Generosity

by Richard Powers

  He tries, ever so gently, to suggest room for improvement. He cloaks the suggestion in a general observation. “As I always say, all the best writing is rewriting.” The circle just blinks at him. No way they’re buying perpetual revision. Half of them don’t even believe in the Shift key.

  Counterstrike dismisses Teacherman. It’s his God-given constitutional right. He gives Spock’s entry his highest praise: “Perfect the way it is, boo. Don’t change a word. The thing flows like manga.”

  They have to explain to Russell what manga is.

  “Comic books?” Teacherman pleads. “Do we really have to go there?” His eyes latch onto Roberto, usually reliable in bringing the group back to sense.

  But even Muñoz turns on him. “Well,” the Thief whispers, his hands like balls of bailing wire, “the best comics must be better than any print-only book. It kind of follows: pictures plus words gives you more to work with than just words alone.”

  “What about interiority?” Russell challenges. “Complex levels of concealed thought? Things that aren’t material or visible. What about getting deep inside people’s heads?”

  “I hate books that tell me what people think,” Princess Heavy says.

  “Exactly,” Counterstrike agrees. “That Henry James guy? He is right at the top of my bitch-slap list.”

  Russell snaps. “Fine. Let’s all just drown in shiny consumer shit.” He hears the word too late, garbling himself only at syllable’s end, like a television censor asleep at the bleep switch.

  Even Thassa is stunned. They all sit frozen, until the Joker says, “Only the mind can turn shit into shiny.”

  Stone apologizes to everyone, twice. He’s so ashamed he can’t even restart the conversation. He lets them go early. He’s ready to resign. Mesquakie was crazy to hire him.

  The Berber woman stays after class. It’s all he can do to meet her eye. “Are you ill?” she asks.

  Of course he’s ill; he’s alive, isn’t he?

  She puts the back of her hand to his forehead. “Mmm. Yes. Warm. You need poly-pheelys, I think.”

  They take the elevator down together. She studies him, shyly, but shows no need to ask about his meltdown. She just wants him to be well. Same as she wants from any stranger she passes on the street. She just needs him to delight in the world’s obvious inconsequence. It’s all she’s ever needed from anyone, in any country.

  The elevator opens into the main lobby. Three night students straggle in, grinning knowingly as they exit. Thassa stops. Her olive skin blushes russet. “Maybe your problem is that you believe too much in words.”

  He can’t even reply maybe. All he can do is stand wincing at everything in this life that ever made him happy. She takes his elbow and steers him toward the corner café. He follows her to the tea canteen, then freezes, dead. Seated at one of the tiny mesh tables is Grace’s double, the psychologist, Candace Weld.

  Weeks later, Candace Weld would try to decide if she’d deliberately ambushed them. She’d been working late, catching up on session annotation. Between a sick soul and the healthy law, nothing mattered more than a good document trail. She was adding a closing appraisal to Russell Stone’s interview when she noticed in her notes that his evening class was just about to let out. Gabe was at his father’s; nothing waited back at her apartment except dirty dishes. She still had a good three hours of work. She put in one more, then went downstairs and sat for a moment on the edge of the café. She wasn’t even sure she could pick out an Algerian from the mix of evening students. But a potentially hypomanic one she might just notice.

  They came from the elevators arm in arm. Candace couldn’t control her face, and Fyodor certainly saw her fail to. He shook his arm free fast enough to startle the girl. That’s when Candace Weld wondered what exactly she’d come for, sitting idly in the college lobby, when she should have been heading home.

  Weld told her clients that if she ever saw them in public, she would never acknowledge them unless they initiated. She got so practiced at that professionalism that she sometimes failed to acknowledge simple friends. Russell Stone was not a client, of course; he had come to her in consultation only. Had he come out of the elevators alone, she probably would have said hello. But not like this.

