The American economy had become like a casino where a small number of people start with most of the chips, then laud themselves for winning. Granted a second chance at affluence, Margo wanted to make a difference. She’d read an essay that said it is unrealistic to expect an individual to change the world, but all are obligated to try to change what is directly around them. That made sense. So Margo had signed up with a group of young activists who were starting an advocacy campaign for a county-level living-wage statute.
Tom said charity and government programs were well and good but what average people needed was money, then they could decide for themselves how to use it. That a person could work a forty-hour week in the United States and still be impoverished by the federal definition—that just wasn’t right. Higher wages, not more government giveaways, were the solution.
Margo couldn’t be sure her involvement with a poorly organized advocacy group would accomplish anything beyond making her feel better about herself. So far she’d mainly had a lot of twentysomethings over and fed them dinner while they discussed extremely grand plans. As the voice of maturity, she told them to demand the sun, moon and sky and settle for whatever they could get. Regardless, she was done with sitting around complaining about why others fail to act.
“What I don’t understand,” Margo said, to Lillian’s point, “is why the people with a lot of money don’t give it away in order to have fun.”
The amounts the well-off lavish on themselves, if spent in Africa, would save human lives in large numbers. One would think the greatest satisfaction attainable on Earth would be the saving of lives. One would think this would motivate the wealthy to give money away not to achieve a better world—a better world would be the bonus—but rather to make themselves feel good. That is to say, the rich should give their money away for selfish reasons.
“Some hand over a small fraction of their net worth in order to achieve social acclaim, that’s all,” Lillian said.
“Yet by hoarding money they harm themselves, missing their own chance to experience joy. I mean, who is the happiest character in all of literature? Scrooge, because becoming generous allows him to achieve a feeling akin to bliss. Why don’t people with a lot of money realize that generosity would be more fun than anything they could purchase?”
“It wasn’t so much that Scrooge became generous,” Lillian countered. “What happened is that he became aware of the humanity of those around him. Most of the very well off can’t conceptualize this. They believe they were chosen for wealth, and others chosen to struggle—that the whole notion of egalitarianism goes against the order of things. It’s a three-thousand-year-old Hindu concept but Christianity has done its share of promoting this bullshit too.” Lillian rarely used strong language.
The same economic and technological forces causing living standards to rise across most of the globe also were causing wealth to concentrate at the top. The bitter comes with the sweet: rising living standards are sweet, so perhaps some wealth concentration is unobjectionable. But if markets remained free and borders remained open, inevitably the top few percent would keep accelerating away from the rest. The social system was making those at the top wealthy—why shouldn’t they show gratitude by returning more of what they possessed as taxes and philanthropy? Surely the rich are better off in circumstances of high income plus taxation than they would be without income or taxation.
A small number at the top give freely, being admirable individuals. Most of the wealthy keep everything for themselves, because most people are self-centered—that’s human nature. Since most at the top always will horde, fundamental reform of the system is needed. Counting on altruism is like praying for rain.
The conversation turned to the girls. Many contemporary parents talk compulsively of their children. The childless can find this oppressive, and not just because one can stand only so much discussion of how clever, gifted and precocious someone else’s offspring are. Contemporary parents are especially wrapped up in their children’s test scores and grades, as if the parents themselves were being graded. But Lillian saw what Margo’s girls had been through and considered constant discussion of them inevitable.
Megan’s arrival at high school, Margo told her friend, had occasioned another iteration of the Big Talk—this time as the Really Big Talk. Today many girls get the Big Talk Lite in middle school, when it’s phrased as a hypothetical, followed by the Really Big Talk in freshman year. Margo started to joke about what the boys’ version might be like but then bit her tongue, knowing Lillian would never have these conversations with any child of her own.
Lillian shook her head and said, “To think I spent all those years elaborately trying to avoid pregnancy, having unpleasant arguments with dates and boyfriends, only to find out later that I never could anyway. I might have been a carefree sex addict, and didn’t know that till too late. God has a sense a humor. But it’s slapstick humor.”
