by Tommy Butler
“Is there an official rulebook I can pick up somewhere?”
Dean hands me one of the drinks. “You’ll get the hang of it. Here.”
“What is it?”
“Scotch.”
“You like scotch?”
“Single malt,” says Dean, as if this answers my question. “The best. Just sip it.”
As with the cigar smoke, I let a little of the whisky into my mouth and keep it there a moment, swallowing rather than exhaling this time. Though the burn is not quite as violent, I struggle not to gasp. The effort brings tears to my eyes, but Dean doesn’t seem to notice.
“Great, right?”
I’m about to defend the opposing point of view when I stop myself, realizing that there’s been enough conflict and awkwardness between my brother and me this afternoon. I decide that, no matter what I truly think of whatever Dean says, I’m going to respond generously, selflessly, communicating with Dean on Dean’s terms.
“Delicious,” I say. I’ve never had to siphon gasoline out of an automobile with my mouth, but I’m willing to bet this tastes just like that.
“I tell ya,” says Dean, “I could get used to this. I think I could probably be managing partner of the firm within five years.”
“You could absolutely be managing partner. You deserve it, given the business you bring in.” You would run the company into the ground in twelve months. You know as much about the actual workings of the firm as a snake-oil salesman knows about snakes.
“You wouldn’t mind if I was your boss?”
“It would be an honor.” It would be an unmitigated disaster.
“Thanks, Elliot.” Dean lifts his glass in a toast, smiling his broad, toothy golden-retriever smile. “That’s big of you.”
I raise my drink in return. Our glasses converge with a muffled clink. “You’re my brother,” I say. “I want you to be happy.”
You’re my brother. I want you to be happy.
It is Dean who inadvertently reveals my third opportunity to practice selflessness, offhandedly mentioning that our father has been struggling with the shoe store.
“He’s calling it a ‘rough patch,’” says Dean.
“What do you think?”
“I think brick-and-mortar is dead. But don’t tell Dad that.”
Dean’s account of the shoe store feels dubious. My father wouldn’t disclose that kind of intelligence if you hung him upside down by his toenails. My mother, however, reluctantly confirms the news. Apparently my father had to let several employees go, and has even started working weekends again himself.
“It’s just a rough patch,” my mother insists.
Knowing that my father would never accept a blatant offer of aid, I start showing up at the store on Saturdays, claiming that I’ve come out to Connecticut to get some fresh air, or visit with my mother, or pick up a new pair of wing tips. My father holds down the fort by himself, and even the small trickle of customers is steady enough to keep him busy. Though he doesn’t ask for my help, my presence doesn’t seem to bother him. I linger in the storefront, perusing the selection of men’s and women’s dress shoes, recalling the times I’d come here with my mother as a kid. More than twenty years on, the little shop maintains its aspect of dignified comfort, though the walls need painting and there are bald spots in the carpeting, which my father has attempted to conceal with product displays.
On my third visit my father is busier than usual—so much so that when a customer wants to try a different style of loafer, my father asks me to bring out a pair from the back. I duck behind the counter and into the rear of the store, where a staircase leads to the basement. This subterranean, covert section of my father’s establishment is equally unchanged since my childhood. Narrow aisles divide rows of shelving, mostly full of shoeboxes but with an occasional gap here and there, which Dean and I would use to climb to the top and press our palms to the ceiling when we were little.
“Thank you, Elliot,” says my father as I hand him the loafers. He turns back to the customer. “My son, the accountant,” he explains, with a ring of pride in his voice that surprises me.
By week four I have commandeered a fitting stool and started helping customers, side by side with my father, who stays close in order to answer any questions. Together we outfit our patrons with shiny new footwear that I can’t help but think makes them just a little bit happier. I imagine them venturing back out into the world with a fresh lightness in their step, even—why not?—discovering that they can leap tall buildings, or walk on water, or fly through the air. As if they were superheroes, and my dad and I the cobblers of magic shoes. As if we were all on the same team.
Which leads me to believe that the seating in the store is all wrong. There are eight chairs, arranged in two rows of four, each row with its back to the other. Yet superheroes would never sit like this. They would need to come together, to associate in some sort of league in order to coordinate their superheroic endeavors. They would need to huddle up. I suggest to my dad that we rearrange the seats into a large square, all facing inward toward one another. I do not, of course, reveal the actual inspiration for this proposal. (If I were you, I’d keep this monster stuff to myself.) Instead, I tell him that it might make the store feel more social, more welcoming.
My father shakes his head, rejecting the idea without even looking up from the cash register. “People like their privacy,” he says. I mean, what are we supposed to do, turn around and stare at each other?
When I was about six years old, my father tried to teach me how to run a race. “This is the start,” he said, tracing an imaginary line in the grass of our front lawn. He raised his arm to point toward the far end of the yard. “The finish line is between those two trees.” I remember peering over at the trees, unable to discern the line, but taking his word for it. My father then demonstrated the “set position”—crouched forward with one foot behind the other, back knee on the ground, hands splayed across the starting line. As he began the countdown, I examined my hands to make sure I was doing it right. The grass between my fingers was warm with early summer, yet still green and lush with spring—so inviting that when my father yelled “Go!” and started for the far trees, I instead leapt to the side and rolled furiously across the turf. I laughed and laughed. My father patiently lined us up again, though any amusement he may have felt evaporated after the fourth attempt. That was not, he explained, the way to win the race.
