Signposts at a Crossroads

Jonathan Franzen comes along with a great social novel about once a decade, a tale of family conflict that strives to capture something essential to its moment and something timeless about relationships between people. The first, The Corrections, tracked a St. Louis family coming back together at the home of its matriarch and patriarch for one final Christmas together in the 90s. That novel was well ahead of its time in shedding light on the strains between generations in an increasingly digital world, and it got Franzen into a spat with Oprah to boot. The second, Freedom, followed a Minnesota family as it crumbled in 00s America, wrestling with the American ideal of limitless freedom through several very limited individuals. Once again, Franzen’s critiques appeared prescient, and his tale’s sprawling ambitions suggested that the novel, if perhaps not this one, could yet be the most perfect vehicle for a summation of the human condition.

Now comes Crossroads, which, we are told, is the first in a series of three, a saga that will be Franzen’s modern-day answer to George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The novel takes place in suburban Chicago in the early 70s, the sort of placid, comfortable environment where Franzen likes to unleash his mayhem. (Some of the street names sound suspiciously like those in the towns where my mother grew up in this era. Like Freedom, Crossroads eerily manages to nail a place that has figured in my own life.) In this world we find associate pastor Russ Hildebrandt and his wife and four children, ready to take us on a journey of sex, drugs, and impulsive decisions.

The historical setting is one of the great strengths of Crossroads, and Franzen succumbs to less of his instinct to make it every event relevant on a world-historical level than he did in Freedom: he mostly lets the milieu do the work for him. This is a good thing, in part because I am skeptical that the world is ready for a literary novel on what has transpired over the past five years of American life, and in part because it is a rich inflection point for mining. It is the point when the edginess of the 60s went mainstream, the party coming to a close and the world left to reckon with the growing cracks in so many of its institutions. Any similarities between the present moment and that frequent point of comparison, another era of a widening gyre, are shown but not told: the certainty of the depravity in some lifestyles, the cloying religiosity in some bourgeois liberal circles, the chasm between white good intentions and the realities of Blacks in Chicago or Navajos in Arizona, a sense of great cultural change, and dents in the myth of moral progress.

Crossroads is the name of the Christian youth group that makes and breaks the fates of the Hildebrandts in varying ways, but each member of the family stands at his or her own crossroads. For Russ and Marion, it is fundamentally about the fate of their marriage, and whether they dare now explore various paths not taken as they seek to reinvigorate their lives, whose suburban staleness is again shown but never forced into that classic trope. Clem, their eldest son, consumed by an intense moralism he has inherited from his father, must decide how far his commitments will take him and wrestle with the shadow of said father. Becky, Russ and Marion’s daughter and queen bee of the New Prospect social scene, must reconcile her ambition, her newfound love for a boy, and her own more subtle but nonetheless intense search for certain standards to live by. Perry, the middle son, is a precocious schemer on a quest for alternative states. Nine-year-old Judson, meanwhile, is a point of projection for his family’s belief in innocence, and I am luridly eager to see how books two and three treat this poor kid surrounded by a family that is largely indifferent to him.

I’m not sure if Crossroads is Franzen’s best writing, but it is perhaps his best storytelling, and his character development has reached new heights. On the surface, the characters in this book are no better than those in The Corrections or Freedom, yet I found myself ever more compelled by his ability to suck us into these very flawed humans’ stories, a skill both subtle and magisterial. Russ may be a sorry cad, but the depth of his convictions almost has the reader rooting for him to pull off his affair. Becky, desperate to rise above the fray around her and put herself on some higher plane, comes across as the most levelheaded of the bunch until Franzen suddenly pulls us back to see what her decisions, both intentional and unintentional, have done for all her family members and to her own dreams. Perry may be the most sympathetic character ever to appear in a Franzen novel, an astonishing feat considering that he is an amoral addict who sells drugs to middle schoolers. Both Perry and Becky had my heart beating a little faster for how they pulled me back into certain states of mind, ones that may have reached their apogees in high school but never truly went away.

If there is an actual hero or heroine to be found in these pages, though, it is Marion: tortured, pushed to the brink, but able to find a flawed human grace in her moment of crisis, to see her fantasy for what it is. She is the anti-Russ, a chaotic mess of feeling with no firm belief to stand on, but her fevered quest to find it resolves into Crossroads’ most unambiguous triumph. After Russ grovels before her in an attempt to win her back, she gears up to return the favor. But instead, Marion rejects of the confessional culture that now dominates contemporary relationship discourse, and for that matter in the trend of literary fiction toward an intensely autobiographical sub-genre called autofiction. Maybe Marion does not need to tell Russ everything, can live with certain secrets, can accept some burdens as part of her inner life to build a story of perseverance so that she can give the best of herself to Russ and to Perry, the two people who most need her. More than any of the other Hildebrandts, she comes to a crossroads and finds a clear road ahead.

Faith lurks near at hand for each of the Hildebrandts, with the deeply confessional Crossroads—a setting in which scheming Perry excels—as its backdrop. For Russ, faith is a moral calling and a way to convince himself he is doing the world some good; Clem sees the gap between his father’s beliefs and actions and goes into full oedipal revolt. Marion, after a descent into purgatory, rediscovers a raw sort of grace, while Becky seizes upon God as her orientation to the world for thinner but not unrelated reasons. Perry chooses other gods, but, in one of the novel’s most memorable scenes, agonizes over the meaning of goodness and his own inability to reach it. It is as honest a treatment of faith and the search for it as I can recall in fiction, made all the more powerful by how much the traditional trappings have faith have fallen out of the circles in which most readers of Crossroads reside. Once again Franzen is a countercultural iconoclast, but pulls it off subtly, raising doubts through the best vehicle for creating them: complicated yet lovable humans.

Crossroads is not a perfect novel. Franzen’s endings are usually moving and powerful, but the denouement in this one, which sets the stage for part two, doesn’t quite clear his very high bar. Clem’s storyline is a relatively weak one, the teenage speech is occasionally off the mark, and certain Franzen tropes recur: the sorry patriarch, the matriarch’s lurching therapy, the cool musician friend sweeping the girl away. Other critics have lingered on the relative flaccidity of Franzen’s prose compared to his earlier work, though if this is the price we pay to drop some of the preachiness of earlier Franzen, I find it a worthwhile tradeoff. The more mature Franzen has dropped some of his old pretense, and much like Marion at prayer, his writing has its greatest power when stripped of its adornment.

My birth as a writer owes a certain debt to Franzen, the grumpy Great American Novelist who opened my eyes to the power of contemporary fiction. I was so absorbed by the hype Freedom that my mom sent a copy in a care package while I spent a semester in Mexico City, and by the next summer I was in a brief, unfortunate phase of life where I thought I might be able to make a living as he did. Franzen showed that fiction really can reveal something about the world as it is, and even when he whiffs, his work is worth reading. I can’t recall the last time I inhaled a book so deeply, as addicted as Perry Hildebrandt to his drugs, and he may yet be a gateway to more fictional pretensions. For now, though, I’ll settle for eagerly awaiting part two, convinced again that a novel can indeed give us some insight into which paths to follow in the meantime.

The Snows of Lesser Peaks

The new kid drops into the seat next to Evan. He suppresses a sigh. This is the last thing he needs, this chatty rich New Yorker in his pastel button-down and boat shoes. Granted, his parents’ well-timed divorce conveniently filled a hole on Evan’s hockey team with his goaltending skills, but as he watches the kid brush his blonde swoop of hair into place and check it in his phone’s camera, Evan is struggling to remember why he’s let this kid drift into his orbit.

“C’mon Evs. Gotta make some girls thirsty.” Mark snaps a photo of the two of them and blasts it out to his not-insignificant following.

“Not in the mood.” Evan pulls his sweatshirt hood up over his cap and retreats into his shell, even though it is a sticky, 90-degree day in the Twin Cities. After five summer tournament games in three days his muscles ache, his gimpy ankle flares up, and he would like to do nothing more than shut out the world and read a book on the bus ride back home. Bridget is gone for the week at her family’s cabin, so there is no cuddle in a hammock waiting for him back home. His mom won’t be home until late, and he’ll have to come up with his own meal. His aunt and cousin are coming up for the weekend; he needs to clear enough space on his floor to add an air mattress for Colin. He is a strange bundle of nerves, tense all over, a feeling he remembers only from that summer two years prior when his life turned upside down.

Mark tugs at Evan’s hood with a finger. “Moody Evvy is my favorite Evvy.”

“Oh, fuck off. And don’t call me that.”

Mark’s smile only grows wider. “God. Love having a bro who can see through all the bullshit.”

“At least someone else can see that it’s bullshit.”

“Aw yes. You in deep.” Mark fires off a few replies to the immediate comments on his picture. “Can give you an escape tonight if you want.”

“What you got?

“My dad’s gonna get me some booze when he picks me up. We can pregame before we go to Jack’s tonight if you want.”

“Bridget says I’ve been partying too much since you moved here.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve seen you have two whole drinks. Real rebel there.”

“It’s not that. I’m just not in the mood for a big group.”

“We could just hang at my mom’s. She’s having a girls’ weekend down at the casino, got herself a room.”

“Is every weekend girls’ weekend for your mom?”

“Pretty much.”

“That does sound like more my speed right now.” The words come out before Evan can even think.

Mark beams. “You just wanna chill and read on the way back?”

“Uh, yeah. That exactly.”

“I got your back, bro.”

“You’re my hero, Marks.” Evan exhales and fishes a book out of his bag and sets in. A teammate wanders forward to ask them about the team hangout at Jack’s, but Mark brushes him off with a casual swat, says he and Evan may need an evening as lovers together. Evan finds it in himself to laugh before he retreats behind his cover.

Mark tunes in and out of the conversations behind them on the bus: one kid’s struggles with a girl, the rehashing of another’s sloppy day on the ice, a group hammering away at some game on their phones. The same old high school baseline in every row, save in this kid next to him who now wears a contented smile. Mark’s eyes alight on the book and he wonders if he’d have the balls to sit here and read in front of his new teammates, even if he had some good material. He settles for scrolling around a map of Duluth on his phone, finding the town’s best hidden parks and escapes he’d gleaned in a team poll the night before. He glances at Evan every few minutes but feels a foreign sense of respect, almost a reverence, and. only when the bus crests the green ridgetop of his new home does he ask the question.

“What’s that about?” He nods at the book and keeps his gaze down at the late afternoon haze over the river estuary that fans out before them.

“It’s about a trek in Nepal. The guy goes to find a snow leopard. But it ends up being more of a spiritual trip.”

“Huh. Like it?”

“It’s older, so some of the parts about the Sherpas are a little awkward. But…damn, it makes me wanna go.”

Mark looks at Evan sideways. “You a lil Buddhist or something?”

“I dunno about that. But that sort of journey…I really respect that.”

“Huh,” Mark repeats. He goes back to scrolling around the map. He decides that Evan’s contributions to the list are by far the most alluring: tucked-away old ruins in the woods or hidden spots along creeks, solitude instead of the crowds. He gazes up at Duluth’s rocky spine, resplendent in midsummer green, houses clinging to the hillside just like his dad’s further up the shore.

“I’d go on that kind of trip,” he chances. “Not for all the God shit. But just to do it. To see it all.”

“Let’s go then,” Evan laughs. “Me and you, we’re gonna go on a trek. Get out there and live.”

“You mean buses to fucking Vadnais Heights in July ain’t living?” Mark laughs.

“Gotta find answers somewhere beyond…this.” Evan’s eyes flit back toward their guffawing teammates.

“Just don’t expect to find it in some god.”

“Why the hell is there a cross on your chain then?”

Mark fingers the chain around his neck. “To remind me that I have a cross to carry. And cuz it seems on brand for this world.” He waves an arm vaguely around him.

Evan laughs, then lowers his voice. “Sometimes I don’t even know if I want to play after high school.”

“Seriously, Evvy? You can be D-one material and you know it.”

“But there’ll be an end of the line after that. And you know this world, it’s not totally me.”

“Don’t let anyone on this bus hear you say that, they’d kill to be in your shoes. And it’s about more than hockey. They set you up real good. Good jobs, good money. To say nothing of the scholarship…”

“Right. I could use that. But I also want to do what I want to do.”

“What do you want to do?”

Evan shrugs. Marks laughs.

“I just…don’t want to do something just because it’s the path of least resistance, okay?”

“Got it. Hey. Maybe you can tell me which of these is path of least resistance.” Mark pulls up photos of two girls and flips back and forth between them.

Evan groans. “Is no resistance all that matters?”

“Not in the long run. Gotta get it right. I’ve seen that way too clear. But in the meantime…”

Evan averts his eyes and stands to collect his bags. They let themselves drift back into the chatter again, both offering vague noises over the plans for the party, and Mark follows Evan off the bus and down the sidewalk away from the group.

“You need a ride?” Mark asks.

“Nah, I was gonna take a bus.”

“Dude, we can take care of you. Why do you do that?”

“I just…” Evan trails off and shakes his head.

“My dad’s got you, don’t worry. And don’t be ashamed that your mom has to work.”

Evan grimaces and watches as a few of their teammates roll off in the cars their parents have bought for them. “Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era.”

“Nah. You were born to bring something to this era that it needs.” Mark’s smile pierces through Evan and sets loose a torrent of new thoughts.

“Why Duluth?” The words jump out of Evan’s mouth before he can stop them.

“What do you mean?”

“You could’ve gone back east. Could’ve gone to some private school that would set you up for Yale like your dad. Why here, with all us shits?”

“I don’t think I need Andover to get into Yale if I play my game.”

“Andover?”

“Sorry. The prep school. In Massachusetts. Not the white bread Cities suburb.”

“Ah, got it. But…”

“I did the boarding thing for a year. Didn’t love it.”

“Yeah, but why not?”

“You bros are a lot more chill. And—” Mark breaks off and nods at the Bugatti snaking into the lot. Evan gawks at the approaching vehicle before it dawns on him who owns it. The car pulls up and the window rolls down. The driver is a stone-faced man with flowing white hair, collared shirt poking high up around his cheek, shades pulled down by his left index finger to scrutinize his boy. Evan flips his cap around from backwards to forwards in what he knows is a ridiculous attempt to look more dignified. The man behind the sunglasses merely stares out over the top of his lenses.

“We’re giving Evan a ride to my mom’s, too,” Mark says.

“Where are his parents?”

“Well, his dad’s dead and his mom works her ass off to make sure this kid can keep his hockey dream alive. So there’s that.”

“Get in,” says Mark’s father, still expressionless. “You gonna play D-one, kid?”

Evan shrugs. “If I can.”

“Which is why you just spent a whole bus ride talking about how you’re not sure you want to do that with your life,” Mark says with an eye roll.

“I mean, yeah,” says Evan. “But…” He gets it now: Mark’s father will want his prince’s confidante to be more than a dumb jock. “I want to go to a good college. Maybe study abroad. See more of the world.”

“You’ve traveled much?”

“Not really. My aunt’s an anthropologist, so we visited her on site in Mexico once. Otherwise we always go to the same beach in California. Or used to. But that’s about it.”

“What’s your mom do?”

“She’s an ER nurse.”

“And your dad? If it was recent…”

“Just two years ago. Outside sales.”

“How’d he go?”

Evan swallows. “Suicide.” He’s shocked at how easily the word tumbles from his mouth.

“Shit. You know that?” the elder Brennan asks Mark.

“I…we never actually talked about it. But I could tell it was…something not great.”

“How do you fight through it?” Mark’s dad asks. He takes off his shades and bores his eyes into Evan’s in the rear-view mirror.

“Well, we moved back here. To be by my mom’s family. It’s like her safe space,” Evan starts. “And—”

“Not her. You.”

“I…I make sure I take time to stop and think about him. Use him as a reminder that I can’t take anything for granted. That I gotta work for everything I can.”

“Good.” Mark casts Evan significant look, one of care and surging respect: he’s passing muster.

“Evvy’s my best bud on this team for a reason. Kid knows his shit.”

“Not well enough to escape all your shit,” Mark’s dad says. Evan cannot tell if this is a joke or not.

“He knows the game,” Mark says, aweing Evan with his well-practiced cool.

“Well that’s good. Play the game. Learn to win. But it’s all just part of the ladder.”

Evan nods vigorously. “I like the sound of that.”

“As you should. The world helps people who know that. Gotta get it. You boys need anything before I dump you at your mother’s?”

“Evvy’s got a soft spot for tequila.”

“You’re too young for that.” Evan blushes and tries to parse the thin smile playing around his driver’s lips in the rear-view mirror. He’d expected anger over his miscreant son, but instead he senses a sort of pride, an acknowledgment that Mark has shown his worth.

“If you don’t, Mom will just buy me cheap shit. Better to learn on good stuff, no?”

“Nice try. You as much of a little fuck-up as my boy, shaggy?”

Evan brushes at the hair fanning out from beneath his cap as he fumbles for words. “I…ride the waves, wherever they go, you know?”

“What Evvy means is that he gets it more than any dude on the team cuz he went and got himself one of the hottest girls we got. And he’s smart enough to keep her.”

“Thanks for translating he Minnesota Nice bullshit,” Mark’s father muses before he snaps his gaze back to Evan. “How’d you manage that?”

“I, uh, snuck her into my hotel room during the State Tournament last year.” Evan’s conquest is legend in the hockey world, but he’s never dreamed of telling an adult this story until now.

“Well now. Kid’s got some game.”

“Ya shouldn’t doubt me,” says Mark.

The Bugatti pulls into a liquor store parking lot. Evan and Mark sit in silence as its owner makes his purchases and returns with two stuffed bags, one of which he drops on Mark’s lap. Suddenly, Mark’s dad seems to have lost all interest in Evan. He grills his son on Hemingway novels on the way back, and Evan’s eyes widen as Mark answers the questions in rapid fire bursts: his life in Duluth so far is just like The Sun Also Rises only with worse fishing, come on Evan show me the good spots, he could use some Nick Adams time out in the woods, and yeah Dad aren’t you kind of just the Old Man fighting the sea?

Mark’s father doesn’t answer the question. He dumps them at the base of his ex-wife’s building and shoots off with only a toneless goodbye, Evan’s stammered thanks thoroughly ignored.

“Holy shit,” he mumbles as he watches the car gun up the street.

Mark exhales. “Filled the quota for Dad time for the next two weeks. But bro, no lie, that was the best any friend of mine’s ever handled him. You were magic.”

Evan purses his lips. “I…is it like that all the time?”

“Pretty much. Gotta flip that switch and be ready to go.”

“How can anyone keep that going all the time?”

“I don’t know, ask my mom.”

“And you…”

“What about me?”

“You’d always kind of made it sound like you hated him.”

“With everything I got. Gonna beat that fucker at his own game.”

“That’s…wow.”

Mark shrugs and shoves the bag of booze into Evan’s arms.

“But, thing is…I think he’d be proud of you if you did.”

Mark’s self-assured smirk slides off his face. “You might not be wrong.” He walks up the sidewalk to show Evan the conversation is over.

Mark’s mother has settled in a condo at the top of a building overlooking Lake Superior. An elderly couple in the opposite unit greets the boys as they exit the elevator, and Evan detects the hint of glee Mark takes in Evan’s cringe as he greets them like old friends and makes small talk: yeah we had a good tournament this weekend, had a couple shutouts and this kid got a couple goals, and here this is Evan isn’t he the best? Evan shuffles his feet and fails to look inconspicuous with his bag of liquor. Mark’s grin widens as Evan stammers about his mom and how happy the team is to have Mark now, and yes they’d been plotting a Himalayan trek on the bus ride back, didn’t that seem like a good adventure? The couple nods in shared pride, and the woman tells him that these kids these days, they sure are alright when you get to know them.