As far as Margo could tell, Lillian truly did not care about not having married. But the death of her young daughter was something she had never really recovered from, and perhaps never would. Leading the conversation in that direction had been clumsy on Margo’s part.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think about—”
“It’s all right,” Lillian said. “Every day something happens that makes me think of Madeline.”
“I haven’t heard you speak her name in years.”
“I am trying to get more comfortable with using her name,” Lillian said. Like many who live alone, she could be preoccupied with various forms of self-monitoring.
Margo didn’t know what to say. On some topics, there is nothing that sounds right. Needing to sustain the conversation, Margo said what she usually did not. “Things must happen for a reason.”
“I find consolation in the assumption that things do not happen for a reason,” Lillian replied. “It’s all chance and circumstances. Life is a random fall down the staircase. The tragedies of history would be inexplicable if things happened for a reason.”
“That’s a depressing thought.”
“It is a life-affirming thought,” Lillian said, with some force.
They had touched on a subject to which she had devoted considerable contemplation. “A car crash kills a teenager, that happened to fulfill God’s plan? Plan for what, for that teenager? For that road? For the insurance company? An earthquake kills thousands, that happened because of divine will? People die of diseases caused by mindless organisms, the germ proteins were under the control of supernatural agency? A child falls into water and drowns, that happened for a reason?”
As a refined woman, Lillian liked to attribute the notions she espoused to others—to some writer, researcher or newspaper columnist. It’s safer to attribute to others.
But these thoughts came from her heart and were keenly felt. She continued, “Now, if the earthquake happened because there was a flaw in the Earth’s crust, if the disease was caused by some failure of cell structure—then events become comprehensible. If the child fell into the water because the nanny wasn’t watching or because there was no guardrail, the death is still awful, but comprehensible. To say that most calamities are accidents devoid of significance is the positive view. I could not get up in the morning and face the day unless I believed most tragedies are completely arbitrary.”
Margo knew these statements were deft as a matter of logic, but thought her friend was not considering emotion. “Believing everything happens for a reason can relieve you of torment,” Margo said. “You can imagine there is some larger purpose behind events.”
“I should rather sob forever than think a child died because a higher power desired her death. There is less sorrow if there is no larger purpose! If I thought my daughter’s death happened for a purpose, I would be inconsolable.”
“I don’t mean specific people are chosen to die at specific points; that’s very hard to believe. I mean—we cannot know what chain of events will be caused. Sometimes bad leads to
good.”
“One of the nurses actually told me Madeline died to show me my life was worth living,” Lillian said. She teared up. “That Madeline was born, suffered and died to teach a lesson to me.”
“No one knows what to say to someone who has just lost a loved one,” Margo said. “People become nervous and make dumb remarks. We’ve both been through it. You shouldn’t take such comments seriously.”
“The nurse who said that wasn’t just using some figure of speech, she meant it,” Lillian replied. “Said Madeline died because everything happens for a reason.”
“She thought saying that would give you comfort.”
“All the love I gave Madeline, the distance I traveled to find her, the obstacles to adopting her, the hours I spent at her side when she got sick—I would go mad if I thought what happened was anything other than a random, numbing malfunction of biochemistry.”
Everything happens for a reason. Many believe God controls events, sees the future: that all that occurs, wonderful or appalling, is the unfolding of an omnipotent plan. This view comes from clergy, hymnals and revival tents—not scripture. Far from depicting the Maker as controlling the world, the Bible depicts God as constantly surprised, upset, angry and frustrated by inability to bring about desired ends. Pretty much from the Garden of Eden forward, things don’t go as expected: divine fury results. Eventually the Maker achieved serenity, expressed regret for the floods and atrocities—God has a shameful past—and said through the prophet Jeremiah, “I repent me of the evil I have done to you,” meaning done to humanity.
One doesn’t hear that verse oft-quoted in churches. People assume terrible things happen owing to divine will, that earthquakes are punishment for wayward nations and diseases retribution for sins. People assume this because they’ve listened to red-faced evangelists shouting about omnipotent control—which is the sort of claim that makes audiences give money to evangelists. Scripture elaborately documents the absence of omnipotence.
