learn what I study, if I can share with them the secret to being happy. I usually respond by quoting my wise colleague Daniel Gilbert: ‘Happiness is a noun, so we think it’s something we can own. But happiness is a place to visit, not a place to live.’ The thing to remember is that very little of anybody’s day is spent feeling happy. It’s an emotion designed to be fleeting. And you cannot pursue it directly, which is why the things that we think will make us happier – a promotion, a windfall, a new car – have little lasting effect. This is called the hedonic treadmill, which is like a personal-happiness metabolism. Even after a big change in our lives, whether positive or negative, in time most of us return to the same baseline.
Binx and I waited until all our compatriots could legally marry nationwide before we officially tied the knot, and we’re now fortunate enough to be residing on campus again . . . as House Masters (Mistresses!) of Kirkland House, though the official title is now Faculty Dean. I miss the top-floor garret I lived in my senior year, though I don’t miss the weak water pressure of those ancient showers ( Jules and Mariam, you know what I’m talking about). Our current quarters are rather roomy, and, Kirkland alums, you’ll be glad to know that every Sunday evening at the Open House we still make sure to serve the giant wheels of baked brie that are responsible for many a sophomore fifteen . . . but in my opinion are worth every extra pound of flesh around my middle.
We will be hosting drinks at our place from five to seven pm on Thursday evening of the reunion long weekend, all classmates and partners welcome (though no young children, please). Donations at the door will go to the non-profit organization Binx recently founded, Who-Min-Beans, which advocates for posthumanists suffering discrimination for their beliefs.
MARIAM WEBSTER. Address: 1609 Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11207. Occupation: Mom, pastry chef, and educator. Spouse/Partner: Rowan Anthony Webster (AB, Harvard ’03), May 25, 2003. Children: Alexis, 2013; Eva, 2017.
Greetings, friends!
Rowan and I are still renting in Bushwick. From our decrepit brownstone we look out onto the Evergreens Cemetery. We almost named our second daughter Bojangl
es in honor of Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, the legendary tap dancer who is buried there and near whose grave we picnicked frequently while I was pregnant with her. Luckily childbirth brought me back to my senses, and we called her Eva.
We love the area, though we’re conscious we are part of the first wave (second wave maybe?) of gentrification that is destroying the community around us. We placate our consciences by being active supporters of the Do-Not-Go-Gentry network. I contribute muffins to meetings; Rowan contributes much more useful community-organizing skills. In September, our older daughter will start kindergarten at the local public elementary school where Rowan is the impassioned and tireless principal.
On the one day a week I’m not home with our girls, I put my chef-school skills to work as an educator at the nearby Rising Dough Collective, teaching at-risk teens how to bake really amazing bread so that they can get jobs at up-market bakeries beloved by gentrifiers everywhere. There’s an irony in this I’m not yet sure I want to unpack.
Since my father passed away two years ago, and with everything that Syria has suffered in recent times, I have felt a resurgent interest in exploring my family’s Syrian Christian roots. This past winter, I took Rowan and the kids along on a memorable visit to the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch in Paramus, New Jersey. I also recently learned that my name is the Syrian Christian version of Mary, mother of Jesus, or something like that, though I assure you nothing about our children’s conceptions was immaculate.
To stay sane, Rowan and I like to invent haikus to record our experiences of full-contact, 24/7 parenting, which many of you are no doubt also reeling from. I will share our most recent – scatological, of course – composition:
‘I’m ready to wipe!’
The summons most dreaded by
parents everywhere.
ROWAN ANTHONY WEBSTER. Address: 1609 Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11207. Occupation: School Principal. Spouse/Partner: Mariam Webster (AB, Harvard ’03), May 25, 2003. Children: Alexis, 2013; Eva, 2017.
I should start by saying I have no idea what Mariam – my soul mate and fellow Class of 2003er – has submitted to this class report.
Next confession: I discovered my first cluster of gray hairs today. The horror, the horror! They decided to sprout all at once, clinging to each other as if they’re afraid of being alone. I’ll probably regret writing that, just as I now semi-regret sharing, in my tenth-anniversary report entry, the gory, wondrous account of the birth of our first child, Alexis. I will spare you the details of the birth of our second daughter, Eva, though let me be a proud birth partner and tell you that Mariam got through this birth, too, without any drugs except the concoction her own brain was making. I’m not supposed to weigh in on these things, and I know all births are beautiful however they happen, so I mention it here only because seeing what women are capable of, I keep thinking, why are they not already running the world?
Which leads me to the calamitous state of our country.
Since the election of the fascist Gerald Reese as president, I have felt an unyielding anxiety most midnights, as I lie awake looking out into the dark. Often on those nights my thoughts turn to our classmate Frederick P. Reese II, who is not only the spoiled son of this abominable man but his most trusted political adviser, the one whispering in his ear, guiding his every morally bankrupt move.
Our college’s motto, Veritas, had never been his creed, and now, thanks to him and his father, we have all been forced to live in a post-Veritas world. Who knows if Frederick will brazenly choose to show his face among us on reunion weekend. If he does, I vow that I shall say to his shiny, boyish face what I write here:
Shame on you, Frederick Reese.
Prologue: Mariam
Dawn on Sunday morning of Reunion Weekend
(May 27, 2018)
Her daughter had just fallen back asleep in the crook of her elbow when Mariam noticed the man on the bench in the courtyard below.
