by Meg Wolitzer
“It’s like looking at the world through a urine sample,” Amy said, when she tried them on. Every bush and tree had become individuated.
“Can I try?” Nadia asked tentatively, holding out her hands, and Karen strapped the second pair of goggles to the little girl’s head. “Oh!” Nadia cried as the yellow light was turned on and the world lit up just for her. “Wow!”
There seemed to be two different entrances into the campgrounds, and the women arbitrarily chose one. They walked and walked, but after about five minutes the trail ended and they found themselves wading into the cold woods. They shuffled through drifts of leaves and twigs, using the flashlights and the goggles to guide the way. Instinct drew them in a particular direction, and they went from tree to tree and bush to bush, finding another trail and then choosing which fork in the path to take next, all of this done in a darkness that was punctuated by flashlights and urine-vision and lights from the cabins in the distance.
“If we were all to be eaten by a bear in a moment of ursine barbarism,” said Roberta, “nobody would ever know what we had been doing here. It would be this huge mystery: why we were all in the woods at the father-son weekend. It would become a legend, and every year our husbands would tell the kids another version of what they thought had happened to us.”
“They’d tell it to their second wives too,” said Jill.
“What second wives?” Karen asked, confused.
“Karen. It’s a joke,” said Roberta.
“Oh.”
“And then our husbands would say, ‘Well, son, I’ve begun to believe that the reason that your original mom and her friends drove all the way up to the campgrounds was to say “I love you.”’”
“‘But unfortunately, son,’” Jill said, “‘one of Mommy’s friends had her menses at the time, and that attracted a bear.’”
“I actually do have my period,” said Karen. “Fairly heavy too.”
“Oh Karen,” Amy said, “your idea of fairly heavy is probably a thimbleful of blood, am I right? Like a pinprick on a sewing hoop in a fairy tale.”
“No, as a matter of fact, it’s not,” Karen said, but the others seemed to suspect, accurately, that her neat little body was rarely overcome by torrents, the way their bodies apparently were.
“I see a light up ahead,” Jill said.
“‘I see a ring,’” said Amy.
“A ring? Where?” Karen asked.
“It’s the opening of The Waves,” explained Amy. “Virginia Woolf. My senior thesis at Penn. I still know exactly how the novel begins.” She began to recite:
“I see a ring,” said Bernard, “hanging above me. It quivers and hangs in a loop of light.”
“I see a slab of pale yellow,” said Susan, “spreading away until it meets a purple stripe.”
“I hear a sound,” said Rhoda, “cheep, chirp; cheep, chirp; going up and down.”
When she finished, the women were silent for a moment. “That’s interesting writing,” said Karen. “Kind of strange.” She was thinking: Too strange. Much too strange for me. Words, to Karen, were what numbers were to almost everyone else; they confounded her and always seemed as elusive as a quivering ring hanging in the distance just past fingertip reach.
“It’s not my favorite of her novels,” said Amy, “but it’s mesmerizing. I once read the entire thing out loud to Leo.”
“And he let you?” Karen asked.
“Oh, he loved it.”
“I can’t imagine Wilson letting anyone read to him that much, even when he was a baby, unless it was the NASDAQ.”
As the women drew nearer to the center of the camp, a bonfire scented the air, and the sky became slightly lighter from the flames. The smell reached them first, then the light, and soon they heard the singing. It was this that stopped them, finally—the surprising sound of a hundred male voices, all joining together in some kind of idealized, testosterone-drunk vocal perfection. It was a world without women, Amy said later, as though they had stumbled upon an encampment of Civil War soldiers stopping for the night.
“Whoa, listen to that,” said Karen.
The men’s voices were lifting up in a song that Wilson would never have sung on his own, so dismissive would he have been of its sentimentality. He still liked the ’80s punk music he’d listened to in college and had played when he was in the band Fermat. Over time, though, that punk streak had made fewer appearances in him. He rarely played the expensive electric bass he’d treated himself to on his thirtieth birthday, after he’d received his first big bonus from the bank. Karen knew enough to realize that here, out among the logs and stones, and the bits of cinder that flew into the eye, and the marshmallows pierced dully by crooked twigs, it was very unusual for Wilson and all the others to be singing that old Joan Baez folk song “Donna Donna.” But that was what they were doing, and they sang with improbable beauty:
On a wagon, bound for market,
there’s a calf with a mournful eye.
High above him, there’s a swallow,
winging swiftly through the sky.
How the winds are laughing,
they laugh with all their might, laugh and
laugh the whole day through and
half the summer’s night…
“They sound great,” said Jill. “I’m floored.”
The men were singing angelically, and without obvious irony inflecting their often-ironic voices. The women closed in on the campfire, and through the night-vision goggles and with their flashlights, they watched the scene. One or two fathers stalked the periphery on illegal cell phones, whispering into them with agitation. But they were a small minority; the other men had agreeably left their business behind overnight. There were Wilson and the twins, all three of them wearing parkas with reflector strips on the side. There, a few feet away, was Leo Buckner with Mason beside him, the big uncomfortable man and his intelligent son, their eyes glittering in the night. They were all singing openly, willingly, without rolling their eyes or demonstrating any overt sarcasm.