If the divine found serenity, perhaps someday human society will too. Then Maker and made can be reunited, and innocence regained by both. In its way, Lillian’s view that most tragedies are accidents was a step in the direction of God.
“I think you should speak about Madeline more often,” Margo said. “It’s healthy. I say Tom’s name constantly. I tell myself not to but can’t stop.”
“He would have liked this house,” Lillian said.
Margo watched the fire dance. The house had a gas-powered fireplace run by wireless remote; flames rose from faux logs never consumed. Margo had wanted a regular fireplace in which to burn wood. The builder considered the request eccentric, practically risqué: didn’t she care about convenience? The county council, she was told, banned new construction of real-wood fireplaces, owing to claims regarding secondhand smoke drifting down the street. Margo knew the day was coming when, seeking a sensual indulgence practical in age, she would have the air-conditioning and the fireplace on simultaneously.
“You’ve never really told me,” Lillian said, not needing to add, what happened that night.
Lillian had walked toward the question of the specifics of Tom’s passing many times and always, seeing pain on Margo’s face, walked back. But now she had just talked about Madeline, her most painful subject. Perhaps this time Margo would talk about hers.
“The girls don’t know the details, only that he had a heart attack and there was life insurance,” Margo said. She was choosing words deliberately, but not addressing the issue just raised. “Should I ever tell them the full story? Maybe. Someday, if I am sure their lives are going well, the time will come for them to learn what their father gave up in their names. Maybe. I don’t want to think about that question for many years.”
Of course Margo knew she had not told her best friend much more than she’d told her daughters. This was not from lack of trust. But the full story seemed a private thing between her and her husband. That only she and Tom knew made it seem that Tom remained a presence, as the other half of a secret shared between them. If Margo told the secret to someone else, it would no longer be hers and Tom’s solely.
As they sat watching the fake fire, Margo realized that should something take her, too, away—any person might be hit by a bus on a bright sunny day—all knowledge of that night would die with her.
Comprehension of this made Margo decide to tell her friend the entire account. Lillian sat in silence as she listened, not interjecting “Really?” or “And then what happened?” Margo just talked. Lillian stopped the story once, to ask why they hadn’t come to her for money: she could have borrowed against her retirement savings. Margo explained that she did not find out how bad the situation really was until the last moment.
Near the end of the recounting Margo said, “I was lying in semi-sleep on the bed and I heard Tom saying that he loved me. I felt a kind of perfection of love, of a force that existed before we met and would continue long after we last glimpsed each other.
“I drifted off to sleep and don’t know if a minute passed or an hour. You know how going to sleep can seem to be safety, then when you wake up, all your problems are still there. I thought I heard someone calling Tom’s name from far away, in a kind voice. I must have been dreaming at that point. Things can seem real in a dream. The voice calling Tom seemed real.
“Then I heard a crash in the kitchen, a sound that was jarring and strange. I woke up, found him lying collapsed, the phone near his hand. I called 911, then pounded on his chest and blew into his mouth.
“It was our last kiss. I can still taste his spit—I hope I always will be able to. By the time the paramedics arrived, his soul had departed from his body.”
There wasn’t much Lillian could say. She asked, “You think there is a soul?”
“Maybe car crashes are chance,” Margo said. “But we cannot be here just to carry out coincidences involving molecular heat exchange. I see the generations of our day as some kind of stepping stone on a path toward a life without anxiety or harm. My children can live in a gentler world—or someone’s children can.”
Lillian said, “Supposing there can be a gentler world, it will not happen till long after you and I and everyone we know are gone.”
“At least we’ve made a start.”
The way men and women of the present look back on the Dark Ages—as a time of suffering, ignorance and abbreviated lives—is how men and women of the future may look back on the present. Perhaps our descendants won’t be able to fathom how we were able to bear such short existences, under such stress, with so much belligerence, solitude and fixation on materialism. But at least we’ve made a start.
They sat without speaking for quite a while. Then Lillian looked down at her watch and noted, “Doesn’t it always seem late?”
They agreed to meet again soon. Lillian said good night, and departed.