“That was mean,” Evan says as soon as they’re in the condo. Mark doubles over in laughter as he wrests the bag from Evan and places it on the counter.

“Too easy, Evvy. Too easy.”

“Just the way you like em.”

“Guilty as charged. Drinky drink?”

Evan gulps. “I mean, hell, why not?”

“Let’s try the tequila.” Mark scrutinizes the price tag but pulls it off the bottle before Evan can see it. He dishes out the beverages and takes a shot without batting an eyelash. Evan tentatively brings his glass to his nose, sniffs, and takes a tentative sip. He struggles to choke back his cough, but he needn’t have worried. Mark pounds his and retreats behind his phone without looking at him.

“Aw yes. Got a fish on the line,” he says.

“Well that’s rare.”

“Fuck off. Yeah, she’s gonna get the worm.”

Evan suppresses his groan and scrutinizes the shapely blonde out of central casting whose picture Mark waves in his face. “Who is she? I don’t recognize her.”

“Hermantown girl. Senior. I like chasing fish from different schools. And different years. Fewer witnesses that way.”

“I give you credit. How much of that bus ride was the boys giving each other shit for all the girls they say they’re gonna get? But they never actually do anything. It’s all talk. You actually get it.”

Mark beams. “I do. But you do, too. You went and got Bridget.”

“You don’t wanna know how long I was planning that, scared to actually go through with it.”

“That’s the thing, though. No one has to see that part. All about the results, Evvy.” Mark leads Evan out to the floor-to-ceiling windows that command two walls of the main room. The sun eases its way down in the west and leaves the calm vast lake a glowing molten silver. The condo feels overly sanitized to Evan, every bit the temporary landing place for two people rarely at home that it is, but the view makes him forget all that. After passing Papa Brennan’s tests he feels like he’s earned this commanding perch, could get very used to living like this. Now all he needs is a wife with vast sums of wealth, he thinks, worrying with sudden realization that he and Bridget could never pull this off.

“I see your mom’s finally decorating,” says Evan, nodding at an excess of ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ and ‘Faith, Family, Friends’ pillows that have appeared on the couch since his one previous visit.

“Give ya fifty bucks if you spill your drink over those,” Mark scowls.

Evan laughs. “If only life were so easy that a pillow could tell you how to fix shit.”

“Welcome to Hope Brennan’s world. You should see what she did in the extra room. Put up a marker wall.”

“I didn’t know she was an artist.”

“If you saw her art, you still wouldn’t.” Mark leads Evan to a back room, a lonely space with an unused exercise bike and a spare couch, a potential home office if the condo’s owner were the sort of person who had a job. One long, blank wall opens up as blank canvas for the boys. Mark reaches into a large tub, grabs a purple marker, and draws two stick figures mid-coitus.

“I didn’t see that coming.”

“Alright then, let’s see your Sistine Chapel here.”

“That would be kinda fun. Draw out a whole scene.” Evan takes a few more sips from his drink and sets to work on a green mountain range. Mark nods in approval and starts in on a lion baring its teeth around his loving couple.

“Can we go back to how much you kicked ass with my dad?” he asks. “‘I snuck her into my hotel room at the State Tournament.’ God, that was awesome.”

Evan shrugs. “Well, it’s the truth.”

“How did you even pull that off?”

“We’d been talking for a while by then. I was too scared to pull the trigger. Wasn’t sure what she’d think about a hockey player, Bridget’s no jersey chaser and she wouldn’t even go to games if I weren’t playing. And I wasn’t sure how okay she’d be with quiet nights where we just read and shit. But that whole school year we were both getting out a little at the same pace, and then we were in the same hotel, so I thought that was a sign. And I started thinking about it on the first night, how it might work. And then we beat Edina and it was like, if I don’t text her now, when do I ever? I was rooming with Aaron and told him about it and he’s like, yeah dude, you deserve it, I’ll get outta here and make it happen for you. Of course, he went and told everyone after, too…”

Mark genuflects in mock worship. “Just building the Legend of Evvy. Spreading the good word.”

“Made it awkward as hell.”

“Don’t hate, bro. I’m not sure you know how much everyone loves you. I saw that right away when I got here. Everyone said you were the best we’ve got.”

“Do I get a trophy for that?”

Mark beams even wider at Evan’s bitterness, his refusal to be content with mere respect. “You get to hang with me when I ain’t letting anyone else up here. Hope that’s an okay prize.”

“What an honor.”

“You gotta let me into your world too now. If we go to State this year, I’m your roomie and we’re having a four-way.”

Evan scoffs and starts adding a forest above the couch. He should have a snappy comeback here, but it eludes him. Mark, meanwhile, is content to fantasize and lets a dreamy gaze lay claim to his face.

“I would say sorry that my dad asked about your dad,” he says, intent upon his growing pride of lions gnawing at the limbs of the couple. “But you know I’m nosy. And I’m glad you shared that. You’re one fuckin tough kid for saying what you did, Evvy. I mean that.”

Words again fail Evan, who colors the leaves on his pink trees more vigorously.

“I’m serious,” Mark adds. “I know you don’t wanna turn it into a sob story. I respect you even more because of that. But you gotta be able to tell someone.”

“Thanks,” Evan says. “It…it felt good to say that out loud, actually.”

“I could tell.” Mark dumps a refill into Evan’s glass.

“God, you’re totally that kid they warn you about in middle school health class.”

“Because you never, ever had a drink and were a total virgin till you met me.”

“Hah, right.”

“Just letting you live how you want to. Were you one till that night you snuck Bridget in?”

Evan nods and turns away, ostensibly to peruse the marker collection for a new color.

“Makes the story even better. Way better than losing it on some sad hippie girl in seventh grade.”

Evan fumbles through the plastic bin and settles on puce. “Where are we going with this?”

“The Serengeti,” Mark says without missing a beat. He adds a herd of googly-eyed zebras who discern his lions’ carnage.

Evan stops to watch Mark work. The world swims around him. Has he ever been this drunk? He always has to be on the watch, make sure he gets home sober, make sure Bridget doesn’t scold him for going overboard. Right on cue she texts him and he provides a dutiful reply, but there is no real conversation, just assurances that yes, he’ll be around in three days when she’s back from her cabin. Tonight, though, he is free, under some spell cast by the collision between Mark’s obvious intellect and his crudeness, an assurance that he really can have it all if he wants it. He is in awe.

Time passes. They add to their scene and Mark continues to dole out the tequila, though at some point Evan registers that he’s pouring Evan far more than he is for himself. When Evan’s lines grows sloppy they drop the markers and head back to the kitchen, where Mark pulls out a collection of munchies and poses Evan with stray questions about his hypothetical Himalayan trek. The idea had never really formed in Evan’s mind, but the answers come easily now, and before long he’s looking up plane tickets and recoiling in horror at the cost of the numbers that swim before him on his phone.

“Would you use a Sherpa?”

“I wouldn’t want to. Want to do it myself. Unless that’s insensitive? I’d need to learn more.”

“Would you learn the language?”

“Enough to function, I’d hope.”

“Kay. And are we going up any actual mountains?”

“Like Everest? I don’t think so. People die doing that. Seeing it would be enough.”

“You’re so damn responsible.”

“The biggest mountains aren’t always the hardest ones.” Evan smiles to himself at his quip, but Mark’s eyes are back in his phone.

“Hm.”

“What is it?”

“My fish wants to get in the boat.” Mark brandishes the latest message from his would-be lover in Evan’s face.

“Well, shit. Want me to get out of here?”

Mark pauses. “I mean, don’t feel like you have to. We could both…or you could invite Bridget…or—”

“Don’t worry, man. I’ll go.”

“Sorry. Don’t want it to feel like I’m throwing you out. Honestly, if you wanna stay, I’d rather—”

“Nah, forget it…damn, I don’t even have a way to get home. I don’t want my mom to know I—”

“Don’t worry about it. I got you covered.”

“Sorry. I need to get a job so that I can—”

“You’re not going to do that either. We’ll take care of you.”

“Mark, I can’t take that.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“I…hockey is expensive. It’s hard for my mom to cover it all, and save for my college. You can’t cover all that.”

“I sure can.” Mark bores his eyes into Evan to show he is serious.

The full scale of Mark’s wealth immobilizes Evan. “No, you can’t do that.”
“I can if I wanna make sure we can keep having nights like this. And doing it while you wait tables at fucking Applebees would kinda be a downer.”

“You’re drunk, Mark.”

“Drunk people are the most honest people.” Mark throws an arm around Evan and guides him back out into the main room, where they stare down at the lights on a ship waiting to enter the harbor. Evan chances a mushy smile, but Mark keeps his gaze outward, and Evan follows his eyes into the void of the lake. This night is exactly the escape he was looking for, but is that only because it is a step into a world he cannot afford, and probably never will? His new friend is a strange creature, both the teammate most like him and least like him all at once.

Mark walks Evan down to the lobby and salutes as his car pulls away. He jabs all of the elevator buttons on the way back up, stops to peer out on to every floor before he finally heads back to his mom’s place, where he goes to stand before the windows again. He checks his phone; his date won’t be here for another twenty minutes. He misses Evan already, wonders if he’s made a mistake. Maybe the two of them should have just passed out here together, drunk and pussyless but content. For that matter, did he come on too hard to a friendship that is only a month old? Was he too clingy, too desperately in search of a real connection? He frowns, idly scrolls through Wall Street Journal articles his dad has sent him without processing much. He thinks back to that question Evan had asked on the bus: why is he, a kid who could be anywhere, in this lonely loft in a lonely city, struggling to form any sort of connection?

The girl calls him. He lets her in the building and directs her to the condo. The place is a mess, he notices: bags of snacks strewn across the counter, a deeply dented tequila bottle atop the stove, his and Evan’s hockey bags abandoned atop the inspirational pillows and stinking up the whole place. Mark leaves the unruly scene and checks himself in the bathroom mirror, brushes his sweep of hair into place and finds a smile that looks cool without betraying how wasted he is.

The girl pushes open the door without knocking. He appraises his catch: shapely, wider around the hips than he’d hoped, but the blonde is indeed natural, and he rather likes the tired look in her eyes, the sense that she’s seen it all, even at seventeen. He has little patience for the naïve.

“Welcome,” he says. “Sorry bout all this, my boy Evan just went home. You know him?”

“Evan DeBleeker? I’ve seen him at parties, but he’s usually off with that one girl. He seems shy.”

“He’s the best. But he can do some damage, too.” Mark hoists up the bottle and pours the girl a generous shot. She accepts it and gazes around the apartment.

“Holy crap. You live up here?”

“Honestly, I’d rather we’d got a house, but my mom wants to pretend she got her New York glamor back.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s an artist. Which mostly means she’s a retired hooker who lives off the child support she gets from my dad for me.” Mark pours her a second shot.

“Oh. What does your dad do?”

“Screws over poor people, mostly.”

She shuffles her feet uncomfortably. “You’re even taller than I thought.”

“You’re even hotter than I thought.”

Her face is caught between embarrassment and eagerness. “Honestly, you’re the most exciting thing to happen here all summer. Every party I go to, it’s like, have you met the new Mark kid? Seen those pics he does?”

“I do have that effect on people.”

“You’re playing with all of us, aren’t you?”

“I’ll let you be the judge of that.” He puts an inquiring arm around her back, and she draws him in and lets him kiss her. She spins him around, an invitation to push her up into the wall. Mark lunges in for a few deep kisses slides a hand down toward her waistline. She pulls back and laughs, and he eases up, content. Yes: they have a rapport, much more than with the last three.

“Damn, boy. You know what you’re doing.”

“Did you doubt that I would?”

She laughs. “You have marker on your arm.”

“Evvy and I were coloring.”

“Coloring?”

“Let me show you!” he guides her into the back room and throws on the light to reveal the sprawling marker mural.

“It’s…an entire safari scene?”

“Yup. Not many people know about my artistic side, you know. I figured I had to let it out.”

“Yeah. I mean, the stick people getting eaten by lions? You’re obviously the next Van Gogh, Mark.”

“I try to be modest about it.”

“The blue giraffes up there are a real nice touch.”

“Yeah, I made Mount Kilimanjaro a little thinner than it should have been. But I had to leave room for the landing strip for the bush plane there…”

“What’s that beneath all the trees?”

“That was Evan’s contribution. But I think it’s a rhinoceros.”

“Can I ask why a safari?”

“It’s called symbolism.”

“Is this some weird roleplay crap?”

“Eh, not quite. Just want you to know what you’re getting into.” He pauses, isn’t sure he likes her troubled stare, but decides to let it loose: he is who he is, isn’t he?

“The giraffes are my mom, since she has a long neck and always gets into everything. The man-eating lions are so totally my dad. The herd of zebras who just blend in are my bros on the team. Evvy and his girl Bridget are the chimps fucking over in the corner there, he didn’t like it when I drew that part. I’m the dormant volcano. I didn’t put you in there, so I guess you can be Evan’s rhinoceros.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

Mark ponders the question. “Means I’m gonna be your guide. Gonna take ya every damn good love-making place this city has. I’ve learned from the masters. The best hidden little parks. Some of those old ruins up on the hill. Wanna get into Glensheen at night? I know the way. Best safari you’ll ever go on.”

“Didn’t you just move here a month ago?”

“I’ve made it mine.”

She cackles. “That’s what I like to hear. But…why? Why this?”

“I’ve been reading some Hemingway. Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

“You’re such a dork! I love it.”

“Whatever the hell Hemingway was, he sure as fuck wasn’t dorky,” says Mark, hurt coursing through him. He takes a swig from the bottle and hands it back to the girl, who struggles for words and instead follows suit.

“Sorry,” she says after she chokes down the drink. “I just love it. Here you are, nonstop shirtless selfies and little rap videos, hockey star, and what do you really do for fun? You draw safaris from old books.”

“We can do the shirtless part if you want.” All of Mark’s expectations for this hookup are gone now: it is merely that, and he was rash to ever expect more. He will take what comes, but he won’t ask her to go all the way. His line in the sand, he muses, eyes flitting to the cross on his chain on the chest that she now begins to massage. Pity.

The door bangs open just as the girl is getting into a rhythm.

“Marky’s still up!” he hears his mom yell. “Oh, he must have friends over, look, and—oh.” She rounds the corner, tipsy in leather and high heels, followed by a fellow dolled-up middle-aged woman with a hairdo twenty years out of date.

“Oh, shit.” Mark hikes his pants back up and tightens his belt as the girl shoots up to her feet. Hope’s eyes travel to Mark’s yawning fly and the bulge he has managed to tuck slightly off-center.

“Sorry to—oh, hi there.”

“Uh, hi.” Mark applies a mushy smile and, after an instinctive jerk of the hand toward the damning evidence, decides the more prudent move is to turn their collective attention elsewhere.

“You’re back from the nino already?”

“I just wasn’t in the mood.”

“Could’ve used a heads-up,” Mark mumbles.

“How old is he? Fifteen?” demands his mom’s companion, who is not one Mark recognizes. Her discerning stare conveys both sobriety and intense judgment, a formidable pairing. “I thought you said he read fat books for fun.”

“Not mutually exclusive,” says Mark, even quieter than before. The girl starts to laugh before she cuts it off in a strangled yelp. Mark, now that his drunk eyes look more closely, sees his mom is not in a chipper mood. His adrenaline surges.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says, with a rub of her eyeliner that assures Mark she is not.

“Think I might go home now,” the girl says as she pulls her shirt back on. Mark finds some confused sense of chivalry and collects her purse for her.

“Come on now, we can’t just throw her out like this,” says his mom’s friend. “She’s just had this happen to her and now…come on, do you need a ride home?”

“I have a car—”

“You’ve been drinking—”

“Not that much—”

“Cheryl, she’s had enough of a night already, we can put her in the guest room. Can you imagine her coming home to her parents now? Honey, here, we can pull out the couch bed.”

“You think she wants to share your apartment with this little pimp wannabe?”

“Hey, she had a fucking choice,” Mark yells, a bit more loudly than he’d intended. “She didn’t have to do any of this.”

“Fifteen, Hope. Fifteen and already just like his dad. Sweet-talking them. Manipulating them. Get past your mom genes and take some control.”

Mark’s anger ignites into an incandescent rage. “Who the hell are you? You’ve never even met me! If you ever think I’d do what that cheating sleazebag did to my mom…”

Hope throws her arms around her son, half in embrace and half in restraint, tears welling in her eyes. “Now Mark. Cheryl works with battered women, she’s seen some things. Let it go. We’ll all be alright. We’ll all be alright.”

Mark stares bullets of fury into Cheryl’s eyes. She seems cowed now, almost stunned. This, Mark gathers, is not the nerve she expected to trip. Suddenly he sees a different emotion in her eyes, one a million times worse than her condescending judgment: a hint of pity, a dawning understanding of what this spoiled brat has been through, torn between a father he hates and a mother who can only blubber. His eyes soften and flit to the girl, whose mortification is on a level unknown to Mark.

“I think I’ll call my mom. She’d want me to come home safe,” she finally says to break the frozen scene.

“I’m serious, sweetie, you can just stay here—”

“I’ll be fine,” she sniffs. She snaps her purse out of Mark’s hands and marches out of the apartment as purposefully as her tequila-addled legs can carry her. Cheryl chases after her, though the girl loudly tells this mystery woman to stay away. Cheryl pauses back in the doorway but Hope brushes her off with a wave. The door closes behind her.

Mother and son turn to each other and share a synchronized sigh. Hope sinks to the couch while Mark closes up the chip bags.

“Drink?” He lifts up the tequila bottle and gets the laugh that assures him he’s disarmed her.

“Your dad gets you top-shelf stuff, I see.”

“Sorry. I mostly had a quiet night. Just me and Evan and your marker wall. But then I got that text.” He looks down, frowns, zips his pants back up, and draws out a second laugh.

“Marky, I love you, sweetie, and you know I want you to be happy. But you’re scaring me these days.”

“You telling me you weren’t doing this when you were my age?”

She gazes around the apartment in a haze. “Not like this. Not about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.”

Mark had expected this response. He crushes the chip bag in his hands down as small as it will go, pulverizing its contents before he pitches it back in the cabinet. He is left to ask questions in his mind. How did his mom get her start? Some crude and thoughtless mining town kid north of here, not someone who’s been trained by an expert—an expert like herself who has dropped more than a few hints to her boy on how to make a woman happy. Did she, too, chase anything she could get at a young age, or was promiscuity merely a vocation? Is she the source of his hunger, or is Cheryl on to something, and is he the inheritor of his father’s predation? He solemnly swears to himself yet again to never, ever commit to a relationship until he knows it is one he can sustain forever.

Does Cheryl’s work with battered women include his own mother? Is that why they never talked to him about what was going wrong? Should he drive up the Shore right now and pound the shit out of his lecherous, scheming, wife-beating father? The man who is responsible for two broken families and thousands of outsourced jobs, but also for this condo for an unemployable ex-trophy wife, for all of Mark’s hockey training, for his hunger for canonical literature, the man who has him set up for Yale, or wherever else he may want to go? Suddenly Evan’s escape to the Himalaya sounds that much more alluring.

“You should see what Evan and me drew in the back room,” Mark says. “Come take a look.” He takes his mother by the hand and guides her before his scene. He doesn’t tell her what any of it means, just sits back and revels in her wonder at the scale of this creation, this reminder that this bursting vessel of ego and testosterone is still her little boy. She traces her way from one wall to the next, eyes glazed over, off in some other place.

“Did Dad ever hurt you?” Mark asks quietly.

“Not physically,” she says. “Mentally…”

“That I don’t doubt.”

“How was he today?”

“He absolutely grilled Evan. But, you know, it went okay. I think Evan’s a keeper.”

“Good. You need friends like that. Your dad never had many.”

She’s right, Mark thinks. Who in his father’s life is there for anything other than instrumental reasons?