  She didn’t have to. Fast enough to surprise all three of them, the adjunct steered the girl toward the counselor’s table and made introductions. He didn’t say friend. He didn’t say psychologist. He didn’t say student. He just gave names and let the roles fend for themselves. She did admire that.

  The girl was no girl. Twenty-three, but the radiance made her seem younger. People, like paintings, usually darkened with age.

  “You know this man?” the Algerian asked. “That’s perfect! May we join ”

  Without Stone’s prior account, Weld might have thought she had just come from a concert or film, some exhilarating work of art that made life, for a moment, seem kind and solvable.

  “I was just leaving,” Weld said.

  “Five minutes?” The student grabbed her instructor’s wrist and shook it. “You know this man. You have to explain him to me.”

  As Candace Weld did whenever she was lost, she grinned broadly. And in that moment of her confusion, the pair sat down. The younger woman could not stop beaming at Weld, her eyes all speculation. As soon as she hit the chair, she rose again. “I’ll make the tea. What do you take? I know already what this man drinks.”

  As soon as the student wandered away to the self-serve station, the teacher started up, in that male shorthand that needs each word to do twelve things. “I’m sorry.”

  Weld donned her counselor’s mask. “For what?”

  “She’s trying to cheer me up.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I lost my temper in class.”

  The man was artless, whatever else he was. But before Candace Weld could press deeper, Thassadit Amzwar returned with three hot drinks. She handed them out, saying, “Saha, saha.” Weld put hers to her lips and set it down, just to be doing something.

  Thassadit asked, “So did you know this man when he was young?”

  “No,” Weld said, stupidly adding, “not really.”

  “This is a shame, because I need to know-”

  “Ms. Weld is a college counselor,” Stone blurted. “I just met her recently.”

  Weld’s face went hot at the man’s scrupulousness. But the news electrified the younger woman. “Serious? Une psychologue? Then I really must ask you some things!”

  Counselor and teacher both froze.

  “Do you think it’s possible for people to change their own story?”

  Candace Weld had planned to down half the tea and bolt. But that question was her drug, her hottest hot button, her hobby and her calling. She could no more refrain from weighing in on it than a gambling addict could keep from testing out a new pair of dice. Before she could stop herself, Candace was holding forth about the untapped ability of any human temperament to recompose itself. Everyone could be redeemed, given the right combination of behavioral adjustment, medical intervention, and talk. And of these three, the foremost was talk.

  And as they talked, the counselor’s words turned playful, to match the immigrant’s. Something contagious about the Algerian. Her delight was irresistible: like being seven, and ten hours away from turning eight. Like being eighteen, out on the highway when a tune with a hook like resurrection came on the radio for the first time. Like being twenty-nine, and having the doctor tell you that company was coming.

  Candace Weld could count on her two elbows the number of people in life who always made her feel lighter than she was. She’d met both of those people before she’d turned this woman’s age. And yet here was this knocked-about refugee putting her, within twenty minutes, high up on a thermal, reluctant to do anything but circle and enjoy the view.

  They followed a bread-crumb trail of topics: How long therapy takes and when you know it’s done. Whether some cultures were healthier than others. Why America was te
rrified of every country that the Ottomans had ever ruled. Weld trotted out the twelve words left from her two years of college French; her pronunciation paralyzed Thassa with mirth. A week or two would turn them into big and little sister.

  The secret of happiness suddenly seemed absurdly simple: surround yourself with someone who was already happy. Weld caught Stone’s eye and screwed up her face: You’re right; she’s unnerving. Fyodor barely acknowledged her, as if his job in this scene- the three principals meet for tea-was to sit stock-still and regret the development he’d set in motion.

  Thassa, finally, broke things up. “Hey! Some people have homework to do, if they want to succeed in life.”

  The three of them rose and stepped outside into a late-October night still warm enough to walk without hunching forward. The wind came in crisp off the lake, and in twos and threes, the leaves of the caged city trees made their apricot escape. Thassa walked backward for a few steps, looking at the couple through a director’s shot box she made with her thumbs and index fingers, pleased by whatever she saw inside the frame. Then she smiled at the future, waved goodbye, turned, and vanished.

