A Field Guide to the North American Family Read online

  The attraction Gravity exerts between two bodies can be calculated by multiplying the quotient of the product of their combined mass and the square of the distance between them by the universal gravitational constant, G.

  SEE ALSO:

  •ADOLESCENCE •DEPRESSION •FIDELITY•INTIMACY •MOMENT OF CLARITY •RUMOR•TENDERNESS •UNCERTAINTY

  GRIEF

  ❧

  Less than a month after Gabe’s accident she was back in the gym in her pep squad whites, her feet falling into the complicated floor-work as though she’d been gone only a weekend. If she’d lost anything, it was just the inside track for next year’s head cheerleader position, the goodwill that would have accrued from four more weeks of closeness with the other girls. She would never have imagined, or desired, that the sympathy they now felt toward her had virtually guaranteed her the spot. That her best friend and closest competitor, Michelle DuPlessis, was ready to step aside for her. Lacey didn’t let the subject come up, didn’t give Michelle an opening. Instead, she hurled herself brightly into the new routines, clapping, slapping her hips, shaking her ass, springing into the air, dropping to the parquet, spiraling back up, her pointer finger thrust into the air, her exultant smile so well-rehearsed as to seem completely spontaneous. She sweated a little more than usual—she was out of shape and this was strenuous work—but she resisted the urge to put her hands on her thighs during breaks. At the end of practice, when it was time to make the pyramid, the girls insisted that she reclaim her place at the top. She was, after all, the lightest. As she rose, lofted by the soft hands on her legs and back, she forgot, for a moment, that she’d ever been gone at all. From the top of the pyramid, it was hard to imagine that anyone died ever. And if later she slumped a little bit on the locker-room bench, waiting for the other girls to finish showering before she took off her clothes, no one was so gauche as to let her know they noticed.

  Slow to adapt to ecological upheaval, Grief now thrives only in isolation. Its study is further complicated by its nocturnal Habits, and by the fact that no Grief is like any other.

  SEE ALSO:

  •COMMITMENT •DEPRESSION •DIVORCE•FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY •FREEDOM•MEANING, SEARCH FOR •MIDLIFE CRISIS•RESIGNATION

  GUILT

  ❧

  “Oh, you know…Since pretty much as far back as I can remember.” And how far back can you remember? “Everything’s a question with you guys, isn’t it?” Does that make you uncomfortable? “No, no. It’s just…” He laughs, not wholly convincingly. “Okay, you want a story, I’ll give you a story. We were all on a school trip to the roller-skating rink. Galaxy of Sports, it was called. Gabe and Lacey were in second grade or something, I must have been in first, maybe even kindergarten. There was this girl I was crazy about, with the hair bow and the curls that were begging to be pulled. Jenny. Jenny Lehotsky. Why are you looking at me like that?” I’m not looking at you like anything, Thomas. Keep going. “Well, I thought maybe Jenny and I could go roller-skating, maybe hold hands. I mean Gabe and my sister were probably already doing Olympic routines at the center of the rink, but this girl was scared or something. She spent, I don’t know…an hour hanging around the snack bar. And then she took some money out of her pocket and proceeded to clean them out. They sold these candy sticks, these barbershop spirals, lemon swirled with lime, butterscotch swirled with cream, and when she turned around with a huge handful I swear it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. She starts handing the candy sticks out to her friends, friends who unwrap them and eat them incredibly slowly, making those noises of enjoyment. Yum. Slurp. Mmm. My dad, of course, has taken the position that he’s already shelling out five bucks for the damn skate rental, and no I may not have any money for snacks. So naturally I ask my beloved, you know, you’ve got like fifty of those, could I have one? Nope, she says. And I watch her put the rest of them in the locker where her shoes are. Well, what am I supposed to do, when she goes off to skate with her friends and leaves the locker unlocked? Guilty, your honor. I stole a butterscotch candy stick and hid behind the Whac-A-Mole machine to eat it. But here’s the interesting part: I couldn’t. I took one bite, and immediately I saw my dad’s face, my dad kneeling at the communion rail, that why-me-lord look he got, and the candy just turned to ash in my mouth. I went and turned myself in to the teacher and asked to be punished. She probably thought it was hilarious, this little kid looking for absolution for stealing like two cents’ worth of candy that probably should have been given to him anyway. But she bit her tongue and told me to go tell my victim what I’d done. Which is the last time I ever stole anything. Not to mention the last time Michelle ever talked to me.” Jenny? “Right. Jenny.”