Hope musters up a trace of a smile and provides the answer for him. “You do mean the world to him, you know. Even if he never says it.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I just wish…”

“I wish a lot of things about him, too.”

“Yeah…but not that, so much. I wish you’d given me a chance.”

“A chance to do what?”

“To fix everything. Instead of trying to hide it from me. Pretending I couldn’t hear you yelling. Or making excuses for him when he was off with one of his hookers.”

Hope laughs and sniffs. “Oh Mark. There are some things you can’t fix.”

“But I would’ve wanted to have tried.”

Evan’s ride back home is a painful affair. His driver, a stern-faced Native American man, expressionlessly processes his drunk 16-year-old passenger and waves him into the back seat without a word. Evan crumples into the back seat in shame. This man carts around dozens of drunks every weekend, he tells himself; if he’s driving a cab now, he probably has little regard for the façade that college-bound kids like him put up in front of their neurotic chase, will forget him within five minutes of dropping him off. He knows Mark would think nothing of the man’s judgment, would sit in cool repose. He tries throwing an arm across the back of the seat, but realizes it only makes him look like more of a stuck-up little asshole. It’s too late to take it down, though, and Evan sits there awkwardly as the car shoots through the highway tunnels and up along the lakeshore toward Evan’s quiet neighborhood. If he had any money on him, he would tip everything he could; he texts Mark to do so and says he’ll pay him back, but gets no reply. He mumbles an inaudible apology as he bolts from the car, which pulls away as quickly as he does. Evan trips on the front steps and falls forward in a heap. He swears and rubs at the scrapes on his arms.

The house is dark. He fumbles with his keys for half a minute and the door sticks as he pushes it open. He throws the keys down on the floor and stops, shocked at his own anger. He retrieves the keys and stalks past their cat, which stares in fear at this sudden intruder, this unfamiliar version of her guardian. She bolts toward the basement, claws clattering on the hard wood floors. Evan is alone.

He’s just had a night that was exactly what he wanted, perhaps the best male bonding he’s ever had. Why is he so bitter now? For starters, Mark never answered his question on Duluth. He still can’t figure out exactly why that kid is here, why he has taken on Evan of all people as his lone confidante when there are others who could better play wingman or feel less awkward around his wealth. He is ashamed that Mark wanted to offer him all that charity, he supposes; annoyed that Mark wanted his night to end with that girl. For all Mark’s kind words, he sometimes feels like a hollow vessel, a fishing boat trawling only for easy bites, its stray sweeps through the depths merely an amusing pastime. But just as he’d said, he wanted an Evan in his life, someone he could speak to freely. And sure enough, he’d gone and collected him, just as his father collected untold millions, the lesson he’d passed on to his son.

Evan stalks to his mother’s liquor supply: two dusty wine bottles and a three-quarters-full handle of rum from a vacation in Jamaica five years ago. He’s never raided it before, but tonight he takes a deep pull straight from the rum bottle and immediately chokes. He puts it back, grimaces, and stalks up the staircase, filled with instant regret. The floorboards creak beneath him, join his coughs in wrenching through the silence. His sock snags on a loose nail and he mutters “fuck” a few times for good measure. All of the charm of this groaning old traditional feels diminished after a day in Mark’s gleaming world.

He flips the light on in the bathroom, runs the water, tosses his cap aside and brushes his hair in a doomed quest for order. He pauses, opens the medicine cabinet, surveys its contents. It is sparse, his mother’s deliberate purge of anything that might call back her late husband’s final cocktail. Evan takes out the bottle of aspirin and shakes it. More than enough to do some damage.

He’d found his dad when he got home from school. It was a different house, a mortgage only two incomes could afford and before they knew the extent of the debts. The bathroom was larger; there wouldn’t be room to drape the body over the side of the tub in the same way here. He’d stammered his dad’s name a few times, backed away, collapsed into the wall in the hall. Feebly dialed 911, strung together words that cannot have been coherent but were enough to get the point across. Sat, watched, waited as the ambulance came and then his mother and then been trucked off to Aunt Cathy’s. He’d never cried, a source of retroactive guilt. He just took it all in, eyes wide open, silently consuming it all just as whatever had killed his father silently consumed him.

Evan puts the pill bottle back on the shelf and shuffles into his bedroom. He leaves the lights off as he strips down and stands there, naked. He shares those genes, he thinks. He recoils in horror, pushes down the framed photo of himself with his dad at a squirt hockey practice, even though he can’t see it in the dark. But yet he can’t feel that same way. Is this a failing on his part, an inability to connect with a dead man whose lack of connection killed him? Is it his triumph, proof he will never fall down the same hole?

A pair of headlights swings into the driveway. For a moment he panics, thinks either his driver or the neighbors have called the police over the drunk teenage delinquent making a racket, but he realizes it’s his mother, home from her shift. He considers feigning sleep, but instead pulls on his boxers, flips the light on, and settles into a seat on his bed that he hopes will look natural, pretends to scrawl a few notes in his journal.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she says from the doorway to his room a few minutes later. “Up late?”

“I, uh, actually just got home,” he says, blushing. “Was at Mark’s. Just the two of us. Quiet night. Guess it was a little late.”

“You’re almost spending more time with him than with Bridget these days.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Just an observation.”

“He just…jumps at things more than anyone else I know.”

Charlotte DeBleeker smiles at her son. “I remember when you used to be the kid who hid behind my legs because you were scared of Lily Yu next door.”

“Well, she did have a mean left hook.”

“You’ve come a long way. And even if that’s hard for me…I’m proud of that.” Evan now knows she knows he isn’t fully sober, exhales in relief as his defenses come down. He makes eye contact for the first time. She brushes a stray lock of hair back behind her ear, a move Evan subconsciously copies with his own locks.

“I’ve had to. Or maybe not quite that. But I’ve seen that I can.”

“Please don’t give your Aunt Cathy reason to think you’re a budding alcoholic this weekend, will you?”

“I was kinda looking forward to corrupting Colin a bit,” he says with a toothy grin.

“On second thought, Colin could use a little of that. Just don’t let his mother find out,” Charlotte says. The two share a laugh. She comes forward to muss with his hair, and he reaches up to wrap a hug around her chest. He holds her there for a minute, and her eyes alight on the picture turned downward.

“Two years to the day,” she says. “I wish I had some words that could help, but this might have to do.” She feels Evan nod in her chest, holds him through his silent, dry sobs. His relationship with his mom since that day has not been one of deep words, but it has been one of simple honesty, and one of frequent raw, perhaps even carnal, contact. Fresh off an afternoon with Mark and his dad, he has some inkling of just how lucky he is.

The tension in Evan’s shoulders eases away. The game slows in front of him. Somehow this great hurtling contradiction that is himself is okay now, is a reality he accepts he must inhabit. The cat leaps up on to the bed and rubs up against him; slowly, he reaches to pet it and relaxes his hold on his mother. She kisses him on the forehead and makes her exit.

Evan settles into bed. He has his phone out to call Bridget before he reminds himself he is drunk and she is asleep; that would hardly be becoming boyfriend conduct. She has been the essential brake pedal on his most reckless urges over the past five months, and frankly from before then too, as the promise of someone like her made sure all his nights didn’t descend into this sort of fear.

But oh, will he take more nights like this. He closes his eyes, laughs back at his art project with Mark, drifts away, drifts up toward the clouds, up toward Kilimanjaro and then perhaps on to even greater heights, his mind back on that Himalayan trek. That urge to go isn’t one that Bridget would quite understand. His mother might, but she would only want to live vicariously, would never do it herself. No one in his life would follow him there. Except Mark. Mark would.

‘Fish off the line?’ he messages Mark.

‘Had it on the worm for a bit, but it got away. Long story. But I’m cool with it.’

‘Aw. Good to hear. Thanks for tonight.’

‘Showed me what’s really important. And that’s why I’m here.’

Evan replies with a heart and settles in for sleep.

Ferocious Ambivalence

This story is a companion to the eleven-part series that began here and had an additional episode here.

Mark almost ignores the call from his mother. He’s not planning any human contact until Evan and family arrive tomorrow afternoon, and this is not the inspiration he needs as he heads into the wilderness. Her calls tend to be idle recollections of trivial episodes from his youth, or, if she’s had a few hard seltzers, unsolicited relationship advice drawn from her days as an escort. He could do without a seventh telling of the greatest hits. There was the saga of Ronald, the financier with a secret second life in a heavy metal band, and Pedro, who passed her off as his estranged wife to his blind mother; perhaps this time she’ll linger on Jack One, the effeminate mobster, or Jack Two, who had a fetish for socks. At least the sock story is mildly funny. Maybe he could use something mildly funny? He answers the phone.

A chorus of wails greet him on the other end.

“Mom? Mom, come on. What is it?” After three minutes of incoherence, she finally forces the words out.

Her breast cancer diagnosis should be a shock. She’s only 53, a generation younger than many of his friends’ parents, to say nothing of her late ex-husband. But for Mark, it seems like only the next logical signpost along this entropic highway. He knows the road well. He seeks out the off ramp, even as he knows her bleating will force a new route for what was supposed to be a meditative vacation.

Mark’s soothing tones do little to slow her tears, but he knows she just wants to hear his voice. His mere presence has always been enough. She’d never been entirely comfortable around him after her cute, pampered boy became a hard-edged teenager, complete with his father’s ruthless streak. But she’d never said anything about that, never dared question him to his face. In a rush, he realizes how much he loves her in spite of it all: she let him be a total shit in high school, imposed no curfews, bought him booze, trusted his ability to keep himself under control even as he spewed angst back at her every chance he got. She was unconditionally supportive of anything he did, and he knows how much pride she took in telling her backwoods boyfriends about her Yale grad Wall Street son. She omits any mention of his father in this story, an oversight that both makes her look like a superhuman mother and Mark a much more self-made than he actually is. It’s a convenient lie for both of them.

“Take good care of yourself. Sounds like they caught it early. You’re in good hands. If you’re ever not happy with what you’re getting, I’ll get you something better. And send me all the damn bills, of course.”

His mother sniffles. “You don’t need to do that.”

“Of course I do. Dad screwed you over, you know that. Least I can do is use some of his old money to keep you alive.”

Silence. He thought she’d like that dig. Mark casts about for the right words.

“I’ll swing through before I head back to New York.”

He can hear his mother warming on the other end of the line. “That would be great.”

Mark eases her worries to a halt so he can hang up. After a giant exhale, he tosses the car door open and surveys a trailhead deep in the worn-down open hills of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. The lot is empty aside from him, and a few coyotes call in the distance. Dusk already looms, and he has to hustle to find a backcountry spot to pitch his tent. He pulls the straps on his pack into place, cocks the cap on his head, and hefts a water jug out of the trunk and into his arms. This will do. He locks the car and trundles along the banks of a dry wash, his eyes fixed on a distant gully that will serve his purposes.

In her own way, Hope Salonen Brennan’s story is far more impressive than that of any girl Mark has ever dated. She’s worked her way up, put herself in elite circles in New York, somehow made an investment banker with a wife and three kids believe he’d be happier with this uncouth Finn from northern Minnesota. She’d even had the good sense to escape his clutches when she saw what he was. Sure, her climb had been an unsettling one as she sold her own body in higher and higher circles of Wall Street wealth, but how unique did that really make her? The Brennans’ ancestral fortune had probably been built on sold bodies in one way or another; hadn’t his dad said something about ties to the British East India Company? Mark’s own additions to that ledger are filtered through a few institutions of polite society, but he has no illusions about what goes on lower down on the food chain. She’d gamed the system and won, and he should be proud of her.

He thinks back to a time in high school when he’d had Evan over for a couple of beers. It was a tame night, just two friends escaping the drama to imagine a more worldly. His mother stumbled in from a girls’ night and thrust her protruding breasts in Evan’s direction, left him with some advice: you’re a cutie, Evan, but you roll over too fast. You need to make them beg. Make them show you they’ll give you what you want. Know that you’re the one in control. She reached in and fluffed up his hair, kissed him on the cheek, and strode away with a ravishing backward glance.

Mark has never forgotten that look in Evan’s eyes, both queasy and hungry, a first great temptation for the friend Mark had only ever known to exude sainthood. Evan’s wide eyes somehow captured everything Mark ever felt about his mother, and for the first time, he understood what his father had seen in her. He’d bumped his knee on the table in shock, but she was too drunk to notice his revelation. He and Evan turned away from each other in shame. They never spoke of that night again.

The sun wakes Mark as it pours up his valley the next morning. He lies in his tent and listens to stray bird calls, closes his eyes, and lingers in bed for the first time in months. Evan would describe this experience in metaphysical terms, a tale of being one with the land, his Minnesotan pagan rite. Mark has absorbed enough of his friend’s ritual that he subconsciously follows suit, filters it through a few related Brennan family instincts: that hunger for exploration, for conquest, or at least some place where he can get away from the short-selling leeches, the loveless sex. He’s always attributed those instincts to his father, but now he realizes they’re just as much his mother’s story, too. The three of them shared a quest for purity, for rebirth, and while they may not have found that in their many escapes, they’d at least stripped away the worst of what came before. Mark pours his coffee, gazes out at the badlands of the Little Missouri, says what the fuck to himself and tips in a splash of bourbon. He grins as he takes a deep sip.

He wonders if his mother ever expected to find real love when she went to New York. At turns she seems both naïve and ruthless, a believer in happily ever after and a fighter who knew to look out for herself. Has his own pursuit been all that different? He runs through the litany of his most serious prospects: Jackie, Victoria, Magda, Amelia, Indira, Amy. All these could-have-beens that never came to fruition, some reason or another they came up short: too caught up in the past, too boring, too cautious, too ruthless, too career-driven, too put off by that monster ego or that New York drive or that contrarian Midwestern rootedness.

They were all probably mistakes anyway. Not one of them was right. Is that belief an acknowledgment of a hard truth or a symptom of a perfectionism that plagues everything he does? He trails on through the failed endgames: a walk down a wooded trail, a stolen moment in a kitchen at a graduation party, a backward glance on a Nantucket beach, amid a downpour on the steps of St. John the Divine, at a drunken post-finals party. Now, the most recent addition to the saga, the most mundane, on his couch in his new place in Westchester, a palace far too large for a single man and yet she was not the one to help him fill it and he told her so and that was that.

Mark flew into Rapid City at the start of the trip to spend a night with an old high school friend named Jake. Back in their glory days, Jake had been a deeply earnest kid who nonetheless attached himself to athletes like Mark in a tentative search for a party. He’d written a fawning profile of Mark in the school paper their senior year, one that articulated Mark’s blueblooded panache in a way that had both tickled his ego and made him more conscious of the nobility that came with the Brennan name. Mark followed from a distance as Jake chased his dream in journalism, and for the past year his old friend has embedded himself on the Pine Ridge Reservation to send dispatches to the learned classes.

Jake shows up in mismatched flannels and with a scruff all over his face, a disheveled look with no resemblance to the pretty boy Mark remembers from high school. They still get along amiably, but every time Mark tries to turn the conversation to a mundane concern, some question about his writing method or his girlfriend back in Minneapolis, Jake always finds some way to turn his life into some stilted microcosm of their cultural zeitgeist. Maggie’s apartment in Minneapolis may have flooded last month, but it has nothing on the trailer he now occupies near Wounded Knee; their last trip together, to New Orleans, underscored the ongoing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow; reflections on his career path and college life lead to expositions on college debt and the decline of traditional media. Mark can hold court on all of these subjects if he so desires, but he looks at this man in front of him and can’t see any trace of the kid who used to sketch out classification systems of their high school’s girls in the lunchroom. The absence of the old Jake jars him. In a last-ditch effort he asks after Jake’s parents, but this too just brings out grumbles about how they sit glued to their TV every night and don’t read his work.

“They at least still reading the paper? I bought a stake in it, it you know.”

“I don’t think—wait, what? No way. Are you working on that a lot?”

“Not really. Just trying to give it some life and editorial direction. Let the reporters do their jobs.”

“I knew you had money. But not that kind of money.”

“My dad died a few years back. I came into some. I invested a lot in pet projects like this. Not big returns. Happy to break even.”

“Wow. Why not just coast and live off of that?”

“My dad did a lot in his life that I’m not proud of. Trying to make up for that, as much as I can, and put that money to use.”

“But you still work for…”

“Yeah, I do.”

“How’s that any better?”

“I never said it was. Anyway, if you wanna move home, I can probably get you a reporting job.”

“I…” Jake breaks off, perplexed. “I—thanks. Really. Hadn’t even considered something like that. And Maggie’s a city girl. But—I’ll consider it.”

“Consider it a standing invite. Duluth could use you.”

Jake seems unsettled, but Mark isn’t sure what else he could have done. Pretended he isn’t who he is? Perhaps just sat and listened, a fly on the wall? Jake is full of gut-wrenching tales of reservation life, and before bed that night, Mark slides some funds he’d earmarked for a New York charter school into a scholarship fund for Pine Ridge kids. But that raw empathy has never been his specialty, his power-as-birthright certainty once again colliding with his desire to dismiss opinions as the province of the unwashed masses. Give him either a chance to solve the problem or accept that he won’t burden himself with things beyond his control.

Mark leaves his encounter with Jake puzzled. In every way he admires his friend for his work, meant everything he said about becoming his patron. But Jake has made Pine Ridge his cause célèbre, while Mark knows that, as much as he may now contribute, he can always walk away from it, or anything else. He has no Pine Ridge in his life.

A storm brews on the horizon, a looming tempest that threatens to cut down Mark’s planned hike. He battens down the hatches on his tent, nervously tests the slack on the stake lines in the crumbling dirt, and tuck his gear in beneath the leeward side of the rain fly. He considers a run for his car, but is a veteran enough hiker to know not to tempt a storm. He stands atop a nearby rock to watch its advance, retreats only when the first drops start to fall, and zips himself in. The wind rips at the tent, does everything in its power to tear it up from the ground. He splays out his body to hold in all in place, his breaths coming sharply as he tests the corners for incoming water. When he’s confident it will hold in place her curls up into a ball, a fetal coil here in this lonely wet womb.

Solitude does not suit Mark. It never has, even if he’s lived alone most of his adult life. That image of his father fading toward death in his clifftop fortress is too visceral, far too close to home, and that nightmare looms up before him again now. He can never be that. But he can’t stay on the run, either, out into more distant wilds and lonely prairies. Evan will make sure of that. His old friend can’t arrive soon enough.

The drive north from Rapid City had been bleak, as he’d expected. The open plains and endless road he can do; the shock comes when he stops for dinner in Belfield, North Dakota. He finds himself at the end of a bar opposite a drunk clump of oil field boys at least five years younger than him, decked out in Carhartts and trucker hats and Confederate flag belt buckles, constantly reaching for their tins of dip. At some point in his life, Mark thinks, he would have seen them as a potential conquest, a proving ground for a slick city boy to slide in and go drink for drink with these people from a different world. He’s done it in Detroit and Nepal and half of Europe; these boys bear some resemblance to some relatives on his mom’s side of the family. But after Jake’s tales of Pine Ridge, he cannot in good conscience put on that blithe bravado. Indira had called Mark the poster child for the privileged patriarchy, but his ever-probing, hungry style has nothing in common with these misogynistic tools. Or is that only wishful on his part? Either way, he has never felt as foreign in his own country as he does on that bar stool in that moment.

Mark has started hanging out with politicians. His dad always told him not to, but then, one of his first contacts was the son of his dad’s ex-associate, a New York Republican Party functionary. What better way to honor Preston Brennan than through hypocrisy? Mark enjoyed toying with the kid, a pudgy hothead two years younger than himself who’d simply assumed Mark was red meat. Mark can speak the language well enough, and saw a much faster road to prominence here than on the left, but he walked away repulsed by this profit-hungry devotee to a losing cause.