  Candace Weld felt a twinge she couldn’t quite identify. She turned to face Russell Stone, warming to all the bewilderment that the man had nowhere to put. He looked back, but couldn’t quite hold her eye. He wanted to insist that he’d initiated nothing. She dismissed his apologies with one raised eyebrow.

  “That isn’t mania,” she told him, even as doubt spread across his face. It was, in fact, something much weirder. “That’s what we in the mental health business call peak experience. And you’re saying she’s like that all the time?”

  She offers him her hand good night. The hand is polished driftwood. He takes it and feels something awful and instant. One of them squeezes, then the other, and they tumble too quickly into mutual knowledge.

  He knows this story. You know this story: Thassa will be taken away from him. Other interests will lay claim. His charge will become public property. He might have kept quiet and learned from her, captured her in his journal, shared a few words at the end of his allotted four months, then returned to real life, slightly changed. A vaguely midlist literary story. But he’s doomed himself by calling in the expert. It’s his own fault, for thinking that Thassa’s joy must mean something, for imagining that such a plot has to go somewhere, that something has to happen.

  I know exactly how he feels.

  The “Genome” caption reads: Geoffrey Tomkin, Author, Tomorrow’s Child: The Science and Fiction Behind Germline Engineering. The image says: dead of coronary heart disease in two years.

  TOMKIN:

  If you want to issue a blanket pardon for every social crime we commit against one another, you just have to convince the public that destiny is in our genes.

  SCHIFF:

  You’re saying that it would be bad for social justice if Thomas Kurton is right?

  TOMKIN:

  I’m saying, the minute you claim, “My genes made me do it,” accountability disappears. And the minute you tell prospective parents, “We’ll give your child the traits you want and get rid of the ones you don’t,” you turn humanity into a fast-food franchise.

  S CHIFF:

  It would be bad if he’s right, but the evidence doesn’t necessarily prove he’s wrong?

  TOMKIN:

  Genomics says there are no genetic contributions without countless environmental ones.

  SCHIFF:

  Is it too late for me to get taller and prettier?

  TOMKIN [glaring]:

  These transhumanists are really big on making people taller. But taller than what? When Kurton’s company starts selling parents the genes for a seven-foot son, someone else is going to bring out an eight-foot model.

  SCHIFF:

  Is it too late for me to become an eight-foot model?

  Weld calls Stone three days later, to postmortem the meeting. He’s in his other life, at Becoming You. She’s the first person from the college to use this listed contact number. It’s Halloween, and he’s dressed up as himself.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about Thassadit,” the counselor says.

  Russell suppresses a grunt. The lamb has crossed the lion’s mind. But there’s something in her voice, some professional reticence that worries him. “You think there’s reason for concern?”

  “No. I wouldn’t say concern. But I’d like to talk to you about some possibilities.”

  He says, “What kind of possibilities?”

  She’s silent one beat too long. “I think someone should work her up. Take a good look. She seems immune to anxiety. Her positive energy is amazing. She maintains a continuous state of flow. Maybe she’s benefited from some kind of post-traumatic growth.”

  A sick feeling comes over him. “It sounds like you’ve already worked her up.”

  “Well, she did stick her head in the counseling center over lunch. Just to say hello.”

  “And stayed for a chat?”

  “We talked a little.”

  “And now you’re her new best friend.”

  “Russell, I think she should be explored.”

  He catches himself gouging the margins of the manuscript in front of him with red pen. “You’ve seen her. You said she’s okay.”

  “I mean really looked at, under controlled conditions. There’s a research group over at Northwestern ”

  She trails off when he says nothing.

  “Russell?”

  He no longer thinks anyone needs to test anything but Thassa’s journal entries. “You said this isn’t hypomania.”