It was very early morning. She’d been up for over an hour, rocking her toddler as if she were a baby, mumbling snippets of lullabies, her eyes slowly growing accustomed to the dark outside. Her arm had gone numb from the weight of Eva’s head.
From the attic room in Kirkland House, she had a view of the enclosed garden quadrangle, which all the windows of the elegant redbrick undergraduate residence faced.
Mariam smiled to herself when she saw the awkwardly angled silhouette of the man’s upper body. He was going to have a very sore back later today, when he awoke from his drunken stupor on that bench. They were almost too old for these antics. Behind her, in the narrow single bed they were sharing, just as they had through their years of dating in college, Rowan was passed out with the same oblivion, clutching a pillow to his chest as if it were a life raft, his hot rum-and-Coke breath making the air in the small room smell tropical.
In the other single bed, her older daughter slept the enviably deep sleep of a 5-year-old. Ah, to sleep like a child, or a drunk!
Mariam was dying of thirst – the post-alcohol kind, which no amount of water can satisfy. Normally Rowan would be the one settling Eva; with both girls he had taken on the diaper changes, the soothing, the settling. They’d made a commitment to divide the night load straight down the middle, but he had always tried to do more than his share, aware that during the day, as the stay-at-home parent, Mariam carried the full burden.
But for now she wanted to let him sleep, after what had happened at the reunion dinner-dance at Winthrop House the night before.
She’d been astonished to see him like that, breaking loose, letting his appetites surface. It had been a shock, at first. Then it had been thrilling to be reminded that he, too, had other selves he sometimes kept secret from her. That there were still mysteries for her to solve, after all their years together.
If they’d been at home she would have let Eva cry for a bit longer, but as soon as Mariam had heard her whimpering she’d leapt out of bed to pick her up from the crib. For Jomo’s sake, and Jules’s, too. Jomo was in the room just down the corridor, within the same senior suite, and Jules was in the room closest to the door out to the landing. If either of them needed the bathroom, they had to tiptoe across the room in which her whole family was sleeping (or not sleeping), but that night she hadn’t heard them come through once.
It had been a long time since Mariam had shared a bathroom with people who weren’t family. The evening they’d all arrived, Thursday, it had been a fun game to negotiate the use of the shower and toilet, just as she and Jules had done back at college as roommates. It was easy to romanticize communal living when it was no longer your daily reality. But the novelty had worn off fast. On Friday morning, she’d been busting for a pee and had to hold it in with her sub-par pelvic floor while Jomo shaved, shat, and took a long shower. How selfish the childless could be!
While she rocked Eva back to sleep after her night terror – which was so much worse than a nightmare, her eyes wide open, not awake but not asleep; why had nobody warned her about these before she was a parent? – Mariam was trying to figure out how she felt about the fact that Jomo was not sleeping in his room alone.
His door was closed, but Mariam knew someone was in there with him. She’d heard scuffling sounds a bit earlier, familiar from those long-ago years of close living, when it had been normal to listen to other people having sex and think it was no big deal. Once, in their junior year, Eloise had brought back a guy who had kept going at it for three hours. Mariam had sometimes wondered if that’s what had turned Eloise off dicks forever.
It wasn’t exactly surprising that there was a woman in Jomo’s room. This had been his standard behavior at college, a new woman every weekend after some party at the Spee. He was a good person, so this wasn’t as sleazy as it sounded. He was just so very attractive to women. It was almost like a public service he provided to the opposite sex, to be that hot, that charismatic, that talented at playing singalong tunes on the piano, that creative, and also so respectful, someone who g
enuinely enjoyed the company of women . . . it was too much for most girls to bear.
Plus there was the fact that he was best friends with Juliet Hartley, the most famous person in their class. They all wanted to get closer to Jules through him, perhaps, though they couldn’t have known that he was in fact the barrier denying them access to her. Mariam suspected that Jomo had charmed the room on all those social occasions in order to give Jules a break from the spotlight that shone on her relentlessly. Jomo had been the insulating force, absorbing every bit of negative energy he could before it affected Jules. Those other girls must have known how it would end, that they wouldn’t be the one. Yet they’d all greedily taken whatever he’d offered them of himself.
It wasn’t that Mariam felt bad for Jomo’s current girlfriend, Giselle, either. They’d only met her a few times, though Jomo and Giselle had been together for a year and a half. She got the impression Giselle didn’t exactly love hanging out with Jomo’s old college friends.
But she and Rowan had tried to make an effort to get to know Giselle better, and persuaded Jomo to bring her to their place in Bushwick for Thanksgiving dinner the year before, when they’d stayed in the city for the holidays.
Jules had come too. She was about to go overseas for a shoot, she’d said, though there had been nothing in the celebrity magazines about upcoming films she was starring in (Mariam checked them regularly because she still didn’t like to ask Jules too many direct questions about her work life). Jules had brought gifts for the girls that were beyond their wildest imaginings: tiaras from the set of Sleeping Beauty, and a life-size toy Olaf, the snowman from Frozen, whom Jules had pretended was her date.
When she wasn’t entertaining the girls, Jules had seemed tired, maybe from the effort of preparing for the new film. Mariam had felt glad to be doing something to cheer Jules up, feeding her a home-cooked meal in an environment where she could let her guard down.