A meet-and-greet with Manhattan Democratic activists left him with the opposite impression: the attendees were legion, eager to spread their gospel, and company he struggled to keep. One had recoiled when he gave his employer, though they was all too happy to let Mark pick up their tab. Another, who assumed he was gay, lectured him on how his career destroyed Black bodies, and it took all of Mark’s self-control to avoid telling him that he’d seeded an urban farming microfinance operation in Detroit and a vaccination drive in Senegal. Who in this group could claim to have done so much, he stewed as he donated another ten thousand dollars to the vaccine drive with a few casual flicks at his phone’s screen. Score one for his reserve.

Mark was born in the wrong era. In the past he’d have been the ideal inheritor of the Kennedy or the Roosevelt mantel, a traitor to his class; for that matter, he could have at least worked with a Bush. Now, though, noblesse oblige seems a lost cause. The masses have the power but none of the wealth, and what’s a good, old-fashioned aristocrat to do?

“You could renounce it all and become a radical,” says Lezlie, his work life confidante. “If the Democratic Socialists are a step too far to you, you could at least go all Gandhi on us.”

Mark snorts. “Yeah, I’m definitely gonna start fasting and swear off sex.”

“It’s more you than you think, Mr. Wilderness Hiker.”

“My hikes aren’t exactly leisurely strolls in the woods.”

“Fine, I guess. It’s a reach,” she concedes. “And maybe that’s okay. You might be able to do more where you are anyway.”

“Should use some of the inheritance to buy myself a politician or two.”

“I think they come pretty cheap these days, especially if you’ve got some co-investors.”

“Let’s go in on one,” Mark laughs, shaking his head.

“Why do you even want to do this?” Lezlie asks, boring her eyes through Mark’s veneer. “What are you in it for? Guilt over your career, or your dad’s career? That doesn’t seem like your style.”

Mark shrugs. “Guess I just always gotta be that man in the arena.”

“Ever the hockey player, aren’t you?”

“Something like that.” Mark chooses not to share his next thought: ‘Or, at least, I like myself better when I am.’ That’s it, he thinks, ever the self-improvement machine. This was the distinction with Amy, the reason that one too fell short: she loved him for who he was, not who he wanted to be. That current self was fun, but always a step behind the goal.

The rain moves on around noon, and Mark sets out on his planned trek. He marches up a plateau and marvels at the openness, this vast expanse of waving grass without a soul to be seen. He ignores the trail and plunges out across the meadow in no direction in particular, his hyper-awareness just enough to keep him alert but bury his anxieties beneath his immersion of the whole scene. He gets to this point more often than he gives himself credit.

The DeBleekers will arrive later this afternoon. Evan, Brendan, pregnant Bridget in tow, their three-year-old son’s first real road trip and the first time Mark has seen Bridget in over a year. He and Bridget had squabbled a bit after his breakup with Indira—they’d always squabbled a bit, really—and Mark will forever wonder just how different Evan would be if he hadn’t committed so young. Getting Evan alone was always a challenge, and now with Brendan added to the equation, it’s borderline impossible. Even his New York friends, though, are pairing off now, throwing up the same barriers. Has he even aged a day?

Mark orients himself by the sun and starts to pick his way back toward the spot where he parked his car. He’d committed too at that age, he figures, just in a different way. Evan chose a woman; Mark chose a road, one with no real end, a hurtling cycle of ambition and achievement and revelation and subsequent exhaustion or irritability or just plain old annoyance. It seems so small. He reads books of great men, towering midcentury Wasps who shared his pedigree, and occasionally some of his flaws. But even that doesn’t seem to get there. His troubles seem pettier, less attuned to an era when sheer force of reputation and power of will alone can’t do it. Could it ever? Or was that just hagiography, or having an army behind one’s back? Mark can’t be sure, and he sure wouldn’t mind a bit of either. But there it is, a question that needs an answer, and he has summoned the one person he knows who can provide one.

An hour before the DeBleekers are slated to arrive, Mark heads into town and checks into a motel room so he can shower. He decides not to shave, figures he needs to leave some scruff to show he’s been roughing it out here, but otherwise perfects the look. When the call comes, he heads back into the park and meets them in the campground.

“Marky!”

“Evs. Bridge. Bren-Bren.” Mark strides into the campsite and throws an embrace around each of them.

“Ya look good, bro. How’s the stay out in the wilderness?”

“Damn good time. Saw some buffalo. Got to think. Slept like a log. Almost got blown into Saskatchewan in the storm this morning. How was the drive?”

“Smooth enough. Brendan was big into the giant cow.”

“Uncle Marky, it was the biggest cow ever!” Brendan informs him.

“Legit. You get to milk it?”

Brendan scoffs. “Naw. It was so big!”

“Hm. Just remember, dude, you gotta milk things for all they’re worth. I got a present for you.”

“Yeah?”

Mark pulls a stuffed bison out of a bag and tosses it to him. “Named him Teddy. Take good care of him, okay?”

“But he’s not a teddy bear. He’s a buffalo!”

“When you go to bed tonight, tell your dad to tell you about Teddy Roosevelt. And about his buddy John Muir, too.” His eyes flit toward Evan to catch the grin from their inside joke.

“Aw, it’s actually cute,” says Bridget as she rescues the bison before it descends into a mud pit.

“I got some taste sometimes,” Mark shrugs.

“In buffalo, if not in women,” Bridget laughs as she holds the stuffed animal just out of the reach of her jumping son. “Honestly, you’d make a good dad. I’m just thinking of how you’d pour yourself into it.”

Mark hides his shock and channels his best Evan shrug. “Thanks. Someday.”

“Any closer lately?”

Mark mulls his response. “Just let another one go, so I’m gonna go with a ‘no’ there.”

“Why this time?”

“Exactly what you said. She’s not the mom.”

“What’s it gonna take?”

“I’m looking for answers. The bison didn’t have many. But this kid might.”

Bridget beams at Evan, who’s been watching this exchange silently, transfixed. “You two go do your thing. I’ll see if Brendan’s any good at setting up a tent.”

“Sweet. Let’s go.” Mark guides Evan down the roads through the campground and down toward the cottonwoods along the Little Missouri, his usual resolve lost behind a simple smile.

“Bridge was in a good mood.”

“Much as she gets on you sometimes, she really does like you.”

“Prolly knows you bring out the best in me. Even if I lead you into sin and evil sometimes. Guess that’s harder when your kid’s along.”

“Right on all fronts there.” Evan pauses and lets Mark lead him down toward a sandbank along the brown, fast-flowing river. “So what were you saying about me having answers?”

“I need you to level with me. Is the reason I’m like this because I’m…me?”

Evan laughs. “Slow down and rewind, bro. Tell me what’s really on your mind.”

“Nothing you haven’t heard before. Tryna live my life to the max, getting there in most people’s eyes, but still feeling empty. My own giant ego, wanting to run everything, make it all perfect. And because I stay caught up in that shit, I never get to what I really want.”

“And you recognize that.”

“Yep. Every fucking day.”

“Then why don’t you do something? You, of all people…”

“It’s like…when I get to a place where I want to, I’m out of gas. Or I don’t remember till too late.”

“Marky…you taking enough time for yourself?”

“I take plenty. Got my runs, my hikes, my—”

“No, not like that. I mean quiet time. You and yourself. You and—”

“Bro, I’m an extrovert. That’s not how I process.”

“It’s not that simple. We all need other people time and we all need ourselves time. No matter where we are on that spectrum. And you do need to pause. To lose yourself. Remember that Marky you want to be.”

“Problem is, I’m less sure than ever what that means.”

“You really? I think you’re getting there, mostly. Look at what you’ve done with your money, with your career, with your new place…you are getting somewhere, I think. And you’re mostly good with all that, right?”

“I am. But let’s not pretend this picture ain’t missing things.”

“Course not. That’s why you have to ground yourself. Remember that.”

“I mean, what do you think this trip is?”

“Just make sure it’s not some manic chase across the prairie. I know you too well.”

“Aw, fuck off.” Mark grins in spite of himself. “Here’s another way to put it. I want to be free. I’ve never felt free. Not really. I had so much pressure of expectation.”

Evan bends over and skips a stone across the Little Missouri. “Funny. In a way I don’t disagree. It’s been heavy on you. But you also love standards. That, let’s be honest, that kinda snobby end goal. Even when you lived with your mom, who let you do whatever. And I don’t think you should disown that.”

“Do you see a tension between that and freedom? Or do I just have daddy issues?”

“It’s not totally smooth, I don’t think. But I can’t see supercool Mark on the beach just chillin, ruling his world, and not think of you as free.”

Mark grins again. “Yeah. Yeah, I like that.” He brushes his hair into place and wanders on ahead of Evan, savoring the idea of that beach life freedom.

Mark’s mind flits back to the Nantucket house. (Is he wandering more than ever before now?) Last year he’d bought one of three shares in it along with two of his half-siblings when his dad’s first wife finally sold it. ‘I’m not him,’ he’d been careful to tell the original Mrs. Brennan in her retirement lodge along the Hudson. He showed her pictures of him with his mom, of his wanderings with Evan, of him with whichever love interest he’d had at the time. She didn’t need to know that part, and since there was no other potential partner to keep the house in the family, no one tried too hard to correct the record.

Yes, he feels free there, though sometimes thanks only to alcoholic oblivion. He thought Amelia would show him true freedom on the beach, but since that failure, he’s been loath to burden his funhouse with anything serious. He’s never been one to allow a failed relationship to tarnish his memory of a place; maybe he’s just reached a point where he’s too cynical to even bother setting the stage for anything serious.

He’d run into Amelia again recently at a wedding reception for a mutual friend in the Hamptons. She was with a bearded hipster who did content curation, whatever that was; she caught Mark’s otherwise imperceptible eye roll and smirked at him, gave a little head-nod that said, ‘I’ll see you later.’ He’d failed to hide his grin, and they found each other later along the pier at the far end of the lawn.

“How long have you had Blackbeard the Pirate there?” he’d said by way of greeting.

“We met maybe two months after you and I moved on. Hooked up and the rest was history.”

“Hitched yet?”

“It’s a matter of time. I’ll invite you if you want. I’ve got the balls for that and he won’t give a shit.”

“Depends on the venue, you know I’ve got standards there. I’m flattered, though. I’m the last finance bro you dated? Figured you needed some nice boytoy as your real soulmate after all that shit?”

“You know, I’d never thought of it that way, but you might be right.”

“Hurts me to admit it, but I had you pegged wrong. Thought you wanted power as much as I did.”

“Think I don’t have it in this relationship?”

Mark snorts with laughter. “I guess if you’re happy with a one-way street…”

“I appreciate not doubling down on the neuroticism.”

“An instinct I’ll never quite understand.”

“I guess we just weren’t meant to be.”

“We weren’t. Though I’m still proud of Nantucket.”

“Never had anyone roll it out for me quite like that.”

“The things I do for love.”

“Doesn’t seem to be working, unless you’re hiding someone.”

“Am I wrong, to be as demanding as I am?”

“I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

“I do sometimes get second opinions.”

“Yeah. You always had that side. And I admire that in you.”

“But only so much.”

“What are you thinking?” Evan asks. They’ve come to the end of the sandbar and have no choice but to turn back.

“Off on some girl that got away, as usual.” If there’s one thing he can’t share with Evan, it’s his tortured love life. For all his friend’s empathy, this is a world Evan does not know. He wants to ask Evan what he thinks of the Jake episode, of his dabbling in politics, if he can picture Mark firing up a crowd or playing out his cutthroat game in the public eye. But he already knows Evan will be supportive of anything he suggests, will find ways to work past any blocks he faces, and he’s not sure he’s worthy of that confidence. Better to say nothing at all than drive up false hope. He kicks at the ground, scuffles his feet. When did he become this weakling afraid of his own potential glory?

“It’s more than that. I can tell,” says Evan after a while.

“Meh.”

“Goddamn, spill it, Marks. I come chase you all the way down in North Dakota…”

“Hey, I chased you down in Nepal once. You owed me!”

Evan grins. “What a trip that was. I mean, I loved every moment of it, the mountains, the monasteries…but my favorite part was probably seeing you come rolling in to Tengboche and holding court liked you’d been there a thousand times before…”

“I was thinking about that the other night. How awesome it was to cut completely loose from the outside world for that long. And then, of course, I got back to civilization and found out my dad was in hospice.” He pauses. “My mom just got diagnosed with cancer.”

“Aw, shit.” Evan wraps an arm around Mark’s shoulder and shakes him gently. “No wonder…”

“No wonder what?”

“It explains a lot. About why you’re here. Why you’re back in Nepal in your mind. Why you feel the way you do.”

“I don’t exactly hide it when I brood, do I?”

“Gotta ride the waves, Marky.”

“That’s what I do every day. I mean, my life is all perpetual motion. Isn’t that what your red friends would tell me? The late-stage capitalist in his element…”

“I think you have more socialist friends than I do when you have those artists over.”

“Yeah, you Minnesotans at heart are too boring to be revolutionaries.” Mark laughs and shakes himself out from under Evan’s arms. He fishes at his pockets and grimaces. He’s left the flask behind.

“You keep trying to build this image of yourself as the hard-ass rich fuck, but at the end of the day, I’m not sure that’s you at all. Maybe just…let it go.”

“So what should I do? Quit my job? Give it all away tomorrow?”

“No. None of that. Maybe just start by acknowledging that you are who you are.”

“I’ve never believed I can just throw away part of who I am. We’ve talked about this.”

Evan shrugs. “You said you wanted to find freedom.”

“I’m…” Mark trails off. “Problem is, I don’t know what that means.”

“Maybe, as you ride the wave, you need to seize it.”

“I’m sure you’re a master surfer, Mr. Metaphors.”

Evan turns away to hide his blush.

“What?” Mark demands.

“Nothing.”

“Your turn to spill it.”

Evan turns away from Mark and walks off the dirt path and into the tall grass, still damp from the morning’s storm. He toys with a few of the nearest blades and turns around.

“You remember those people who used to surf off Stoney Point in big storms on the lake?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m…a low-grade celebrity in that group.”

“Shit. No fucking way. You? Really?”

“Learned a little as a kid on those California trips. That’s why I went back there a few years back. Dabble when I can on the shore.”

“I don’t believe it. What does Bridget think?”

“She has no idea. My old board just lives in the garage. Easy enough for me to sneak it out and come up with excuses.”

“I’m…fuck. Who else knows?”

“I’ve been doing it for fifteen years and you’re the first person I’ve told. I don’t ever talk to anyone when I’m out there. Don’t go if there’s a crowd. I’m just the mystery dude.”

Mark splutters. “Bro, that’s fucking awesome. So much makes sense now. Why the hell did you have to hide it?”

“It was…just my thing, you know?” Evan gives a very Evan shrug, folds his arms, and wanders back to Mark’s side. He scrutinizes him closely and sees something he’s missed for too long in those eyes, that unburdened delight he’d chased halfway around the globe. Mark drops his head into Evan’s shoulder and throws his arms around him, and Evan stands in stock-still shock as Mark chokes up. He returns the embrace, pats Mark on the back, looks out at his taller friend, his eyes drawn tight in a tearless sorrow.

“I’ve got you. You’ll get through this,” Evan murmurs.

Mark closes his eyes, exhales, and pulls back so he can look Evan in the eye. “Getting through is fine. I got that down. But I want to do so much more than that.”

Evan opens his mouth to counter Mark’s demand for achievement. He wants to calm him, remind him yet again that there’s another way. But this, he knows, is not Mark’s wave.

“And you will,” he says. “Look at what you’ve got behind you. Look at everything you know. You got all the tools you need. You will.”

“I just need the will.”

They head back to the campsite, where Bridget has wrestled the tent into place in spite of Brendan’s help. They cook a dinner over the fire and let the child divert them from any heavy thoughts, and the DeBleekers, drained from a long day on the road, crash after a brief, non-alcoholic nightcap. Mark gives himself a second splash of bourbon and wanders down to the river again, but chooses to go no further. This is enough, he thinks, and for the first time all week he stems the tide of nonstop drifts into the past. The past provides wisdom, but wisdom alone is no agent of change, of new beginnings, of instinct on Evan’s waves.

No: he needs to be free again. Not free like Brendan, untroubled by the weight of his home in the world, but freed by belief his capacity for change, to twin dream and reality, to make good on some promise that lurks beneath all these visions he pulls from the past. He turns his eyes up to the stars and digs for the charts he’d been careful to memorize before his last hike with Evan, that flair of brilliance he’d stashed away strictly to show off but now, as he gazes upward, allows him to recover his awe. His pursuit has freed him yet again.

Beach Boys

This story is a companion to the eleven-part series that began here.

The San Onofre crew is accustomed to week-long interlopers every now and then. Some appear on their little slice of beach every year, others just drift in and out. Some are memorable, but even those are never more than a stray story, a remember when so-and-so and such-and-such that provides a background bass line to the chatter at the Ex-Con-Tiki bar every weekend.

He shows up with a beginner’s surfboard and a wetsuit, and little else. He doesn’t wear any surf shop gear, makes no effort convey any talent or experience. They all agree he is attractive and looks the part of a beach poser: long scraggly hair pulled back beneath a backwards hat, muted tone tank tops and generic board shorts, well-sculpted shoulders and legs that show he’s more than a casual athlete. His wide, brown eyes bear an eternal look of someone peering off into the horizon, someone who gazes toward the light to see what it can reveal. After watching him for four days, Casey decides that this interloper, intentional or not, has become the platonic ideal of the beach. He makes it seem effortless without deploying any effort, a shockingly rare achievement along the California coast.

He has no great talent as a surfer. Not once does he attempt anything bold or inventive, his movements always deliberate and precise. But his form is on point, no wasted effort on his board, and he’s clearly done his homework, knows the nuances of the wave in a way few rookies do. Nor is he one to repeat mistakes, each lesson stored away in a trove of knowledge that Adrian suspects must border on the encyclopedic. Surely he’s been to San Onofre before, Casey asks him, and he shrugs and says yes, years ago, when he was just a kid. Neera suspects this is a lie to enhance his intrigue, but when pressed, the kid pulls up a picture of his preteen self on this very beach, grinning between two parents as he clutches this very surfboard. The memory means something to him, clearly, but what they cannot be sure.

When they break into his cabana to see what else he has, they find no more than a bottle of bourbon, sipped at in moderation; a pile of cheap microwave meals, though of the semi-healthy variety; and a few little notebooks half-filled with unintelligible scrawl. Adrian sees a picture of a girl on his phone background, but Jack, who holes up in the cabin next door, reports only one late night phone conversation, and it with a guy at some East Coast college. He is agreeable enough, shares a few beers with the Samoan proprietor of the Ex-Con-Tiki, can talk about the wave and downplay his own skill with the best of them. But even Neera, the most skilled prosecutor on these sunny shores, fails to fish out any details when she sidles up to him with a drink and her voluminous eyelashes.

Over the boy’s first four days at San Onofre he is tentative, avoids others unless they address him, willingly accepts his position as the rookie on the fringes of the lineup. He simply goes about his wave work within his limits, creates as small of a swell as he can. Neera invites him to a club in San Clemente, but he demurs and spends his night reading some cliched travelogue outside his cabin. His heart isn’t in it.

The interloper is a source of mild interest at the club that night; if Neera weren’t newly single, they wouldn’t have given him much mind. But Alexandra, eager to quash Neera’s intrigue, convenes a meeting of the minds before the boys inevitably disappear to the back alley to toke a bowl. The last thing she needs is to babysit yet another brokenhearted roommate.

“What was the name again?”

“Evan. His bag says Gopher hockey on it.” Frantic googling ensues.