  Onlookers generally agree that Guilt is essential to the healthy ecosystem, though recent genomic variation has led to some weakening in parent-offspring transmission.

  SEE ALSO:

  •FAMILY VALUES •HIERARCHY •MATERIAL•MATURITY •MEANING, SEARCH FOR•RECOGNITION •TANTRUM

  HABITS, BAD

  ❧

  You’ll see them first thing in the morning, like dew on the lawns, and last thing at night, in the gaps where the motion sensors won’t detect them. They believe they’re invisible like this, in the shadows, but if you study the postures of the figures hunched on front stoops and in bathroom windows by box fans and slumped in lawn chairs out back, you will recognize congressmen, judges, PTA chairs, pillars of the community, sometimes even your own parents or children—the secret smokers. Each cigarette is a stitch binding their lives more tightly together: the cigarettes Jack sneaks behind the modest bungalow literally on the other side of the tracks from the old place on the water; the cigarettes that drove Frank’s blood pressure up by imperceptible degrees; the cigarettes Gabe chain-smokes on his long nocturnal drives to wherever it is he disappears to; the ones Lacey smells on his breath that make her want to ask him to choose, her or Philip Morris, even as she leans in for another kiss.

  Depending on parent genotype, the crossbreeding of a Bad Habit and Boredom will result in either Chemistry or Entertainment.

  SEE ALSO:

  •HABITS, GOOD

  HABITS, GOOD

  ❧

  There is no such thing as a good habit.

  For identification of all habits, see Habits, Bad.

  HEIRLOOM

  ❧

  It wasn’t like I planned it, exactly. Sometimes in the summer it was just, you know, drive out to where the tracks end at night, see what comes your way. Out there, the parking lots went on for acres. You could smoke a tree and watch the sky, the planes streaking in to Islip, if you were feeling that certain way. Or you might ride out there with some of your boys and just fuck with people. I never really got in anybody’s face like that before, but I guess a gun’s got a mind of its own. Like in Lord of the Rings; like it’s using you to complete its destiny. Or I don’t know, maybe I was just fucked up. The gun was my uncle’s who went upstate—I borrowed it off my cousin after I got hassled by some Spanish dudes. Protection and whatnot. I didn’t really plan to use it, just keep it to show, if necessary. And then I’m sitting out there all red-eyed on the trunk of my man’s car in a parking lot in Suffolk County, and he nudges me like, see that? And I look across all those empty puddles of light at this tall, ghost-looking shadow coming toward us. “You see that? He just gave you the finger, son.” I knew it wasn’t true, but the kid was walking like he owned the island and didn’t have to think about nothing. I’m like, I’ll give him something to think about. I walked up alongside him and asked for a dollar, like for a Coke. He just kept on walking, paint all on his pants like some kind of art-school fag. I’m like, “You hear me?” And he just says, “I hear you.” But looking somewhere to the left of my head all spacey. So that’s when I go, hear this, then, motherfucker. It felt good in my hand, the waffled grip, like all the years of Duck Hunt and then Bond had been preparing me. He was probably my age. It was like some movie I can’t remember the name of: the two of us,
same height, same build, moving through our different lives to this one moment where we tested each other all the way down. And the thing is, he won. Because of the look in his eyes, that look in them like, just go on ahead and shoot me. That made it real. I’m like, “Fuck this” and ran to the car and we mashed out. Later, I tried to lie, say I got his wallet, but my man asked to see it. All I had to show was eight bucks and a bus transfer, which I’d had when we rode out there.

  The reappearance of the Heirloom, which happens only once per generation, is not to be missed by connoisseurs of Meaning.