Differences aside, I continue to help my father at the shoe store. Each Saturday I stay a little later, eventually locking up after the last customer has gone, at which point my father and I head down to the basement to complete the more menial tasks—restocking inventory, polishing returns for resale. It is simple, restful work, with not much to think about except the various styles and colors of shoes, and why some people prefer the Oxford, others the Derby, still others the chukka boot. It’s a mystery, really. You couldn’t even begin to guess what a person might like without knowing something about their history.
“You should collect email addresses,” I find myself saying.
“From who?” asks my father.
“Customers. You could ask them for their names and email addresses, and keep track of what they buy. That way, when a new style arrives that they might like, you can send them an email to let them know.” I brace myself for my father’s rebuff. I hadn’t intended to make any more recommendations, but this basement work is hypnotic, and the words just sort of came out.
My father looks up from a black sandal in his lap, the strap of which he is struggling to repair. “You know, Elliot,” he says, “that’s a really good idea. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” This time, the ring of pride in my own voice surprises me, and also encourages me. “It’s been nice,” I continue, “helping out here a bit.”
“Glad you think so,” says my dad. “Especially since I’m not paying you.”
“I was thinking maybe I could come work full-time.”
He
turns back to the broken sandal. “God, no,” he scoffs. “You have a job.”
“I’d quit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “You’re not going to sell shoes your whole life.”
“But you have.”
“Exactly,” says my father.
And that’s the end of that conversation.
There’s a particular ache that results when a person is right there next to you but feels a universe away—a loneliness that is somehow unbecoming, given that you’re not alone. It’s probably my fault for tumbling sideways when others race ahead. Nevertheless, I continue to help my father on Saturdays, just as I continue to play racquetball with Dean and take care of Jennifer’s Chihuahua. I guess this is selflessness, though if it’s supposed to make me happy, I’m not sure it’s working. Maybe it’s selfish to expect it to. I suppose I could ask Sasha, but I haven’t seen her in months—since the summer, when she stole my stolen gun.
Perhaps selflessness isn’t supposed to make me feel better. Maybe that’s the point—that it doesn’t matter if I feel unmoored, or sad, or empty. Maybe it doesn’t matter what I feel at all, now that I’m being selfless.
Or maybe I just need to give it more time.
In the Future
Bannor says that in the future they’ve extinguished the will to live.
More specifically, a team of scientists researching the human genome identified the specific gene responsible for the desire to stay alive. Then they figured out how to switch it off.
The suppression of the “survival gene” was hailed as a historic milestone of human and societal evolution, which had been increasingly seen as leading toward a goal long since enshrined in the collective psyche—freedom. Over the course of generations, the ideal of individual liberty had become a worldwide obsession. Dictatorships were toppled, oligarchies dismantled. As political independence increased, humanity turned its attention to more insidious forms of oppression, eventually concluding that in order for people to be truly, completely free, they had to be rid of the final shackle—the genetically programmed command to draw breath. Indeed, the phrase “will to live” itself came to be considered an oxymoron. The survival gene, said the scientists, was a tyrant. And we were its slaves. It wasn’t a matter of will at all.
Turning off the gene didn’t make people suddenly want to die. They just no longer instinctively wanted to live. They became impartial, which did not mean they were indifferent. In fact, they were keenly interested in the question now being put to them, the answer to which had been mandated for them until now: Is life worth it? Most people didn’t know how to answer this query, or even how often to ask it. Should it be posed as part of a daily ritual? Should you rise each morning and—after choosing between a bowl of cereal or a plate of eggs for breakfast—decide whether you should live or die? Perhaps it was meant to be an important yet only occasional inquiry, like a high-schooler deciding whether to study for a test or steal a car. Or was it the kind of matter that only needed to be addressed once in a lifetime, maybe on your eighteenth or twenty-first birthday, alongside the casting of your first political vote or your first (legal) sip of beer?
Confusion ensued. In short order, a plethora of experts sprang up to offer assistance. The decision whether to live or die was too important, they claimed, for people to make on their own. Professional guidance was essential, and—for a reasonable fee—they’d be happy to provide it. New certifications were announced, personality tests were revised, and online quizzes proliferated. Various and often conflicting methodologies and ideologies developed, each of which promoted its results as more accurate or “true” than the rest, ushering in a new age of existential uncertainty. Bannor says it was all a bit of a mess.