“Sure enough, that’s him. Walk-on. Guess he’s got some talent.” Alexandra shows them his roster profile on his phone.

“He’s got good form for a kid from the middle of bumfuck nowhere,” says Jack, already half out of his seat for his trip to the alley.

“And he’s a cutie,” Neera muses. “Probably real nice. Minnesotans always are.”

“Some midwestern bro living out his fantasy,” says Casey.

“I’ll tell you what he is,” Alexandra says. “He’s a climber. He doesn’t want you to think he’s after anything…but he’s after something.”

“He’ll fit right in in this town,” Casey says, trying to give her a significant look. Alexandra ignores his puppy eyes and instead checks Neera’s reaction: concern, fear that her Minnesota Nice diagnosis may be awry. Yes, that’s exactly what she’d hoped for.

“There’s no fitting in in this town,” she replies. “Either you grab the wave or you end up washed up on the beach.”

II.

“Alright, kids, welcome to Solomon’s Temple,” Mark announces as the procession of cabs pulls up to the beach house.

“Did they add on a new wing since I was here?” asks Matt.

“Yup. New sun room on the side, and another bedroom below it where we can stuff a few more bodies.”

“You’ve been here before?” asks Dante, a newcomer to the group.

“Marky and I go all the way back,” says Matt. “Been dealing with this snob since I was ten, even when he went off to Minnesota and New Haven. Been in the family since way before you, right?”

“That it has. And Matty was one of the few Dirty Jersey friends my parents let me have out here on the island,” Mark says. “No freaking clue what they saw in him.”

“I just remember us out on that beach when we were like twelve, thinking we were hot shit and going after high school girls.”

“Better luck this time, Matty,” Mark teases.

“Why Solomon’s Temple?” Amelia asks from the back seat.

“Parents went through a religious phase. Plus my dad’s gone through almost 700 wives, so it’s fitting.” To Mark’s mild annoyance, the allusion goes over the heads of everyone in the car.

Lost references aside, Mark is proud of his plans for a long Nantucket weekend. He’s made his invites carefully, fifteen in total, six men and nine women, the ratio off-kilter to get the group to the front of bar lines and provide more options for his enjoyment. There are three couples, already paired off, and Leslie, his lesbian work life confidante; to the mix he adds Dante, a Camden-based writer who went to Princeton with Matt, proof this week is more than his own sandbox. No, he’s collected his interesting people, all with some purpose unknown to them. Dante the poet, Leslie the life coach, the couples to provide stability, and Matt, his foil, both a competitor and a partner in the pursuit of the four eligible ladies. They know the unspoken rules of the game they both relish.

The first night goes according to plan. They are all drunk by eight and pile into two cabs Mark has contracted for the week for a venture to a strip of bars in town. Nora, the most attractive and least stable of the four singles, trips on a loose sidewalk brick and goes down in a heap. They are a bit on the drunk side for the finer bars in this outpost, but Mark has curated his guests well enough that he knows no one will go full Jersey Shore on him. They plow through a few fine cocktails before beginning the inevitable push back to the one dive bar on the island, where Mark suspects all their nights will end. The first one has enough novelty that he can ride it through, play his part, head home happily drunk at the end of the night and settle for a few sloppy kisses with Nora. Matt goes to bed empty-handed, and Mark claims pyrrhic sort of victory on night one.

He’s paced himself well. He wakes the next morning with no hint of a hangover and heads out for a ten-mile run along the coastal roads out to Siasconset and back. A handful of his housemates have stirred to life by the time he returns, all in awe of his early morning feat of athleticism. He shrugs off their praise with practiced nonchalance, the borderline arrogance of a man whose achievements require no acknowledgment. He is who he is.

Even so, Mark senses a distance growing between him and the rest of the house as it stirs to life. He has classified himself as a breed apart, and now it is his duty to reclaim his charm. He takes orders for mimosas and coaches Leslie and Dante on the Markian approach to beach life, to dive immediately back in. His disciples laugh and follow his lead. The god has come down from the clouds.

They pass most of the day on the beach. Mark drifts in and out of a few games of volleyball, works his tan, settles under an umbrella to keep his steady buzz and samples the edibles brought by Patrick and Erica, two underlings of his who have managed to hide their romance from everyone else in the office save Mark’s prying eyes. He caught their subtle winks, their well-timed bathroom trips, their aligned vacation schedules. Erica buries herself in the sand and gazes out at the waves in peace, and Patrick nuzzles up against her. Mark nestles near them on his towel, close enough for idle observation but far enough to give them space. They’re a fascinating specimen, this couple that has found love in a desolate office. He’s in a good enough place that he can stave off the wistful thoughts they inspire in him.

Night two involves less pretense, a quick pregame that moves on to a unified beach party with several other homes. This night, Mark expects, will be the most debauched of the week, and he steals a thirty-minute nap beforehand to steel himself for it.

“Game on,” he whispers to Matt as he settles in to bed.

“Remind me how many extra points I get per college girl?”

“Careful, Matty. Can’t talk like that anymore these days. You trying to tell me you aren’t here to find undying love?”

“C’mon, it’s not wrong if they’re in on the game, too.”

By the end of the night they are back in the room they share with two girls who claim they’re headed into their senior years at Dartmouth. In time it comes out that they’re merely Brooklyn baristas, but by this point Mark and Matt are in too deep. Mark thinks Matt wrapped up the proceedings with the slightly cuter one, but his finds just the right level of pleasure to sustain him through the longest finish he can ever remember. He is content to call the night a draw.

Mark wakes to find his new acquaintance wrapped in sheets at his side. Matt’s bedmate, he sees, has slipped off in the night. He deserves extra credit for that. He stays in bed until the girl wakes and politely sees her on her way, though he does not invite her to stay for the brunch Dante has promised to whip up to start day three. She was lovely, but he doesn’t want to give anyone the wrong impression. His prize will be no barista, no random encounter on the beach. He’s already culled his herd.

The group applauds Mark and Matt for their conquests, though Leslie groans as they settle in on the beach with Nora’s foul anti-hangover concoction.

“This isn’t the Mark I like. The one I like is the one who was grilling Amelia on what AI is going to mean for humanity.”

“That Mark does get a little tired of always having to be the know-it-all cynic.”

“Okay then. How about the one who kicked all our asses at volleyball then had some pot brownies with me on the beach yesterday?”

“You know I’d go freaking crazy if I tried to live like that.”

“You don’t make this easy, do you?”

“The world is a complicated place. Just…being one with its waves, you know?”

“Hah. Clever turn, I’ll give you that.”

“I’m good for that, if nothing else.”

“You’re in Sad Mark mode again, aren’t you?”

“Me? Sad? I fucking rule my world.”

“Doesn’t seem to do much for you.”

“Does plenty for me. Just hungry enough to want even more. There you go. There’s a thirst no AI can ever have.” He pours himself another mimosa.

III.

On day five, it all changes. The boy barges in to Adrian’s turf on the wave, commands the inside of the tube, pulls a series of hard turns in succession. The conditions aren’t particularly good, and he still has an erratic streak that nearly creates a few collisions. Yet he surfs with reckless abandon, just hanging on to an edge of control. Even Alexandra rises up from her droll position on the beach to eyeball this display of reckless bravado. Later, when he washes up immediately in front of her, just as composed as when he’d emerged from the waves the two days before, she can’t help but flash him a quick smile.

Evan ignores her. When Adrian snarls at him over his lack of decorum, he rolls his eyes and doesn’t reply. When Casey asks if he wants the video he’s shot of him, he’s downright scornful: he’s not here to be found, to time it just right for the perfect conditions, to pull off any particular move. He’s here to surf.

That night the interloper shows up at the bar for the first time since the second night. After a survey of the room, he gives the boys an awkward nod of respect. They reciprocate, an invitation to become one of them for the night. Evan accepts, but Casey can tell he’s not after their approval. Instead, his eyes flit toward Alexandra at every opportunity.

Alexandra is the queen bee of the San Onofre crew, a daughter of New Yorker socialites who fled west to try show business, found it vapid, and now lives off a trust fund with some beach bums. She’s convinced her parents she’s still seeking out modeling opportunities, and she staved off her mother’s inquiries at the latest visit with a carefully concocted story of her pursuit of some surf magazine. Her housemates are all complicit, bought off with the promise of Alexandra’s influence, and her willingness to pay the freight for the booze and drugs at the parties they host. The girls of the Ex-Con-Tiki have a reputation to keep.

Over the first few drinks of the evening, Evan pulls this story out of his fellow lustful males. Adrian has no interest in her uppity style, though this doesn’t stop him from telling Evan what he’d like to do to her in lurid detail. Evan pointedly turns to Casey and Jack, where he finds contradictory takes: Casey finds the addition of her tight mini-skirts and bottomless purse an unquestioned perk, while Jack tells anyone around him that she’s attracting the wrong type to San Onofre.

“Super high-maintenance.”

“Bunch of valley girls,” Casey admits.

“Exactly. None of the chill natives who actually know their way around a board.” Casey concedes the point, and Evan nods gravely.

That settles it, Casey thinks: the interloper stands for nothing if not purity, so he’s the last person he would expect to seek out Alexandra. He’s free to set up his own play. But it’s too late: Evan buys them all another round, slams his immediately, and marches across the bar to greet her. The boys watch, enthralled: will she eat this new kid for dinner as she has so many times before, or do those searching eyes know something she doesn’t?

Alexandra isn’t even sure why she’s here tonight. She’s cut back her drinking to a light trickle, and the charm of this beach dive wore off months ago. Her tablemates are all shrill harpies, and the crowd is otherwise sparse, a few aging wannabes in the corner and the tiresome Casey there in the middle with his unremarkable friends, headed for yet another stupor. And now up walks this boy who tries so hard to project some air of confidence.

“Slow night here,” Evan muses. It’s a comment for Alexandra alone, not the other four girls at her table.

“We don’t do much speed here,” she answers. “Unless you mean meth. Ask the bartender and he can hook you up for a decent price.” Evan’s eyes flit to the Samoan, who’d told him a tear-jerking tale of his turn to clean living after his release from prison the night before. They make eye contact, and he seems to know exactly what Alexandra just told him. He closes his eyes and musters up his cool.

“Appreciate the reference. Got a trailer we can take it back to?”

“Not much peace and quiet at my place. I hear you’ve got a little hermit cabin down toward the old nuke plant?”

“Out in the wilderness, just like Saint Onofre himself.”

“You’re a smart little fuck.”

“I try to be versatile. A renaissance man. A soldier-scholar. A philosopher king.”

“A drunk college jock who needs a haircut and wants it bad.”

“All of the above. Can I get you something?”

“You can get me out of here, that’s for sure.”

“Now you’re talking.” Evan steps aside to let her out of her booth and leads the way toward the exit. He doesn’t bother looking to see what sort of reaction he’s inspired, but Alexandra makes sure to give Casey a triumphant leer before she slips out behind him.

They don’t head straight for a bedroom. Freed from the need to perform, Evan sets a contemplative pace up the beach, and Alexandra regales him with the inner dynamics of her house. After five minutes of blather, she gets the sneaking suspicion he isn’t paying attention. Casey would have kept fawning after her the entire time, but no, this kid is subtly showing her he’s bored, that he doesn’t need her, that she should be the one seeking him out, not vice versa.

“Let’s head to my place,” she snaps, and he returns his attention to her.

“Not my wilderness hut?”

“Not sure I should trust men who think that sort of thing is fun. Trust me, a night in my bed will be an upgrade.”

Evan shrugs, nonplussed. Only later does Alexandra realize he already knows where she lives, her backstory, her reputation. She’s not sure if his homework should flatter or disturb her.

She drives him the five miles in to a San Clemente neighborhood near the pier. The house is compact but carries a veneer of refinement, laden with the latest IKEA furniture and a mélange of perfumes that trip Evan’s allergies, an upgrade only when compared to the piggish squalor of Casey’s apartment or the eternal pot smell of Adrian’s. He pours them both lemonades to distract himself from her waterfall of apologies.

“Want to watch something?”

“Not particularly.”

“So who are you, really?”

“Some kid who likes to surf.”

“No shit.”

For the first time since he’d swaggered over to her table, Alexandra suspects some uncertainty in Evan. He blows his nose in a tissue and lets his eyes dart about the apartment, not processing anything they didn’t see the first time. He doesn’t seem like a person eager to get on with easy sex.

“You’re such a loner,” she chances.

“I try to surround myself with the right kind of people.”

“What are those?”

“The people who fuel my fire.”

“And who does that?” she asks as she unbuttons her shirt to reveal a pink polka-dotted bra.

“Not many people.” He tugs off his shirt and lets Alexandra run her hands around his chest in gentle massage circles.

“You’re sunburned.”

“Never can escape that, yeah. I’m not a beach kid.”

“You could play one on TV.”

“I’ll remember that if my business career doesn’t work out.”

“Why are you even here?”

“To surf.”

“No, shit. But out of all the beaches…”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Quit being smart.”

“Fine, fine.” He gazes at their reflection in a window across the room. “My family used to come here when I was young. My aunt lived out this way for a bit and my parents fell for the place. It’s been ten years now, though. Was curious if it had changed.”

“Huh. Has it?”

“Hard to tell whether I’ve changed or it’s changed.”

“For the better?”

“Well, puberty did enhance one aspect of it. But mostly, no. Everything that seemed big back then seems small now. And people are just as petty here as they are anywhere.”

Alexandra isn’t sure if this is directed at her or not. She casts about for a response that will be on his level.

“You see places better when you don’t see them as a kid. You can see what they actually are. Not what you wish they still were.”

Her would-be lover smiles. “You’d be perfect for my buddy at Yale, saying things like that.”

“I went to high school just up the road from there. Choate. Bunch of self-righteous dicks.”

“My point exactly.”

Alexandra cackles and slides a few fingers in beneath his boxers. He reaches down and clasps his hands over hers, a caress that nonetheless stops her progress.

“You never answered my question,” she says.

“It’s not an interesting story.”

“I’m curious, though!”

“Living out some childhood fantasy, I guess you could say.”

“Oh, forget it, you’re impossible. Let’s fuck.”

He turns back toward her, and Alexandra is once again drawn in to those wide eyes.

“Nah.”

“Seriously? You put in that much effort and then you run away?”

“Got a girl back home. I’m loyal.”

“Loyal. Then what the hell are we even doing here? Loyal. Holy fucking shit. Loyal.”

“You make it sound like a foreign concept.”

“You sound like the clingiest kid ever.”

“When you know what loss is, you become that.” He pulls his shirt back on, cocks his cap back in place, and heads out the door.

IV.

Night three is Mark’s night for excess. After an early win, he can let Matt take the lead in the pursuit and just follow along, let instincts do the rest. He makes a few overtures to Carmina, the shapeliest of the four single girls, but her speech is slurring before they even finish dinner, and after three bars, Mark is little better. Matt paces himself better and takes home an androgynous gender studies major from Barnard. Under normal circumstances Mark would find intrigue in his friend choosing an interesting chat over the easiest lay, but is thankful he is so drunk that he can just pass out, his only lasting memory of the night formed through Dante’s reenactments of the girl’s relentless moaning.

Day four is drizzly and grey. Nora stumbles in with a ballet dancer she’d hooked up with the night before just as the group wraps up brunch, and he has the nerve to whine about the temperature of the leftover eggs. Leslie overhears Patrick criticizing the waitstaff at the dive bar and lectures him on his lack of empathy, leading Mark to edge out of the room in annoyance. He gives Matt a nod, which Dante catches as well, and they both follow him into the kitchen.

“Gotta love the white girl from Westchester lecturing us on privilege,” says Matt.

“You said it, not me,” says Mark, relieved that the two people of color in the party can be his confidantes.

“I give her points for trying,” says Dante. “But doesn’t she work at the same firm as you?”

“That she does,” Mark replies as he contemplates the empty Bloody Mary pitcher with a frown. “We’re all sinners here. Cept you, maybe, Dante.”

“Bro, his parents run a hedge fund,” says Matt. Mark cackles with glee while Dante blushes.

“Not where you come from, but what you do with it, right?”

“Sure. Something like that,” says Matt. “Ugh, the fridge is out of beer. I’ll get more.”

Dante shakes his head as Matt goes. “You and Matt together are a hell of a pair.”

“We’ve been playing the same game our whole lives, Delbarton all the way back.”

“I had you pegged as more of an Exeter kid.”

“Dad was a sleazebag. He fit in better in Jersey.” Mark grabs a tennis ball off a nearby counter and bounces it off the floor.

“Hey now, you know I’m in Camden.”

“Gotta get some good material there.”

“Like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

“I spent a summer in Detroit. Went to an all-black bar most nights. I’ve seen a thing or two.” Mark idly bounces the ball.

“What were you after?”

“Probably the same thing you’re after.”

“Sure, but you ain’t black, dude. Those are my people there.”

“Right. I realize there are things I’ll never understand about that. Why can’t I try as much as I can to make them mine, too?”

Dante looks at him quizzically. “What the hell you doing here, then, getting trashed on this beach?”

“Playing the game, like I told you.”

Dante shakes his head. “Leslie says you should leave Wall Street. Says you need more than an intellectual dead zone.”

“Everywhere seems that way after Yale, really.”

“Let me show you Camden. See if you still think that after. You can get so much more than this.”

Mark’s eyes flit out at the waves through the rain-spackled window. The tempo of the tennis ball accelerates.

“Roots are complicated things. And mine are here.”

Mark’s heart isn’t in night four. He skips most of the day drinking games and plays cribbage in the lounge with Leslie, who knows him well enough to give him space. He halfheartedly coaches Dante as they size up a group of townies at a less popular beach, the best he can do to escape the motions of a tiresome routine, but Dante has no real interest in his game. Matt is back with the Barnard girl, who makes it clear she has no interest in Mark’s droll act; what exactly she sees in Matt, other than perhaps a brown kid with a lower outward privilege score, is unclear. After staying tight for three nights, their group spreads out across three bars in downtown: the couples choose a quieter locale for date night, Dante and Leslie join an edgier crowd at the dive bar, and Mark trails after the single girls intent upon a party, taking no joy in his role as the playboy.

To his relief, Matt slips away from his hook-up from the night before and employs a full court press on Eva. Mark takes his cue that he’s free to do as he pleases and turns his attention to his target for the whole week: Amelia, the prettiest of the bunch in his eyes, less busty than Eva or Nora but eternally poised and prim, an early employee at a start-up who has drifted into its inner ring. This conquest requires no great art, nor any drunken oblivion: merely the two best-credentialed people in the house taking their natural place at each other’s side.

Mark and Amelia cab back to Solomon’s Temple and wander along the dunes. She’s had more than him but is still in control, content to let him drape and arm around her shoulder and let it sneak downward. He can feel the tension draining out of her as they go and lets himself follow suit, a pair of neurotics twinned in escape.

“Isn’t this absurd, getting trashed out here every night?” he asks her.

“It is. How fucked up do we have to be to want this?”

“If this is fucked up, do we want to know normal?”

“Damn. And we’re the successful ones.”

“Just know how to keep up appearances as we play the game.”

“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?”

“You got a better way to treat this thing we do?”

“Just make sure we don’t always play the game the same way.”

“Oh, I try. Matty and I are in competition all week.”

“I picked up on that. What’s tonight’s challenge?”

“We’re gonna see who can bring a girl home for a night on the beach.”

Amelia stops and glares at him. “I see you’ve won.”

“Always do.”

“Well, tell Matt to get his junk and whatever pussy he’s found to go with it down here with us.”

“The four of us, under the stars?”

“Why not?”