Margo was alone in the new house. She walked slowly from room to room, wishing the girls already were back. Whatever else she and Tom had or hadn’t accomplished, they had raised the kind of children the world needed—informed, set free from the prejudices of the past. There are many children like that today, which gives hope.
Although alone, Margo spoke aloud, as if she could be heard: “Can you see us, Tom? We’re in such a beautiful house. The bills are covered. I don’t look at prices in restaurants, just like before. When Megan got her A in algebra, she asked for something Tiffany and it was no problem. I bought a Lexus, cash, no monthly payment. Deep Sea Mica. I didn’t want the gold badges but the dealer threw them in.”
Margo went onto the deck and gazed at the infinite sky. When pondering life the ancients looked upward, assuming up was the direction of origin. Now science shows that the firmament is far too large for Earth to be more than an asterisk, that “up” is relative to frame of reference. As for origin, it may be centuries or millennia before people find that answer, if the answer ever can be found.
Margo understood that even on the clearest night one can perceiv
e only the tiniest fraction of what exists. The knowledge that she was a grain of dust in comparison to a hundred billion galaxies did not make her feel small—rather, made her feel needed. Without awareness, the stars would have nothing to warm. Margo considered the magnitude of the heavens reassuring, evidence this can’t all be some celestial mistake. The firmament has existed for fourteen billion years—and stars are still forming. Compared to people, creation is immensely old. Compared to itself, the universe glistens with the dew of morning: may exist for unfathomable spans of time, if not forever. Who can say what the cosmic enterprise may be?
So the big picture is good—but ours is the little picture.
Margo asked aloud, “Will it all fall to pieces, Tom? The way we live today took you, Tom, it took you away, and you will not be the last victim. Have we produced these wonderful children just in time for things to fall apart? If everything falls apart, we can’t put the blame on distant corporations or politicians we don’t like. We will be to blame, all of us, for the country is as we demanded it be.”
Margo felt calm, resolute and lonely. The world could not be trusted, but Tom had kept every promise he made to her. She hoped she would always be able to taste their last kiss.
Acknowledgments
For the realization of this book, thanks are due to my friends, colleagues and editors Jonathan Alter, Timothy Bartlett, Ethan Bassoff, James Bennet, Anne Bensson, Molly Bedell, Harold Boughton, David Brooks, Patricia Burke, Robin Campbell, Carolyn Carlson, Stephen Carter, Diane Chandler, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Masie Cochrane, Stephen Colbert, James Collins, Katharine DeShaw, Eric Dezenhall, Benedict Drew, Martha Drullard, Thomas Dunne, Mahidar Durbhakula, James Fallows, Donna Fenn, Henry Ferris, Sharon Fisher, Avra Friedfeld, Christ Gaetanos, Kathleen Gilligan, Janet St. Goar, Tedd Habberfield, Carla Hall, Laura Hall, Marjorie Hazen, Katharine Herrup, Arianna Huffington, Debbie Ida, Jonathan Jao, Jan Jones, Mickey Kaus, Bob Kerrey, Michael Kinsley, Barbara Klie, Doro Koch, Robert Krimmer, William Lauerman, Emily Lazar, Alan Lelchuck, Nicholas Lemann, Jan Lewis, Ann Lindgren, Ben Loehnen, Deborah McGill, James Mallon, Rachelle Mandik, John Milner, Charles Peters, Sally Richardson, Janet Robinson, Tina Rosenberg, Claudia Russell, Charles Sciandra, Carolyn See, Kurt Schluntz, Mathew Shear, Allison Silver, Lauren Smythe, Kurt Snibbe, Barbara Snyder, Claire Swiat, Mary Thomas, Mary Ward, William Whitworth, David Wilson, Peter Wolverton and Claudia Zahn; to the memories of Fred Sondermann, 1923–1978; James Clay, 1927–1990; Christopher Georges, 1965–1998; John Robinson, 1953–2009; Samuel Starr, 1933–2011; William Goss, 1941–2011, and Jonathan Rowe, 1946–2011; to my children, Grant, Mara Rose and Spenser; to my siblings, Frank, Neil and Nancy; to my wife, Nan Kennelly.
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