How, Karen wondered, did Wilson even know the lyrics to this song? The men and boys sang all the verses, and then, when the singing ended, the women watched from their place behind the trees as Alec Giffen, the father of Jake, the boy with the peanut allergy, suddenly stood up in the center of the circle. He was dressed, like all the fathers, in lumberjack clothes. It was established that he had been a designated “team leader” during the games today, and so tonight he had been given the task of addressing the group at large. “Guys,” Alec Giffen said. “Listen up!” He raised a hand, and the talking soon subsided. “You all sang great,” he said. “Give yourselves a big hand.”
There was a round of clapping and fist-pumping. It had been a long day in the woods, Alec Giffen said. They had hiked and climbed, and had had a “most excellent” cold-weather color war, and even if the red team had crushed the heart and soul of the blue team, it had been all in fun, and everyone had performed admirably. There was more applause, and then he said, “And now I’d like to invite one father-son team up here to recite the Auburn Day School Pledge. One team in particular, whose spirit of cooperation and skill today has been outstanding.”
He looked around the group, going one by one, as though he was mulling this choice among the various firelit faces when instead the choice had likely been sealed from the beginning. Karen longed for Wilson and Caleb and Jonno to be the chosen team, but she knew this wouldn’t happen; her sons’ twinness served somehow to cancel them out and probably always would, in various ways. Yet the twins needed each other. They were so much smaller than the other children. Just the fact of their prematurity and how much they had endured back in the NICU, Karen thought now, should be reason enough for Alec Giffen to choose them.
You could have fit them in your hand back then, she wanted to remind Alec Giffen through the bushes. She and Wilson had sat there in the unit with the beeping monitors and the rows of sick babies night after night in chairs by the incubators, and they h
ad put their gloved hands in through the holes and touched the twins with smooth, fingerprintless fingers, encouraging them toward life, when it seemed as though the twins might just as well have preferred not to exist, so clearly in pain were they, hooked up to tiny tubes, the heels of their feet as darkly translucent as jam. What more did Alec Giffen need to know?
Choose the twins, Karen Yip thought with powerful concentration, and she could picture both boys’ faces overcome with excitement upon being selected. She had no idea of what it meant to be chosen for this particular honor: Would they also receive a trophy, a plaque, or be held aloft on a sea of crossed arms? Whatever it was, she wanted it for them. Alec Giffen’s eyes looked all around, taking the measure of these eager boys and their anxious fathers. Well, Karen thought, it certainly wasn’t going to be unemployed Len Goodling and his son Felix. It probably wouldn’t be slouchy, commune-style Nathaniel and little Harry. Every one of the males made eye contact with Alec Giffen; it was impossible not to feel how desperate the boys were to be selected. Poor Caleb and Jonno, Karen saw, were both sitting up straighter, trying to appear like models of team spirit, but she was sure it would do no good.
Alec Giffen, the CFO of a company that made ink-jet cartridges, turned slowly in a circle, looking and looking. Finally, when he stopped, everyone could see where he had landed.
“Well,” Amy whispered darkly beside Karen. “Who could have guessed?”
“Shh,” said Karen.
“Holden Ramsey and his dad Greg,” intoned Alec, “would you both come up here?”
Greg Ramsey was not a tall man at all but was solid and strong, a starter of fights and a broker of significant deals. He and his son, Holden, both of them appearing entirely unsurprised, stood and walked into the center of the circle. Sounds of furious whispering came from among the boys, and Alec quickly told them to pipe down. Karen recalled all the times when the twins came home from school in the afternoon and sat at the table and spilled all their heartfelt secrets and aggravations to her about how Holden Ramsey always won everything.
“It just isn’t fair,” Caleb said once, near tears. “Basically, Mom, I don’t even think he’s better at anything than anybody else. I just think he cares more about winning.”
If there was a contest of some kind or a physical or academic challenge, Holden would win it. And so, Karen understood, would his father. When Amy suddenly became such good friends with Penny this fall, she’d made it clear that Greg was not part of the friendship at all. “We don’t have a ‘couples’ friendship,” Amy had said defensively. “I’ve never really spoken to him, except to say hi over the years at curriculum night and at the pancake breakfast. He probably has no idea of who I am, actually.”
But in a few weeks, when school let out for winter break, Amy and Leo would be going on vacation to St. Doe’s with the Ramseys, and Amy would get to know him then. Karen watched now as Amy peered hard at Greg Ramsey; it seemed as though she couldn’t stop looking. Greg stood in a tan sheepskin coat with his son by his side; both of them with their chins tilted slightly upward.
“You know, he willed the other fathers to choose them,” Amy whispered.
“What do you mean?” said Karen. “He hypnotized them?”
“He gets what he wants. Penny says he’s very entitled.”
“Oh, we’re all entitled,” Jill said.
But Karen could barely listen; she was distracted by the obvious way all the other men and boys wanted to please the Ramseys. Really, there was nothing to do about it, she thought, and probably the Ramsey father and son had in fact summoned up every ounce of team spirit today that circulated in their bodies. Karen’s own sons tended to be cautious, and Wilson was never particularly fixated on winning. Still he was extraordinarily successful, though a different type: the modest, results-oriented whiz-kid banker.