This seems too easy. Mark wants to ask her what exactly it is she’s looking for, but some instinct tells him it isn’t a prudent question. He calls Matt and orders him to the beach, hypes up an impending orgy even though he knows it will be nothing of the sort. He and Amelia pick their way back to Solomon’s Temple and arrive just as Matt and Eva climb out of their cab. The foursome is quiet, and Mark tries to diagnose the mood in the house, some mix of exhaustion and hope for something new; unspoken dreams for transcendence, or merely a release of pent-up drives?

Amelia and Eva collect a few wine bottles from the cellar while Mark and Matt and scope out the dunes for a leeward pocket where they can settle in beneath a few blankets. After the girls arrive, they chug the wine to warm themselves. Amelia is shuddering in the cool night air, and Mark nuzzles up against her. He wants to tell her that he’s been scheming for this moment since he met her two months ago; down the slope, he catches snatches of Matt and Eva’s debate over the most comfortable position with the added variables of sand and dune grass, and is tempted to test their advice.

But he says nothing. Amelia nests her body into his and settles into the rhythmic pulse of sleep, and he can only lie there, wide awake, loath to call it a night but even more reluctant to disturb her peace. He runs his hand gently up and down her side, content drain his plastic cup and meld his body into hers. Something about this feels different, less a conquest and instead a comfortable place to lay his head. He’s not sure he trusts it.

Mark wakes with a start when the first rays of sun creep over the beach, and his shudder stirs Amelia to life. He feels somehow wronged as she peels herself from him, but he musters up a bemused grin that she returns. She lets him kiss her gently.

“I do need to get back to the city today,” she says as she pulls away and climbs to her feet.

“Gotta get outta here before you start feeling something. I get it.”

“You almost sound sad about it, you soulless leech.”

“I can have an emotion every now and then.”

“Cute, kid.”

“Drinks sometime next week?”

“If I’m in the mood.” She swings a blanket over her shoulder and stalks her way back toward the house. Eva yells after her and hurries to follow, sick from how much she drank the night before. Matt sits up on his blanket, rubs his eyes, and looks up at Mark as if he were some heavenly apparition.

“You get all the points. Damn, Marky. She’s such a boss.”

“I guess,” Mark shrugs. “If she were as in control as she pretends she is, she’d say eff the boss and take more of this for herself.”

“She’s got the balls to leave this behind. I give her real credit for that.”

Mark cocks his head. “Dude, you just slept with a Vanity Fair model on a Nantucket beach. You really gonna question all this?”

Matt frowns as he massages his temples with one hand and adjusts his package with the other. “I am. Just too much of the same, day after day.”

“You the last person I thought I’d hear that from.”

“I’m serious, bro. I think you need to start seeing someone.”

“Nah. Not how I operate.”

“You’re allowed to win with help from other people sometimes.”

“You givin up on my game, Matty?”

“Shit, dude, you’re a one-track machine.”

Mark blinks at Matt, shocked to hear his closest comrade abandon the cause. Is he that neurotic, that driven to excess? For all his claims to the contrary, he has to concede the point. His life has taken on a manic pace, its successes more sustained but punctuated by these sporadic crashes when he just loses all self-control and lapses into days of sputtering misery.

Matt is too loyal to leave him alone and march off up the beach after the girls, but even as they collect themselves and their blankets and their empty bottles and begin to walk back toward the house together, he senses a new divide between them. Everyone else has found their stops off this train, but he just plows on toward the end of the line, wherever that might be.

The next day, Evan is back to a life of complete isolation. At first Alexandra just diagnoses cold feet, a retreat from intimacy for a kid who only has a few days left on the beach. She’s seen it before, this fear of commitment. But Jack suspects something different: he looks at all of them the same way, some mixture of intrigue and pity, as if he dreads some great tragedy that he knows will befall them as they party on in their ignorance. Weeks later, when Alexandra looks back on this most bizarre of her summer forays, she will agree: he was a breed apart.

Evan has no knowledge of Jack and Alexandra’s blowout argument at the Ex-Con-Tiki. He is back in his cabin, alone, though alert enough to flash Casey a middle finger when he tries to peek in his window after bar close. As far as Casey can tell, he is only brooding, his notebooks untended, his phone forgotten on the bedside table; those eyes, unable to squint out toward the light, just fixed on the dark void where the nuclear power plant used to be.

Once Evan is sure Casey is gone, he dons all his surf gear again and takes his board down to the beach. He laughs at himself, this necessity of looking the part, even in the wilderness. He’s an actor playing a role, but aren’t they all actors on some great stage?

The waves aren’t right. It’s too calm, too still. He won’t have the final triumph he dreamed of to round out this trip. He turns to leave the ocean; might as well get a full night’s sleep. But he doesn’t get far before another instinct forces him to turn back.

Evan saunters over to where he’d washed up in front of Alexandra the day before. He drives his board into the sand and takes a seat next to it. He holds his knees in his arms and closes his eyes, his sole focus the inward crashes and outward pulls of the surf.

Every step on this beach has stirred up some memory, some past dream. It’s a home of sorts, and it’s tempting to remain in this world, to never leave behind the San Onofre of his youth. Evan could settle into a life here, set up in a little shack and drop his pretense and befriend someone like Jack. He could be happy here. He can just surf.

But this trip has never been about that. He’s passed his test, rode into the jaws of death and tempted himself as he’s never been tempted before. He’s come out triumphant. Back in the cabana a half hour later, Evan jots down a notes for a few calls he’ll make the next day. He’ll go back to Minnesota with no need to linger any further on what this beach means to him, no need to play out a dozen different futures in his mind any longer. He knows how the next chapter in his story will read. Now he just needs to write it.

VI.

Scandal is under way when Matt and Mark return to Solomon’s Temple. Erica, high on cocaine, made drunken passes at Dante in the kitchen the night before. The poet pleads his innocence, but Patrick demands culpability, and the house has separated into Team Patrick and Team Dante. Mark’s natural instinct is to sequester the two of them and order them to find a resolution, but today he feels drained, and for the first time all week, he has no Amelia to perform for. Does he still have time to catch her ferry back to Hyannis?

Mark tells Matt to sort it all out and heads to his room. His hangover, lurking in the backdrop since he woke, roars into full force by late morning, as his worst ones always do. He wants to crawl back into bed, but there is no time, he convinces himself; time, perhaps, is running out. His feelings are too complicated, too cluttered even for a mind attuned to life among shades of grey. He needs to purge any conflicting feelings. He needs to run. Matt can only watch in incredulity as Mark changes into his Yale shorts and a tight athletic top and begins his easy jog out to the beach.

The first mile goes easily enough, but by the time Mark swings inland toward Milestone Road, he knows he’s made a mistake. His stomach churns with the unprocessed concoction of six different types of alcohol, all intent upon making its way out into the world; whether upward or downward he cannot tell. Lightheaded, he slows to a stumble and waits for a slow-moving truck to pass him before he dips into a convenient shrubbery. He squats, wills his digestive tract to act, forces out what he can and wipes his anus with some inadequate sandplain grasses. He is revolted, but he must go on. Perhaps he can cut this short and make a loop down the airport road, though there’s too much traffic there. Maybe this little side lane will do the job?

For a moment he resumes his brisk early pace, seemingly cleansed. But it’s a false reassurance. A quarter mile later, he’s seizing up more than before. He drops his rate to a slow walk, unable to keep a straight line, the world starting to swim before him. A middle-aged woman driving her Prius the other direction gives him a look of concern, but pushes on. Freed from any prying eyes, he returns again to the hedges, this time intent to stay for as long as he needs. He pushes across a grassy plain to another clump of scrub oak, tries to force more out but nothing will come; he fears he’ll vomit, but that too stays down. He breaks out in an intense sweat, feels the color drain from his face, wonders if he’s on the verge of a collapse into the bushes. There’s a house maybe five hundred feet away. Should he call for help? Ask someone to summon an ambulance? Spell out his will and testament in the sand before him?

He’s not quite sure how long his agony lasts, whether it is five minutes or half an hour, but it doesn’t matter. This is more than some stray hangover. He is a piece of trash, a useless scum, a kid with promise who’s pissing it away in a silly performative world of endless nothing. This will be the end of the line, the wake-up call he needs and the liberation of a sickened soul. No more descents into hedonism without purpose, no more sad nights alone in his room. And then there, squatting in a bush, clothing caked in sweat, hands buried deep in his disheveled hair, he turns his gaze upward and his closed eyes perceive the world through those of a child, future or past he cannot be sure, and suddenly he feels the pain easing away, drained out into this sandy Nantucket soil where it can remain.

Mark rises and begins a steady trot back to the beach house, ready to guide his charges out on a tour of the island’s lighthouses and feed them a fresh seafood dinner. His stomach rumbles softly. The wind tugs his hair in and out of his eyes. He smiles a manic smile. He’s found his pace.

90s Boys, Part II

Part One is here.

While The Topeka School aims to render contemporary America in grand moody sweeps, the book I read in conjunction with it, Alexander Tilney’s The Expectations, has seemingly more modest expectations. The allegory is more subtle and less grandiose, the language more measured, more matter-of-fact, a believable rendering of characters’ thoughts. Instead, Tilney worms his way into the mind of Ben Weeks, a third-former (high school freshman to the rest of us) at St. James School, a New Hampshire boarding school not-so-loosely based on the prestigious, if sometimes embattled, St. Paul’s. Ben is a sixth-generation SJS student, the son and nephew of prominent school benefactors, younger brother to a freshly minted SJS grad who was something of a campus legend, and an emerging squash star. On paper, he’s the embodiment of the WASP elite.

It would be easy to take a snapshot of Ben as a thoroughly unlikeable character. He is caught up in an anxious, morally dubious world of high school social striving, and the closest friends he develops have few redeeming qualities. For most of the book, he at best offers compromised advice to Ahmed, his Dubaian roommate with no concept of American social norms; at worst, he enables other kids’ torment of him. The nagging voice in his head does nothing to keep him from getting drunk enough to vomit all over the room in his first month at the school or engaging in any number of other improprieties large and small. He frequently lies to get out of trouble, and he gets away with it.

And yet Ben retains a tender core. Tilney wallows deep in Ben’s adolescent brain, an achievement both relatable and exhausting: in any given moment, his actions make sense, always an effort to find his place in a harsh social world and a long family history. His bluster always tentative, and at no point do we feel his heart is in it; he remains sensitive and industriously tries to make his way through an unforgiving environment. He is overwhelmed by forces beyond him, struggling desperately to find his own self beneath the weight of generations of expectations.

Part of the problem is the world in which Ben finds himself. St. James is caught in a moral paradox best embodied by the St. James Companion, a book of expectations it gives to its incoming students, a relic of a different era that still calls students “boys” even though SJS has long been co-ed. It wants to protect its students from the forces of the world and teach them humility while preparing them to rule it. The isolation from the rest of the world it so long enjoyed is beginning to break down amid modern connectivity. Disciplinary hearings are a farce, tied more to the school’s image than any sense of justice, an attempt to keep up appearances in changing times. Ben’s family situation is not what it seems at the outset, and like any family that finds its social situation fragile, he swiftly develops an anxiety that his complex social world turns into outright paranoia.

The Expectations is an elegy of sorts for East Coast old money. That includes its most redeeming qualities: frugality and taste in the face of gauche free-spending from the likes of Ahmed, its dying moral code an effort to tame the privilege the SJS kids enjoy. The WASPs aspired to their virtues, and often those virtues aligned with the best of the American project, but as that old aristocracy collides with new money and mass democratic culture, it finds the world has left it behind. The Companion isn’t relevant for Alice, Ben’s love interest, nor for Ahmed, who irks Ben with his dismissal of SJS tradition until he suddenly does branch out in a way that could destabilize Ben’s place at the school. Ben has few qualms about breaking rules so long as they are in line with the traditions of SJS mischief, but other forms of impropriety become existential threats.

As with Adam in The Topeka Project, Ben has a smart but ultimately tragic father and a pillar-like mother, an arrangement that seems either oedipal or an indictment of a particular era in American fatherhood. Ben’s mother, a budding academic with a keen and sympathetic understanding of her son’s motives, is the novel’s grounding force; his father, meanwhile, is every bit the sorry heir at the end of the line, riding past glory and fully consumed by a need to keep up appearances. The Expectations is a more sympathetic rendering of how elite hunger for wealth and power overrides a veneer of culture than The Topeka School, and for its efforts may prove an even more searing indictment.

I knew approximately nothing about squash before reading this book—another sign of WASP decline, perhaps—but the squash portions of the book are among its most riveting. Squash is both Ben’s escape and a source of stress, especially as the stakes get higher, and anyone familiar with high-stakes high school sports (or any such activity) will relish the tale of his struggle, at once both in search of prestige and cloistered in a narrow world of little interest to anyone beyond the courts. The SJS squash coach, the aptly named Manley Price, is probably a good barometer for readers’ reactions to The Expectations. Readers who relish his efforts to push his students to the brink probably understand the desire to elegize St. James; those who find him an over-the-top manipulator will probably want to grab Ben and order him to head back to his local public school. But if a culture of excellence is to sustain itself, it needs its manly (or womanly) prices; if there is any virtue in higher moral codes, they need to have arbiters and norms to maintain those standards. That tension sits at the core of The Expectations, and the moral questions it raises are some of the most crucial ones a changing society has to ponder.

The Expectations is a debut novel, and as a result has some of the rangy weaknesses of debut novels. Its third-person limited perspective gives us an exacting portrait of Ben but comes at the expense of depth for some of the supporting characters. Its occasional tendency to wander into other brains or offer sudden insights from on high, while sometimes a welcome break from relentless Ben thoughts, usually rings false; the need to name-check every 90s brand also drained me, especially as someone who is a bit too young to find any resonance in many of them. (This may be the point, of course.) But Ben Weeks is a timeless exemplar of the status struggle of teenage boyhood, and in the final chapter, when he has nothing left to lose, he starts to find himself. ‘Let yourself bleed,’ Price tells him, and Ben pays the price to learn the true nature of the world around him.

90s Boys, Part I

My fiction consumption lately has featured novels with 90s high school boys at their centers, a kick driven by some of my own preferences and a product of what some good younger writers have put out in 2019. The first, Ben Lerner’s critically acclaimed The Topeka School, operates on a different level from the second, Alexander Tilney’s The Expectations; the latter is content to present its characters’ thoughts as-is, but the chapters in The Topeka School often have extended allegories and drift into stream of consciousness to tie the threads together. Its style is one a New York Times review calls “autofiction”: borderline autobiographical, the fourth wall broken as the protagonist, Adam Gordon, writes in 2019 about his teenage self and includes excerpts from his parents.

At its core, The Topeka School is a meditation on the power of language and an argument for its importance in how we understand our world. Adam in his prime contends for a national high school debate championship by mastering a technique known as the spread, an incoherent, rapid-fire style designed to game the rules of the competition that Lerner none too subtly suggests has leeched into American corporate culture and politics. (The causal arrow most likely goes the other direction.) Another chapter delivers a pained portrait of the loss of those faculties in old age, as dementia removes any possibility of comprehension. Whether an intentional debate tactic or a loss of bodily control, the collapse of language upends the world.

Adam’s parents, two psychologists at an institute in Topeka called The Foundation and direct stand-ins for Lerner’s parents, take over the narration for extended stretches of the book. Jonathan, Dr. J, makes for the most lyrical of the narrators, the man himself practically a living Hermann Hesse novel. But Adam’s mother, Jane, is the book’s moral core, a celebrated feminist author who withstands the misogynistic abuse she endures with carefully refined tactics, a pillar even as some of her most vital relationships crumble. The Topeka School has garnered deserved praise for its treatment of toxic masculinity, and at its best, it shows a way out of that hell, a love letter from a son to his mother for what she taught him, even if he often failed to see it.

The Topeka School makes a concerted effort to diagnose the ills of modern America through frequent references to the nation’s imperial decline. One chapter, “The New York School,” lays bare the underbelly of a glamorous life in the diplomatic corps at the apex of American hegemony, an attempt to question the idea that those really were the glory days. The novel checks the “end of history” phrase box several times and pokes at the conceit that filters down from grandstanding politicians to self-important high school debaters. More often, though, it lingers in the mid-90s ennui of well-off white kids in Kansas, following their forays into sex and drugs and gangsta rap. Each chapter begins with an interlude in the story of Darren Eberheart, a childhood acquaintance of Adam’s and a social outcast who becomes one of Jonathan’s “lost boys,” consumed by male rage. If this is the empire, Lerner seems to say, is its demise all that sad?

While Jonathan is the narrator in “The New York School,” Jane takes command of that chapter, which makes an extended metaphor out of guiding an airplane safely to the ground. That great machine up in the sky, so far beyond the imagination of previous generations, incredible until it suddenly becomes a machine barreling along at hundreds of miles per hour, one small mistake all the only thing between its passengers and certain death. While reading this chapter my mind went to the “Flight 93 election” conservative analogy to Trump, the claim that the salvation of the republic require that people of good faith take down the hijacked plane. This, Lerner seems to say, is exactly the wrong way to react when the plane starts to smoke. Jonathan and Jane’s patients’ attempts to talk through their problems are an attempted corrective to the spread, a hope for a halting path out from the incoherence. When crisis strikes Adam, Jane is there to guide him down, and Jonathan is there as our flawed and awed witness to both the heights and recesses of the mind. Here, amid an otherwise fairly dark rendering of modern American life, Lerner finds hope.

I have two great critiques of The Topeka School. One is that, despite growing up in a comfortable Middle American community a decade later with some talent of my own in academic competitions before heading East, I could not relate to Adam at all. This isn’t to say he’s a false character; maybe the world changed drastically in a decade, and maybe there’s a a red state-blue state split or some other cultural divide between Duluth and Topeka at play. I also don’t think relatability should necessarily be the foremost concern in rating a book’s merits. But I never felt Adam come together as a character the way Ben Weeks does in The Expectations, in part because it skipped over the years between innocent ten-year-old Adam and troubled seventeen-year-old Adam that would have described how he became the way he was. Though he is the supposed protagonist, his parents came to life better than he did, more obvious products of their own briefly rendered parents than Adam is of Jonathan and Jane.

Why does Lerner not seem to care about Adam’s progression through life? I’d hazard to say it’s because he sees his world as fundamentally fallen, a product of nature and forces beyond anyone’s control. A pool cue ball, a symbol of Darren Eberheart’s violent rage, “had been there all his life;” Jonathan cannot say how his lost boys of privilege come to be, and his mentor, Klaus, offers up a contradictory claim of both eternal failings and the product of imperial decline. Some combination of male aggression is inherent, and culture (especially in late capitalist America, a land of “adolescence without end”) acts as an accelerant; the best we can hope for is to tame it. In broad terms I’d buy this hypothesis, and Lerner captures many of its contours. But I’m not sure he gives Adam (and, through Adam, his own teenage self) enough credit; while Jane tells us that teenage Adam is really a pretty decent guy, we see him only at particular flash points, and this never really comes through. The portrait just doesn’t feel complete.

My second critique, related and more serious, is of the ending, which I won’t spoil except to say that its attempt at a zeitgeisty twist fell completely flat for me. I felt some unease when I read the first chapter of the book when it was excerpted in the New Yorker this year: the subject matter drew me in immediately, but I worried it might be too clean in its vision of suburbia, too exaggerated in its effort to wash away nuance in its quest to set a brooding mood and say Important Things about contemporary American life. Beneath this desire to plunge into a full examination lay a simplistic, rather ideological lens, and in the last chapter, it all came back out again. If Jane’s plane had a gentle landing, Lerner’s skids along the runway.