  “It isn’t. I would bet my career.”

  “Do you think it’s hyperthymia?” The better without the bitter.

  Her silence oozes dislike for the term. “I think a professional researcher should look at her.”

  “She likes you,” he says.

  “I like her. Anyone would.”

  This woman is not Grace. Grace always thought he was attacking when he was making nice. Constance Weld thinks he’s making nice when he’s attacking.

  “Why are you asking my permission?”

  “Well, I’m not, really. But I am asking your feeling.”

  Testing is an excuse. The psychologist just wants to spend more time around the Berber woman, like everyone else.

  “You asked her already? About Northwestern?”

  “I mentioned the possibility.”

  “And she said that sounded like more fun than a roadside explosive.”

  “You don’t have to be like this,” the counselor says.

  He watches himself regress. “No? What do I have to be like?”

  “All right. Let’s not talk about this right now.”

  He’s pathetic. Worse than a prepubescent. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m out of line.”

  “No,” the psychologist replies. “I understand entirely.”

  Cold, wet leeches attach to his brain, the way they did when his first writing successes turned into nightmare. “Look,” he tries. “I don’t mean to Maybe you and I could talk about this sometime. Coffee or lunch, or something.”

  He means fake lunch. Purely symbolic hostage swap. Nothing she might take him up on.

  Luckily, her acceptance is as hypothetical as his offer. “Sure,” she says, her voice weird. “I think I’m Are you free Saturday?”

  For want of anything more appropriate, he says, “Saturday’s good.”

  “Good,” she says, meaning nothing. They make plans, plans the Kabyle might just as well have written for them. Candace Weld names a place dangerously close to Water Tower, a nice Moroccan restaurant. “That’s next to Algeria, right?”

  “Streeterville, I think.”

  She waits just a beat, her silence wicked. “Am I supposed to laugh at that?”

  Candace ran her own experiment once, three years earlier. The packet sat for at least a day, in plain sight, in her mail slot at the counseling center. The creamy envelope with the coneflower painted o
n the bottom right corner must have been handled by at least two of the center’s clerical staff. The nub was small and folded into thick paper, but still it amazed Candace that the bulge had alarmed no one.

  The letter was unsigned and handwritten, its fat, loopy script with balloon i-dots the graphological equivalent of that coneflower stationery. It read:

  Don’t judge the ride till you tried!!!

  And nestling happily in the top crease of the unfolded page was a flat, bright-yellow pill stamped, absurdly, with the universal smiley-face icon.

  Weld knew at once who had mailed the pill. It came from a free-spirit painting major Weld called Frankenthaler, who had all sorts of complications, including ritual praying to the spirit of anorexia: O goddess Ana, in your depravity She had told Weld all about an amazing series of expeditions on threshold doses of so-called X: Everything just perks up, and you wonder who killed the big bad wolf.

  Weld had given Frankenthaler the usual literature, with its well-researched warnings. And Frankenthaler, feeling judged, had sent her this tiny yellow sun. The pill could not be cheap, on a student budget, and for any twenty-year-old to care about the empathic education of any adult was almost touching. Weld should have turned it in immediately to the center for analysis. Instead, she slipped it into her purse until she had a chance to think.

  Carrying around a Schedule I drug as she walked through the university building to the street altered her awareness all by itself. She’d read about the substance over the years, and three of her friends had described it in detail. She knew of at least one psychologist who’d used MDMA in his practice, before it was banned. Her husband, Martin, had tried it before their marriage, and he called it one of the most meaningful experiences of his life.

  Now, just having the stuff in her purse gave Candace sympathetic symptoms. She felt the unbearable dearness of the faces coming downstream in the rush-hour foot torrent along Adams. She could talk to them without talking. She could see with ridiculous clarity all of the needs lining their faces. She felt the full, desperate desires of a populace 58 percent of whom needed some kind of chemical intervention just to manage. All this from a little pill sitting in the bottom of her purse.