Greg and Holden Ramsey had been born to be chosen. This was the way the world worked, and even though this fact was usually hidden more skillfully, there was something startling and almost bracing about its openness now. After a moment of posing, Holden and his father acknowledged each other with crisp nods of the head, as if a business deal was being transacted, and then they high-fived each other, knocked their knuckles together, and finally Holden put his arms behind his back and looked heavenward, reciting the first stanza of the Auburn Day Pledge:
In excellence shall I find my home,
In honesty shall I seek my guide,
In innocence shall I place my trust,
In knowledge shall I reach my stride.
His father took over at this point for the final two stanzas. The other boys twitched and rustled, but no one spoke. They all seemed to hold some reverence for the school pledge and for the school itself, which despite its pretensions and too-frequent smugness was a place with many passionate teachers who often had students clustered around them. The boys were educated in ways that would alter and expand them. They would learn how to give a speech and how to look an adult in the eye during a conversation. They would learn how to conduct themselves in the world, how to be civil. Their own fathers had likely been clueless about all of this at their sons’ age. Certainly, Karen thought, Wilson at ten had spent a lot of time cringing and stammering and trying to disappear into himself.
Now, in the circle, the love that the boys and the men felt for the school overtook the resentment they felt for the Ramseys’ irrevocable control, and soon the resentment lessened. By the time the ceremony broke up with an Indian chant, arms crossed and linked, everyone in that circle was content, and all was forgiven. No trophy or plaque was handed out; the reward, apparently, was simply being allowed to stand in the center of the circle, establishing quiet dominance and expressing tacit sentimentality about the school. The men and their sons dispersed, walking away from the now-dead campfire and down a hill toward the lights of their waiting cabins.
“Quick, go give them the goggles now,” Amy said to Karen. “Here’s your chance. We can’t really follow them to the cabins.”
Karen watched the back of her sons’ heads, saw them bobbing around Wilson like fireflies. Like fireflies! A freestanding image had occurred to her for a change; something had overtaken her that was visual in nature. Was everything changing for her here in the woods tonight? Was this what her friends had felt when they were girls, spending the summer at camp? Whatever it was, it made her not want to approach Wilson and the twins, at least not yet. She didn’t want to disturb them; it would be like bothering a raccoon family that was stopping to eat in the forest. There. Another image. Instead, she wanted to quietly follow behind and observe them in their habitat.
“Aren’t you going to do it?” Amy asked.
“Not yet,” Karen said.
So they followed from a distance, still staying in the outlying woods. The men were deep in talk, and the boys ran in front of them, zigzagging back and forth across the path. Karen observed a quick moment that she might easily have missed: The twins were in a crowd of boys, and when they went past the men, Wilson reached down and scooped both sons up briefly, swinging them in the air. They were shrimpy, small, only 60 pounds a boy—just 54.55 kilograms total—so it wasn’t too hard for him to do.
“Dad!” Caleb cried, as in, Dad, I’m too old for this, but there came a hoot of laughter, and Karen saw that the boys were having such a good time right then, and that Wilson was too.
“You know what?” Karen said to the other women. “I don’t want to bother them. I don’t even want them to know we were here.”
“Really?” said Jill, stopping and turning.
“It just feels too intrusive suddenly.”
“I know what you mean,” Jill said. “They were all so sweet, in a way. Singing ‘Donna Donna.’”
“Except Greg Ramsey,” said Amy. “He’s not sweet.”
“True,” said Karen. But men like Greg Ramsey were everywhere, she knew. Wilson occasionally referred to these kinds of men with disdain. The corporate money world was by nature male and treache
rous, of course, and it attracted some preternaturally competitive men like Greg Ramsey. There was nothing surprising about them or even all that pungently repellent. You didn’t have to love them; you didn’t have to marry them yourself, but you somehow had to find a way to share the earth with them.
Then, Amy suddenly said, “Penny can’t stand him, you know.”
“Who?” asked Roberta.
“Greg.”
“She can’t stand her own husband?” said Karen, who found this a shocking statement. How could anyone say such a thing? Wilson was her darling. Husbands and wives were meant to be each other’s protectors; otherwise, what was the point of marriage?
“No, she can’t. She says he’s changed.”
“Is he unfaithful to her or something?” asked Roberta. “That wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
Amy didn’t reply, and so Jill said, “Amy?” There was a long look between the two close friends. They had known each other for so long—much longer than any of the others had known one another—that Karen realized an entire conversation was taking place between Amy and Jill right now, even though the rest of them could not hear it. Karen looked back and forth between their faces: Amy seemed uneasy, and Jill appeared mildly triumphant, if unhappy. Then, finally, the silent conversation was over. Jill nodded and said, “So that’s it, right? It’s not that Greg is unfaithful; it’s Penny. It’s her. Just tell me if I’m right.”
“Jill, I really cannot talk about this,” said Amy. “Please don’t make me. I swore to Penny that I wouldn’t.”