Perhaps this is the price we pay for having a poet for an autobiographical novelist, a writer more drawn to rendering moods and meditative auras than crisp declarative prose. (Either that, or I wasn’t on enough drugs when I read the thing.) The Times review, trading off a point made in the Zadie Smith essay I quoted on here last month, thinks Lerner’s lack of authorial authority is just what the novel needs now, an admission that this author who is trying to say something about contemporary life (notably, a straight white guy from the Heartland) needs to acknowledge where his own perspective stops. The point, surely, is a valuable one. But the counterpoint, right there before us, is Jane Gordon, a far more interesting character than the autobiographical Adam. If only Jane could’ve had the last word; she wouldn’t have needed to append an account of her wokeness to prove she’s on the right side of history. Her life, as rendered in the book, is testament enough to everything that she and Lerner stand for.

Part Two is here.

Good Writing, 10/30/19

In this edition of my recurring feature, I highlight articles come to me from friends and colleagues who sent me articles thinking I’d like them. They were right, and each of them ties into some piece of my semi-recent writing. Hey, maybe this whole concept can take off.

First, we pay a visit to James Fallows at the Atlantic, who offers up one of the more impressive Karl-baiting articles I can remember: his theme is one I have played with, both subtly and not so subtly, on here before. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, he argues, was not such a horrible thing for humanity. Instead, for most people, life went on. Many of the monasteries and breakaway provinces retained the most valuable pieces of antiquity and formed the foundations of the modern world. If our American moment is indeed analogous to the late Roman Empire, is that really such a horrid thing? Scale makes national politics nothing more than cultural signaling, and the real work of governance happens close to home. Fallows and his wife, Deborah, wrote about Duluth when they traveled the country looking for examples of how this localism could work.

In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik spends some time in my field of urban planning, and gives some nuanced revisionism of the critiques of mid-century urban renewal. Said renewal gave us a lot of ugly, bad buildings with no concept of the cities surrounding them, but it also aspired to grand solutions. Not all of them were elites glibly or malevolently displacing people of color to facilitate commerce; in fact, many had some of the noblest intentions, and at times they did a much better job of creating access for people than the contemporary ethos of preservation, which often has the effect (whether intended or unintended) of privileging people who already live in a place and making it different for others to break in. As with Pruitt-Igoe, maybe the fault is less with the planners and architects than with a political environment that never gave their ideas a chance.

Gopnik points out many of the ironies of urban political alliances–developers with housing-seeking liberals, conservatives and radical leftist preservationists–and nudges toward a conclusion that attractive architecture and design are what really matters. Our urban moment is very different from that of the past half-century, and Gopnik concludes by abolishing rent control (correctly) and urban planning departments (well, that’s awkward). This kid trained as a planner thinks he is on to something when he says that different times should make us consider rescuing the best of the past era of planning, such as its noble grand attempts to confront pressing issues, while doing away with the ugly architecture and the paternalism. Somewhere in this mess lies an answer, and we can yet find it.

Finally, since I’ve been writing some things about different generations lately, I’ll offer up a New York Times piece by Taylor Lorenz that shows how Generation Z is starting to have some snarky fun at the expense of Baby Boomers (or, at least, a subset of baby boomers that seems particularly naive to some of the challenges that now afflict young people). As noted in my June post, this broad-brush generational portrait is fairly narrow and perhaps enjoys some New York Times confirmation bias, but I am nonetheless amused.

I’ll close with two quotes about writing. The first comes from Zadie Smith, my favorite part of a sparkling, complex essay in the New York Review of Books that explains why fiction is still valuable, particularly in an era when intellectual currents challenge writers’ ability to enter into the experiences of others and accurately represent them.

[I]n our justified desire to level or even obliterate the old power structures—to reclaim our agency when it comes to the representation of selves—we can, sometimes, forget the mystery that lies at the heart of all selfhood. Of what a self may contain that is both unseen and ultimately unknowable. Of what invisible griefs we might share, over and above our many manifest and significant differences. We also forget what writers are: people with voices in our heads and a great deal of inappropriate curiosity about the lives of others.

Amen.

The second, in much the same vein, comes from Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which I reviewed earlier this year:

He knows that a lot of literary people in college see books primarily as a way of appearing cultured. When someone mentioned the austerity protests that night in the Stag’s Head, Sadie threw up her hands and said: No politics, please! Connell’s initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterward feel superior to the uneducated whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing. Presumably this was how the industry made money. Literature, in the way it appeared in these public readings, had no potential as a form of resistance to anything. Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt that old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.

Ouch.

The New Yorker accurately skewers my writing life:

So excuse me while I stay true to form and go drown my sorrows in a wine bottle.

Anyway, I took the past week off from writing after finishing my marginally autobiographical plot-lite exploration of driven-yet-wandering teens who later become twenty-somethings who express their wants and needs in fits and starts. (See? I’m not totally typecast!) It was strange, and somehow resulted in me having no more free time than I normally do. I couldn’t see it when in the middle of that week, but I was directionless.

I think I can officially declare myself an addict. I write to make sense of the world, but for all of the sense-making I do, I’m not happy unless I continue to write and continue to make more sense of my world. Except in rare spurts of stream of consciousness, or when I write about topics that require less mental exertion like hockey or horse race politics, I’m an exacting writer. My process is slow, choppy, and full of long tunnels of frustration punctuated by very rare spurts of certainty and inspiration. (Somewhere in here is yet another obnoxious metaphor for life.) Rarely would I call myself happy as I write, but one of my characters did have a pretty good quote about happiness in that last installment in my story, so maybe he has some wisdom for me there.

The busier I am in my day-to-day life, the more value I place on finding time to write. I suspect this is because a hectic life gives new value to opportunities for slow thought. The instant reaction, the hot take, the sound bite or Tweet: so many demands of contemporary punditry militate against the slow, careful reasoning necessary to parse through different arguments or reflect on the past. (For a take on why this is important, revisit this Joseph Epstein quote factory on what it takes to be cultured.) Writing, which forces me to put care into thoughts, is the perfect vehicle for working toward that pursuit of understanding.

Fiction is the most satisfying writing I do because it is in many ways the slowest. There was no timeline on any of the posts in that series, and no need to come up with my own quick response in the dialogue. Not once did I slide something into one of those stories in response to some recent development in my life; many of the thoughts had been forming for years, while many dealt with things I have never experienced. It was patient, exacting, and had no need to answer to anyone or anything other than my own curiosity over how certain debates and situations could plausibly play out. Fiction is a playground to explore realities like our own without actually living through them.

None of it happens in a vacuum, of course. This latest installment had handful of guides, including books like Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, Peter Matthisen’s The Snow Leopard, and William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, and films like La Grande Bellezza and Y tu mamá también and The Grand Budapest Hotel. (Film weighs heavily here, I suspect, due to the episodic nature of the story; curiously, I can’t name a single novel that directly influenced my efforts, though I suppose there are hints of Gatsby and Wallace Stegner lurking in there.) Deep in my memory, I can probably recollect some stray conversation about Havasu Falls and the tale of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, and while only one of the eleven installments had any direct autobiographical undercurrents, my own life certainly courses through much of it in subtle ways. Fiction can come to seem like an incoherent hodgepodge of influences, or an author’s attempt to show off a vast knowledge. My previous efforts often came across that way, so this story collection tried to rectify that.

Beginning with that first story about Evan on his surfboard, which still might be my favorite of the bunch, there was a deliberate attempt to strip away all artifice and focus only on the world inhabited by the two characters. “Less is more,” I told myself time and again, purging away useless details and chopping out aimless dialogue. I intentionally avoid most all markers of time; other than establishing their use of cell phones and perhaps some of their slang, there’s very little in the stories that can pin the characters at any point over the past fifty years. I used some descriptive language to set scenes and interrupt long runs of dialogue, but I tried to live in the characters’ minds and in the tasks immediately before them that consume their thoughts. If I haven’t put readers directly into their minds instead of some obvious extension of my own, I haven’t succeeded.

When I was fully invested and writing well, my fiction almost becomes an out of body experience. Mark and Evan have existed in some form since my undergraduate days, but they took on new life over the past year and a half, when they became two influential and sometimes warring factions in my head. As a writer of fiction, I sometimes feel like I’m living four or five parallel lives, and if I ever seem lost in some other world, it may be because I’ve wandered down one of those other paths that I’ve invented, at least for a little while. I tend to reject strict methods of categorizing people or a sense of a “true self” because I can inhabit several different, sometimes conflicting selves, and I don’t see this inherent tension as necessarily problematic. If anything, it expands horizons, and makes the rich variety of the world and human experience possible, if only in a fleeting way, to someone who otherwise can get bogged down in the lurches of emotion of day-to-day life. Fiction, in its ability to transport readers, makes us free.

So, perhaps in that spirit, this blog will now move on to some very different ways of being. I have to offer up some bread and circuses to go along with the invented worlds, so we’ll gear up for elections in my next post, and hockey season is just around the corner, too. Thanks, as always, for bearing with all of this eclectic slow thought.

Amor Mundi

This is the eleventh, and (probably?) final, piece in a fictional series that began here.

Evan always dreads the end of his travels with Mark. It’s not because he’ll miss the places he’s visited, or even the increasingly rare time spent with a friend whose infectious charisma still entrances him after all these years. He’s lived to the fullest, and these brief windows can’t go on. That would defeat the point. Instead, Evan fears his inevitable lapse when he’s back to his humdrum routine. His mind will be elsewhere this week, part the product of exhaustion, part the wistful wonder over other lives that could have been or could yet be. His mind opens to different possibilities, and he will dwell longer than he should.

This time, however, Evan suspects his own comedown has nothing on his friend’s. Mark jabbered most of the way down to Havasu Falls about his ongoing exploits in New York, and they’d bonded with their fellow travelers and Havasupai guides on their night beneath the falls before the two of them escaped for their customary bout of moonlit, bourbon-fueled philosophy. He’d seemed as self-satisfied as ever. But this morning, Mark is a different creature entirely. His moodiness is not in itself a strange development, but Evan’s usual tools to coax him out prove useless.

Frustrated, Evan hangs back with the chatty Mormon couple they’d dined with the day before. He needs human companionship, and stray stories of hiking adventures are ample fodder for fellowship in these circles. He rhapsodizes over their night in a tent deep in Zion eight years earlier, and his fellow hikers nod in delight at this story of friendship sustained over time and distance. But his words belie the growing gap between them as they plod up out of the canyon. When he sees Mark accelerating, he knows he too has to turn on his jets and keep up, and the Mormons know to let him go. Mark may not want to talk, but he clearly wants Evan’s presence, and Evan answers the silent call.

Evan trudges along at Mark’s side in the baking heat, but Mark remains intent upon his feet. Even in a state of melancholy, Mark still pulses with power. He’s barely even perspiring. Despite his lighter complexion he somehow manages to bronze instead of burn, while Evan already knows he has a date with a bottle of aloe upon his return to civilization. If this were a week-long trek, Evan could likely outpace Mark, but on a long weekend with just two ten-mile bursts into and out of a canyon, Mark is in a class of his own. Evan feels strangely inadequate, as if he must bring Mark to heel.

“Quit thinking about Indira,” he says. “It’s done.”

“I’m not on Indira at all. I’m actually thinking back to Jackie.”

“Woah. Back to the start?”

“Sure. Just…let me process for a bit, okay?”

“Of course. Here for you, bro.”

Mark’s nods to show his appreciation of Evan, but his mind is already back in high school. It’s the summer after his junior year, and his erstwhile girlfriend, Jackie, hosts a few friends in her back yard on the day before she heads off to college in Chicago. They’d long since given up any pretension of romance—though they weren’t above servicing one another from time to time—but while their friends bubble over with heartfelt high school farewell clichés, Jackie keeps casting significant glances his way. Finally, Mark retreats to the kitchen and Jackie steals away for one last moment with him. Mark grumbles about another year in Duluth without his graduating friends, but Jackie reminds him it’s worth playing the game, keeping up the illusion. He is the best there is at playing that game, and it would be a shame to waste his skills.

Somewhere along the line, Mark thinks, the illusion became reality. He really is something resembling the boy he’d pretended to be: poised, powerful, an old money heir who’s nonetheless built his own formidable reputation. He’s achieved his dreams as well as anyone he knows. He’s made his world his own, collected its wealth and eaten its best food and gone to some of its most beautiful places with the best friend he has. And yet where has it left him? Still searching, still restless, still unsure what the final destination may be.

In his more brash moments, Mark tells himself this is exactly the point. The pursuit itself is the goal, the wisdom to know he’ll never get there yet continue to push with all he has toward that destiny he’s always known is his. That drive is the secret behind all his success, and he must love it for what it is. Camus had it right. Or did he?

The moments when that mindset takes hold are all too rare, and the sheer effort he needs to sustain it wears down even his nonstop motor. Half the time Mark fails to notice his lapses, and even when he does, no number of canned lines can always break him out again. He’s not sure if he’s bipolar, or if he’s settled on a philosophy of life that is too demanding for any human to reasonably attain; one that will leave him rich, attractive, and utterly broken by the time he turns thirty. He’s in too deep to quit now.

Evan is relieved to see Mark perk back to life when they reach the parking area. Mark volunteers to drive, and throws on a series of underground rap albums as they rocket back to Vegas, educating Evan on the nuances of the New York scene that he samples on his free weekends. They make good time, and still have a few hours before they diverge on separate flights. Evan expects Mark to suggest a detour down the Strip, but Mark assures him he has no interest in crass postmodern pastiche, and heads straight for the rental car return. Evan doubts he would have been so dismissive of the Vegas party with his friends out east, but appreciates the gesture nonetheless.

“Let’s find ourselves an airport bar and get some class into this cesspool,” says Mark. “They gotta have some top shelf shit for all the rich fucks trying to live it up on their way out of town.”

“Eh, I’ve gone through so much money on this trip already.”

“It’s on me.”

“But you pay for too much—”

“Forget about it, Evs.”

Evan follows along in tow as they return the car, shuttle to the airport, and work their way through the security lines. Mark researches their beverage options during the wait and leads the way down the slot-filled concourses without a sideward glance at any distractions. Once they arrive, he pulls himself up into a barstool and reaches down to massage his aching knees, battered from his hike on top of a lifetime of goaltending and trail runs. It’s a price worth paying for what he does, his more vivacious self says as it takes back the helm. He has no choice but to push through the pain.

“What’s the best thing you’ve got?” he asks the bartender.

She laughs at him. “Got a twenty-seven year old bottle of—”

“Younger than me? Sad. We’ll take two anyway.”

The bartender looks Mark over as if to ask if this still boyish-looking kid, scruffy after a few days without a shower, won’t drink and run. Mark levels a stare so scathing that she swiftly delivers the drinks as promised. Evan shakes his head.

“What?” Mark demands.

“I’m just thinking back to that wide-eyed goalie we pulled in from Silver Bay who showed up and needed a home. He’s come a long way.”

“Whatever you say.” For once, Mark resists the urge to disagree, as he knows disagreement won’t paint him in the most flattering light. He’s not sure he’s aged a day since that chat with Jackie in high school. He still operates in the same exact way.

“Wow, this is good.”

“Drink it up, Evs. We’ve earned it. After all these years, we still know how to live.”

“Remember that first time we drank Scotch, when you snuck that bottle into the Boundary Waters for us?”

“How could I not? I’ve still got some mosquito bites on my legs from that trip.”

“Damn, Marky. You did more to get me out of my shell than anyone ever did. Even after all we’ve been through, I’m not sure you know how much I owe you.”

“Eh. I’ve always felt like I’m the one in debt here. You’re my rock, man, and you know it.”

Evan sets down his glass and turns away. He is unworthy of Mark’s praise. Bridget wasn’t thrilled that he’d planned this vacation, and Mark has chastised him repeatedly over the course of the hike for his frequent check-ins with his wife and one-year-old son. This trip has prompted alarm on several fronts: his body aches more than it used to, his upper-body strength isn’t what it was, and when he looked in a mirror in the airport bathroom for the first time in days, he realized he can’t pretend otherwise: his hair is thinning. He’s the one who supposedly lives the more stress-free, slower-paced life, but he’s not sure anything Mark has ever done can possibly approximate the life-and-death immediacy and nonstop demands of parenthood.

It has tested Evan more than he can ever tell anyone. His life over the past year has been a blur of his son’s incessant demands and Bridget’s fraying nerves. The two of them fell into spells of silent brooding, unable to say much beyond the necessary acknowledgment of their son’s needs. He can’t quite remember what inspired him to start swiping, or to propose a date to that girl with a summer job leading canoe trips up north. He hadn’t been drinking, nor was his day particularly bad. Baby Brendan was out cold, Bridget was curled up in front of the TV, and life had come to lack that imperative to treat every second as borrowed time.

He didn’t show up to the date, and erased any trace of his sins. Revolted, Evan declared war on anything in his life that might let him lapse again. First and foremost, his own father’s abandonment loomed over him: he’d strapped his son to his back and gone for a long hike along the shore, complete with long time at prayer. (He didn’t tell Mark that he’d gone up the driveway to cast a skeptical glance at the new owners’ renovations of the Brennans’ old home, and whispered Brendan some tales of Uncle Marky.) He’d started a book club with a smattering of other closet intellectuals he’d found around town. He got a key to one of the local rinks from an old friend who now manages it, and skates at odd hours of the night. And he and Bridget have purposefully started scheduling date nights in stray sections of woods to make sure they can always bring back the fire.

One other event had compelled Evan into action: Indira and Mark, after two years together, had broken up on the steps of St. John the Divine some three weeks prior. Evan had provided immediate therapy while Mark rode the subway home that night, but only on this hike did he get the full story. They’d gone to the opera together and then set out for a late-night drink with some friends at Columbia, but they’d never made it that far, and devolved into a vicious war of words beneath the old church. To hear Mark tell it, the split was mutual, the only sane outcome after repeated collisions of two high-strung egos. But Evan suspects Indira was the one to cut and run, and Mark has spent the past three weeks justifying it to himself. Mark, for all his wanderings, is unflinchingly loyal when he does choose to commit.

“I should do something for Duluth,” Mark muses. “What do you think about me buying a stake in the paper? It’d be small. But I’d be hands-on, at least.”

“Newspapers are dying.”

“Sort of. But we can keep em alive if we work at it. You control the story, you control the world.”

Evan finds himself deep in an unexpected well of derision. “That really true? How much did we put into telling this story about progress for everyone, this dream of a better world we were building? And what’s come of it? People don’t trust anyone anymore. No one controls the story, unless you can buy it with enough money, I guess.”

“Well shit. All the more reason for me to buy it, then.”

Evan rolls his eyes, and Mark sighs and tries a different tack.

“I guess it does kinda feel like the barbarians are at the gates every day these days.”

“At the gates? They’ve been living right next to us for a while now. We’ve sealed our own doom. Didn’t need any help from barbarians to get there.” Evan’s eyes bore into Mark, but Mark gazes back with firm resolve.

“Sure, we may have fucked up. But look what we built before that, though.”

“It was incredible, yeah. But we lost something along the way. I’m scared of the world I’m raising my son in, Marks. That cabin in the woods that Bridget wants is sounding better and better every day.”

“Eh, you’d never be happy there.”

“No, you’re right. I’ve got a job to do. I wish I had more to work with.”

“Well, pretty soon you’ll have an in at the paper, I can tell you that much.”

“I wish you’d just come home. You could be the best weapon in our arsenal.”

“You think Duluth would take back an elitist asshole like me?”

“You’re an asshole, but you’re our asshole. And the two of us together, we could figure out how to play the game.”

“You know how to work my ego, that’s for sure.”

“Marky Mark, I know how to work your soul.”

Mark and Evan stare at one another in mutual fear of the other’s reaction. They both avert their eyes. Evan has penetrated Mark to his core: as he always does, he has found a way to twist in beneath his myriad defenses, perhaps never deeper than this.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be. It’s true.”

“I mean it, though.”

“I know you do. But I’ve got a good life for myself, girl thing aside, and I’m gonna work that out eventually.”

“Are you sure you’re not…you know…digging your own grave?” Evan chances.