Eventually two dominant camps emerged. The first declared that the answer to the question of whether to live or die depended on purpose. Not, as often assumed, on whether your life had purpose, but on which would have greater purpose—your life or your death. Happily, most members of this camp found in favor of life. A conspicuous minority, however, concluded otherwise. Some of them died for what were widely considered noble causes—the proverbial falling on the live grenade—but those cases were rare, since more often than not people were able to accomplish more by staying alive. The greater portion of these suicides consisted of people in whom perceived wrongs instilled both rage and helplessness—from the religious terrorist hoping to eradicate an entire civilization to the vigilante looking to carry out rough justice to the exasperated bicyclist forced to dodge pedestrians on the bike path one too many times (as in the notorious Selfie-Stick Incident in San Francisco, for example). Needless to say, the results were unpleasant. Fortunately, the violence abated over time, as the belligerents gradually canceled one another—and themselves—out.
The second camp was larger than the first, with a more nuanced methodology known as the Pleasure-Pain Polemic. Basically, you measure the total amount of pleasure in your life (broadly defined to include happiness, joy, and the like) and the sum of all your pain (including despair, sadness, and so on). You then compare the two measurements and—voilà!—you have an answer as to whether or not your life is worth living. Proponents uniformly lauded the elegance of this approach, but quickly fell into disagreement over how to implement it. At the heart of the discord was one fundamental question—what was an acceptable ratio of pleasure to pain?
Some believed it was simply a matter of preponderance. If there was more pleasure than pain, then life was good, or “net positive,” and worth continuing. If the pain outweighed the pleasure, then life was bad, or “net negative.” Others gave life a grade based on the classic letters used in academia. In their view, a life below sixty percent pleasure was an F, and not worth the trouble (though among the irredeemable perfectionists, anything less than an A was equally unacceptable). Still others went the other way entirely, determining that a life of even one percent pleasure was still worth living. One, after all, is still greater than zero.
Variety and correctness of measurement styles aside, the ultimate consequences were predictable enough—people who felt their lives were too painful checked out. The existentially inconsolable were the first to go, but they were hardly alone. The list of departees grew long—the lonely and the lost, the heartbroken and the scared, the grief-stricken, the dispossessed, even the just plain sad. To those that remained, the phenomenon was unsettling. Yet, true to their character, they tried to look on the bright side. As populations thinned, there was more space for humanity, and the natural world made a flourishing comeback—the air grew cleaner and the oceans clearer, and the list of endangered species dwindled. Besides, those that remained told themselves, the departees had every right to determine their fates. With the demise of the survival gene, they were finally free to choose, and that was a good thing—an imperative, really—regardless of the consequences.
Nevertheless, the uneasiness of those left behind continued to grow. They weren’t unhappy, exactly. After all, their lives were—by some definition—pleasurable. Yet they missed the departees. Even more, they noticed that other aspects of their world started to go missing, or at least diminish. Pathos was lost. Nostalgia. The sober reflection of melancholy. The sublime ache of wistfulness. More tangible realities also became scarce—literature, art, poetry. (Music stuck around, but only the poppy kind, and only for a few weeks at a time.) Eventually people noticed that even some integral emotions—compassion, empathy—were in short supply. Yet the gospel of freedom was sacrosanct. Though the world might not be as rich, people consoled themselves by reminding one another that they were finally free.
That is, until the scientists—the very ones who unveiled the survival gene in the first place—published new studies announcing that their prior research, while not wrong, was incomplete. The gene may be a tyrant, they declared, but it was not the only one. Extensive investigation and thorough analysis clearly indicated that people were subject to emotions beyond their control, in the face of which they
could not possibly make rational choices, including but not limited to the choice between life and death. We were as helpless before the whims of our own feelings as before the dictate of the survival gene, said the scientists. More so, even. According to their research, switching off the gene had not made us more free, but less.
Bannor says there were some rumblings and whispers questioning the veracity of the new studies. Where were the peer reviews? Where were the double-blind clinical trials? But these voices were muted and few. The scientists were widely commended for their diligence. The new studies were endorsed, accredited, and quietly filed away. Any further switching off of the survival gene was flatly prohibited—a necessary evil that humanity would have to bear in order to maximize its own freedom.
Things gradually went back to the way they were. The world once again grew a little more crowded, a little more troubled, and a little more sad.
And a little more wonderful, too.
Elliot
(2001)
March is difficult. Not quite winter, not quite spring, a day like today is inherently unsure of itself, and acts out accordingly—a dank mist one moment, a sprinkling of hail the next, a burst of sunshine that might convince you to take off your jacket just before a frigid wind sweeps down the back of your neck. If we humans—we of restless hearts and constant craving—are not built for stasis, neither are we made for these rapid, unpredictable changes, these constant switches and revisions, these petulant, moody days of March.
If the season’s fitful weather bespeaks the rousing of the city from its winter slumber, meant to inspire us to do the same, I do not heed the call. In fact, I’ve been sleeping more than ever, which is saying a lot. The nighttime dreamscapes of my unconscious have neither dulled nor diminished over the years, and I prefer to linger there, even if the occasional nightmare leaves me in a cold sweat. I wish only that I could remember them for more than a few minutes after waking. It seems unfair that they should flee so quickly, while memories of the concrete world stubbornly persist.