“By being so cynical about love?”

“Not quite. By…sleeping around as much as you do.” Evan gulps. He’s wanted to level this critique for ten years now, so many times has come so close to sharing his fears over his best friend’s excesses. Some combination of envy and a rooting interest has kept him from ever saying a word. He looks up carefully, worried Mark will lash back at him. But Mark is cool and collected, and speaks with icy precision.

“Look at it this way, Evs. Remember Landon? That roommate I had before Indira moved in? Dude’s in tech, loaded family, getting his Columbia MBA so he can keep climbing that ladder. He works full time, he’s in school, he’s got no time to date. Know what he did to put himself to sleep every night? Jerked off. Same old porn every night. You’ve been with the same girl since high school. Not sure you realize how fucked up our generation is, drowning itself in alternate reality. Hour after hour, day after day. Dudes don’t know the first thing about intimacy. I wasn’t gonna let that happen to me.

“So I’m not sorry if I’m a fuck-up in your eyes. I’m damn proud of myself for having the guts to go out and do this, get the real thing again and again. It takes actual skill, gives ya real pleasure. I might not be the easiest to handle all the time, I’ll admit that. But I always ask what they want, I never cheat, and I always make sure we’re on the same page. I’ll never apologize for that.”

“Oh, it’s all noble, I see,” Evan laughs. “Is that really what it’s come to, you twisting yourself like that? Nah, Mark. I’m not saying you’re wrong to be cynical. I’m saying the way you live’s made you a cynic. You don’t need to keep doing things this way. This isn’t healthy.”

“That’s the world I live in now.”

“Come home, man. Just come home.”

“To what? All due respect, Evs, there ain’t much for me there. My dad’s dead, my mom’s running around with her redneck boyfriend and we’re not close. My dad was a dick, but at least he was on my level. She can’t get me at all. You’ve got your mom, your in-laws…don’t get me wrong, Minnesota made me who I am, but there’s nothing left there now. It was always more yours than mine.”

“You’ve got me, dammit. And what’s yours instead now? Chasing the finance life? Really? Thought you didn’t want to turn into your dad.”

“Fuck it. I’ve got friends there, and there are actual marriageable girls…”

“I remember a kid from high school who plotted for half a year to lure in Jackie Donovan. Went after that cute, real smart girl a grade ahead of him. Worked her carefully, got her to let go of her old ex, made her believe love could be real again after she’d been burned. Lived a dream for a few months. Where’d that kid go?”

“Jackie left him for her ex, that’s what.”

“Aw, you still crying over the one that got away junior year? Come on. That wasn’t the point. The point was that I know you know how to make that effort.”

“That was a long time ago. I’ve seen a lot more of the world now. Buried some people, seen those couple happy years we had in high school fade. It’s just a memory now. I can’t be sixteen again, and I never will. I’m not going to try to bring that back. You call my methods spin, okay, it’s all spin. But I’ve gotta find something here.”

“I thought you had something going there with Indira.”

“I did, more than I ever have. But, what’s the best way to put it? I had a sense of loss that she just didn’t. Our lives were motivated by different things.”

Evan’s brown eyes pierce through him, and Mark has the uncanny feeling that his thoughts are no secret.

“More than you ever have? Even with Jackie?”

Mark nods. He’s never told Evan the story, but he knows Evan has pieced enough of it together.

“She was the only girl I ever loved for who she was. The rest? It’s always been chasing something or other.”

“Like what?”

“Status, beauty, some idea of a life I wanted for myself. I’ve never found that.”

“You just sound so…defeated.”

“Me? Defeated? C’mon, man, do you know anyone who’s done more to get what he wants than me?”

“Because it’s all you know how to do!”

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously, where’s the belief in something better?”

“Look at this world, bro. How are you optimistic? You, of all people, should know the darkness around us. You’ve seen it in your own life, you’ve seen it in your travels, you see it in the news every day…”

“And that’s all true! But Marky, I know what I can control. I’ve decided I can settle down with the girl I love in a place I love and we can do it all right out there.”

“Evs, I love you, I get it. But someone like you, who’s taken me places I never would’ve gone otherwise…I think that’s you at your best. You can change this world, Evs. You sure you’re not running from it when you head to the woods like that?”

“I don’t really know where I’m going, Marks, but I do know that this place I’m going is a hell of a lot healthier than the one you’re running toward.”

Mark calls for a second round from the bartender, who has edged her way to the far end of her fiefdom to avoid the bickering men. Evan glowers, unsure if the intended audience for his anguished cries is Mark or himself. He needs to believe it. He searches their fellow travelers in the airport for some humorous hint of Vegas excess to distract him from all this self-important blather. Down the bar, an Irish tourist has made friends with two young women with Southern drawls. Behind them, two parents with five children in varying states of obesity struggle to find an acceptable meal option for their charges. There is nothing particularly Vegas about this scene; just the typical placelessness of a place designed strictly to move people to other places. He’s ready to go home.

“What kills me about you, Evs, is that you could’ve had power, but you don’t. You work a decent job, live a decent life, cool. I just think you were cut out for so much more than handing out a few scholarships here and there. And I know you’ve got that drive somewhere in you to want it.”

“I do! Look at the life I’m living. Everything thought out, lined up in this great big idea of how to live that we’ve been arguing about for a decade.”

Mark closes his eyes and nods slowly. “See, that’s it. I’m the same way, man. I know you think I’m some shitty corporate raider, but I’ve got power and I’ve used it.” He stops, looks around, and lowers his voice. “I sabotaged a merger that would’ve killed a few hundred jobs in Detroit. I spent that summer there—those are my people. I put my job on the line and won. You wanna make this world a better place for your kid, you need some people on the inside. Not even your cabin in the woods is safe these days.”

Evan’s eyes bulge. He takes a drink and taps the counter as if sounding out some answer in Morse code. “I’m impressed. I really am. But can you honestly say that everything you’ve done is right and good?”

Mark stews and Evan nods, knowing the answer.

“This isn’t easy,” says Mark. “I have to make hard choices sometimes. But it comes with the territory. Gotta take the fight to the arena. Do what you can to change that narrative.”

“It’s rotten. Rotten to the core.” Mark has no answer, and Evan is again afraid he’s gone a step too far. Is he losing his filter as he ages? No, not really; they have both become hardened as they go their separate paths, and have always been stubborn in their own ways. Gone are the shared stages of school and growth, and now they are on their own, their freedom to travel their own roads a threat to undermine everything that has gone into their bond. Evan hates his era, and the only way to gain the power to fix it comes through complicity and corruption.

More and more, Evan sounds to Mark like some of the people caught up in the evangelical church he’d attended before his parents’ divorce killed whatever belief he had. Those committed believers had been so earnest, so convinced of the world’s perfidy and their own righteous ability to resist it. Mark wonders if he could find a Biblical way to justify his life to Evan, tap into that last relic of a fading faith to speak a language that makes sense to a believer. He has little memory left of it, not that it wouldn’t come all back to him if he put in a little effort. There are always answers in the wilderness.

“Honest question,” he asks. “Are you really as happy as you sound?”

“Happy, not always. But I’ve always thought happiness is a byproduct of a well-lived life.”

“Are you living your life as well as you want to, then?”

“Yes and no. I love my wife, I love my kid, I love my city, I do good work and like the people…but yet.”

“But yet what?”

“Sometimes I just feel…”

“Shit, this is like pulling teeth.”

“It’s hard to describe.”

“Is it work-related?”

“Yeah. Though it’s more than that. It’s vocational, you might say.”

“Existential Evvy at his finest yet again.”

“What I’m here for.”

Mark stirs his drink with a finger and fixes his lips together to force Evan to go on.

“It’s hard to stay motivated,” Evan chances. “And when I am, too often it’s because of fear, or anger at other things around me. If you’re looking for panache amid the ruins, I’m looking for panache through gratitude.”

“What the hell does that even mean?”

Evan takes a moment to collect his words. “All of the love of life with none of the angst.”

“Even after all this, all your listening to me, all the doom and gloom…you still manage to stay so…pure.”

“Having a kid helps.”

“Sure, but you were like this before that.”

Evan again takes his time to answer. “I waver a lot. I think you know that. But I also remember what it was like to be pure, once. And now I can see that in Brendan, every time I look at him.”

“A faith, sort of?”

“I know you won’t like that, but sure, yeah. That gets there.”

Mark shrugs. “It is what it is.”

“Do you feel it too, then?” Evan asks.

“Not really.”

“Think back to the early days before we were aware of everything. When the whole world and everything in it was sacred, in a way.”

“I’m not sure I ever had that.”

“You did, at least for a moment, somewhere, sometime. Just think.”

Mark opens his mouth, but Evan silences him with a flick of a finger. Mark reaches back into him memory and tries to find some hint of childhood delight that he can’t filter through a lens clouded by everything that has happened since. He fixes on a wedding for one of his father’s associates in his elementary school years, a glamorous affair on a sprawling Westchester estate, lush gardens and terraces galore. But for young Mark, none of those trappings matter: he just runs out and tears up the dance floor with the flower girl, and smile on his mother’s face as she bounces over to join him is forever seared in his mind. Delighted, Mark dares cast a glance at his father, who stands watch from a terrace balcony above. Preston Brennan musters up a thin smile, one of those three or four moments in his life when Mark felt his father’s love. It was possible, if only for a moment, a rare star that Mark can name.

For his part, Evan is back in San Onofre, fresh off his first surfing lesson, drenched but proud that he’s managed to stay upright for a few seconds. He and his parents settle in at a beachside diner for a seafood feast, and Evan boasts of his ride and regurgitates facts from the book on marine life he’s been reading the whole trip. His dad, a few beers deep, pokes fun at Evan’s nerdiness, while his mom grumbles about how she married a philistine. In retrospect Evan will notice how his dad tensed up when his mom tried to make those jokes, and how she would swiftly backpedal as if she’d never meant them. But at that time he’d just laughed along, and soon he has them all laughing along, back in the thralls of happily ever after. He wants nothing more than for Brendan to believe in that possibility.

“What are you thinking of?” Evan asks.

“Hockey,” Mark lies. But it isn’t a falsehood, not really: there he’d been allowed to pour unbridled passion into everything he did. It all feels like child’s play to Mark now, while Evan has the task of convincing his wife that a childhood of checks and tournament road trips is a good pursuit for their one-year-old boy. Evan wants Brendan to have that passion, even if he has to find ways to ease him into the knowledge that it cannot last. Mark simply wishes he could have it back.

“Can you believe what we had there?” Evan asks.

“That’s all over now,” says Mark. “What are we left with, once we can see the world for what it is? Everything that comes after…it’s in the shadow of what we’ve lost.”

“To lose it, someone had to build it in the first place. And me and you, we’ve been part of some great things that we built together.”

“That we have.” Mark drains his glass. “When we were sober enough to remember them.”

Evan laughs. “Left our own legend, in our own little way.”

“Evs, my man, we’ve lived well.”

“And we’ve got a full life of good living ahead of us, if we know where to look for it.”

Mark’s thoughts range far and wide, from Emma to Jackie to Indira to fifteen others in between, from backyard rinks to New Haven to Rome to a gorge high in the Himalayas, from his dying father’s words to Brendan’s fumbling first steps. He smiles up at Evan. “Since the day I met you, I’ve had some idea where. And I know you’ve got it, too. There’s your gratitude.”

Evan and Mark go quiet. Their argument has exhausted itself.

“Well, I’ve got a flight to catch,” says Evan. “Thanks for the drinks. And for everything. Seriously. And think about what I said…just remember if you ever want to come home, you know I’ll move heaven on earth to make it work for you.”

Mark closes his eyes and smiles. “Love ya, Evs. Keep bein you.”

Evan and Mark embrace in silence. Evan hoists up his backpack and makes his way down the concourse without a backward glance. He’s given it his all, and finally said was he’s meant to say to Mark for years. He is at peace with his efforts, at peace with his wanderings, and now he’s headed home to see the loves of his life. He is blessed, here amid strangers in this no-place of a concourse, and while he’ll no doubt lapse again, he has more than enough to carry himself through. He is happy.

Mark watches Evan go until he’s out of sight. “I’ll take one more,” he tells the bartender, and tosses his card on the counter. He takes a sip from the drink, swirls his glass, and raises his eyes to the bottles along the top shelf of the bar. A smile starts to play along the corners of his mouth.

He knows what he must do now, and the rest will follow. He is only beginning.

A Celebration of Literature

PBS is currently running a series that seeks to identify Americans’ most beloved novels. I haven’t watched it, but as the son of a Duluth librarian who is coordinating several panels on the series with local literature professors, I’ve been lured into attending a couple of events. This is the sort of thing I would probably attend anyway: by my count I’ve read 35 of the 100 short-listed novels, and have also seen film or TV adaptations of another 13, and read other works by nine authors who make the list (each could make the list only once). These events, which feature good discussion with (disappointingly) small groups, pose the vital questions that surround any such effort: what does it mean to develop a literary canon, what and who gets left out of a canon, and whether these things should be popularity contests or if some cadre experts can decree what constitutes good fiction and what does not. (While there were some limitations, the PBS series is largely a popularity contest, with works like Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight making the short list alongside War and Peace and Great Expectations.) Whatever the masses end up choosing, it’s a good launching point for discussion, and a chance to spill my own thoughts.

I have little trouble naming favorite works or authors of non-fiction, but find it a much greater struggle to do so with fiction. Still, the PBS series compels me to offer up a few. One Hundred Years of Solitude sits near the top of my list for its layers of allegorical power, and Mario Vargas Llosa’s The War of the End of the World still wows for its ability to recreate a world and the full range of people within it. I reread The Great Gatsby in the past two years, and it resonated far more than I remember it doing in high school, perhaps in part because I’ve lived a slight flavor of the Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby journey, drifting from Minnesota to East Coast money and trying to find my way between those two worlds. As a literary work, though, it is near-perfect: so tightly wound, so well-constructed, and yet still so easy to access eighty years later. If anything can claim the ‘Great American Novel’ title, Gatsby is probably it. If forced to choose one book, though, I still might lurch back to the novel that began all novels, Don Quixote. It does help when one takes an entire class on a book in one’s undergraduate days from an awesome professor to get the full historical context behind a book of brilliant social commentary.

There are other works I would not put on the same pedestal as those few, but have changed how I live my life in one way or another. Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom was a marvelous blend of people in places I have lived, all trying to make some statement on contemporary American life, and inspired my own fictional attempts. Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country came to me as I contemplated a life of foreign service of some sort, while the dry iconoclasm of Graham Greene fit the mood of a more jaded, older kid. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse gave me a metaphor that still informs many of my pursuits, and at a later stage, the criminally undervalued Wallace Stegner came along with Crossing to Safety to shower some wisdom on someone wrestling with both career ambitions and a love of place. I read them all at the right time.

Before we go any further, I’ll confirm my credentials as a literary snob: my list of great novels will all fall somewhere within the realm of realism, or at least magical realism. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed both as a kid, I have some reservations at the appearance of things like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings alongside Dostoevsky and Adichie. My literary tastes have progressed since then. I’ve done little dabbling in science fiction or fantasy as an adult, perhaps because I’m the sort of person who, upon discovering the burdens and frustrations of life, goes running for the most depressing and heavy stuff to try to find out how other insightful people have wrestled with such questions instead of looking for escapes. Some books in those genres do go in this direction: for example, Frank Herbert’s Dune downplays the tech side of science fiction and offers a rich commentary on society (and may yet inspire me to launch a Butlerian jihad), and the study of mythology and imagination behind Tolkien’s world-building has had an overwhelming influence on literature. They build complex plots, and it’s easy to fall into their worlds.

As someone who writes, however, I often find that my fondness for good writing overpowers my identification with the story. While I want to read novels that are both good stories and well-written (duh), if forced to choose, I’ll take good writing about topics that don’t fascinate me over an entertaining story. I’m not a lover of Hemingway, but he has glimmers of some of the most pristine prose I’ve ever read when he takes readers along on a fishing expedition in the Spanish countryside in The Sun Also Rises. A Prayer for Owen Meany is a fun book, but John Irving is capable of making paint drying sound amusing, and that turns a good story into a great novel. The prose of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead perfectly pairs with the heartland Protestant austerity of Reverend John Ames as he writes his letters to his son, and other writers, from Wendell Berry to Flannery O’Connor to William Faulkner, blur language with a sense of place in our minds. Perhaps this love of well-wrought prose is at the root of my dismissal of science fiction and fantasy as great literature: so often, even when they do manage to be insightful about human nature, those novels fixate on plot over structure and artistry, or devolve into sequels and expanded universes instead of standing on their own very real power. Their worlds fall in on themselves, instead of cycling back out to the one we live in.

I enjoy fiction that inhabits worlds similar to my own, and my world is a very large, rich place. While my defense of a concept of good writing makes me broad-brush defender of some sort of literary canon, I certainly believe in an expansive version of said canon that captures the written tradition of any number of societies. The Great American Read list is fairly thin on books translated from other languages; it is confined to a couple of Russian and French giants, Don Quixote, and One Hundred Years of Solitude. This is a mild source of frustration for someone whose literature consumption, especially in his college days, was driven by Latin American Boom authors, and expanded from there. It started with García Márquez in high school but soon wandered over toward the delightful absurdity of Julio Cortázar, the stunning range of Vargas Llosa, the posthumously beloved Roberto Bolaño, and a number of other lesser-known masters of Spanish prose. I didn’t confine my voracious reading to writers in one language, either: my reading list has often been populated by the likes of Arundhati Roy, Orhan Pamuk, Hiroki Murakami, and Edwidge Danticat. In an era of vogue scorn for the dead white men who traditionally dominated many lists of great literature, my reaction has often just been a shrug: I’ve never had any trouble incorporating a lot of people who are not like me at all into my own expansive idea of a canon. I can learn from all of them.

Despite all of this love for different worlds, the novels that affect me most tend to be coming-of-age stories. I have a deep fondness for angst-ridden teenage boys, and this has not waned even as I move further away from that phase of my own life. Thankfully, one can get a lot of mileage out of Holden Caulfield’s search for authenticity in The Catcher in the Rye, the competitive fire that makes and breaks Finny and Gene in A Separate Peace, and the question of destiny that motivates Owen and John’s friendship in A Prayer for Owen Meany. Even Harry Potter becomes a good bildungsroman when one can look beyond its magical trappings, even if it has diseased an entire generation with an overuse of adverbs.

Perhaps my favorite novel of the past ten years is The Art of Fielding, which falls into the same genre. While it bears many of the telltale signs of a debut novel in Chad Harbach’s attempts to show off his range, that flaw almost made me love it even more. It had so much in common with some of my own stumbling attempts to write fiction, and is exactly the sort of debut novel I would have been satisfied to produce. As long as they can attain some measure of distance in its perspective, youthful writings about youth resonate the best. I have little memory of reading The Outsiders in seventh grade, but suspect it would hold up well upon a second reading. (Fun aside: one of my hockey colleagues turned S.E. Hinton into a diehard St. Cloud Apollo hockey fan when he asked her for permission to play off the book while doing a story on the program’s fight for survival a few years back.) Alas, teenage boys are not a large literature market these days, which is problematic for my own stillborn writing career. If I do ever get around to publishing something, though, it will likely fall somewhere in this genre.

Speaking of which, I had a spurt of fictional inspiration this week, so I’m going to finish this blog post and stay up even later to head back to the nearly-complete story I’ve been spitting out on this blog for the past year. Long live the novel as an art form, and may all of my readers continue to read fiction for fun, even if it is trashy smut not worth the paper it’s printed on. (Actually, that sounds like it might be kinda fun. Pass along your recommendations.)

A Patient Cycle

Karl Schuettler on Culture, Politics, and High School Hockey

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