  SEE ALSO:

  •ANGST •BOREDOM •CHEMISTRY•HIERARCHY •MYTHOLOGY •NATURE VS. NURTURE•REBELLION •TRADITION •WHATEVER

  HIERARCHY

  ❧

  There were two kinds of people, Tommy reflected as he walked past the big, detached, Cape Cod–style houses, the porches with their extravagant pumpkins: those who are It and those who are Not-It. Differentiation began at an early age, in backyards and playgrounds. Some Not-Its, through an elaborate and invisible sensory apparatus, were able to intuit the precise instant a game began, and to shout “Not It” to the world. The rest learned fairly quickly to chime in whenever the call of “Not It” arose, and thereby to escape solitude. Not-Its called the games. Not-Its set the rules. Not-Its grew up to own houses of the type Tommy was now passing, spacious and freestanding and painted to look as though they’d always been there, with pumpkins large enough to feed entire Third World villages. It was mid-October, and the streets near school were empty; having skipped sixth period, he was too early for the flood of Not-It kids that would sluice down these sidewalks at three p.m. When the wind stirred, the leaves made a pleasant scudding sound on the concrete. He veered off the sidewalk to kick at a leaf pile. Tommy was surrounded by Not-Its. His dad, for example. And Gabe. The first to shout, the ones with the best toys. His sister and Mrs. Hungate fell in effortlessly. But Tommy, through some quirk of genetics, had always been an It. Every group needed one. The one whose voice lingered alone and false when all the others had faded from the air: “Not It!” The one who stayed behind when the Not-Its ran away. He swerved again to kick at another pile of leaves, doubtless raked by day laborers imported from Plainview and Hicksville and Queens to keep the yards tidy. He was hoping to uncover a mulchy underworld of worms and wriggling, but wouldn’t you know it? It hadn’t rained for weeks.

  Believed by ancient cultures to ward off Anarchy and Misfortune (cf. CLAN, COURT AND CLOISTER: A POCKET ALMANAC), Hierarchy is now seen as vulnerable to attack from many of the great predators that stalk the Family.

  SEE ALSO:

  •ADULTHOOD •COMMITMENT •DEPRESSION •GUILT•MEANING, SEARCH FOR •UNCERTAINTY

  HOLIDAY

  ❧

  Nowadays we split them all, right down the middle of the day, so that the kids might, for example, be with Jack until noon on Christmas, and then with me for the standing rib roast and the evening afterward. Soon Gabe will be off at college, and then Jackie, and it hardly seems worth getting a big tree anymore. That was always Jack’s thing anyway. We’re paying for the high ceilings, was his reasoning, why not use them? Every year he and Gabe would come back from their expedition with a tree bigger than the last. It would take the three of us just to get it through the door. Still, I have to admit, with all the lights and all of the million Christmas ornaments Jack’s mother had given to us from her private hoard, it looked beautiful. Some nights when the kids had gone to bed he and I would lie back on the sofa and just watch it. I remember the way the big back window doubled the lights, a multicolored galaxy in a slick black sky. Our tenth Christmas Eve after we moved out of the city, back when the tree was modest, we were lying like that taking a breather before putting the presents out. Gazing at the tree, at the glitter-strewn star we’d just placed on top, I still felt fat from the pregnancy, but it didn’t seem to matter to Jack. His hands had begun to explore the skin between navel and elastic when Gabe appeared on the stairs crying. He must have been nine. Jackie had just started sleeping through the night. I asked him what was wrong, expecting him to say that he’d had a bad dream, that he needed the light on. Instead he managed to explain, in fits and starts, that he’d been thinking about all the toys we’d given him that he’d abandoned after playing with for a week or two. He’d been thinking about how lonely they were, sitting at the top of the closet, and how disappointed we must be, and how there were kids in Africa who didn’t have any toys. I told him it was okay, we would donate the old toys to some kids right here on Long Island who might like them. I barely managed to keep a straight face as I told him to go back to bed, Santa would be here soon. And then as soon as he was gone I found myself crying, too. He was a funny kid like that.

  The Holiday may be observed as many as eight times a year. A peaceable creature, it abhors confrontation; all conflicts within the pack are settled via high-frequency communications inaudible to the human ear.

  SEE ALSO:

  •COMMITMENT •CUSTODY BATTLE•FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY •MATERNAL INSTINCT•MOMENT OF CLARITY •SECURITY •YOUTH

  HOME

  ❧

  They came to Long Island in search of sunlight. Not the kind that trickled down like water through the fingers of a skyline, but the kind that spread like butter across a green expanse of lawn. They came to Long Island for the relative quiet, the soothing bugsong in summer, in winter the cold crash of waves. They came for the view of those waves, for the big picture window in the living room that looked out over the pool, the trees, the backyard, the breakwater. They came for the community, the neighborhood, the schools. All it cost was a thirty-year mortgage, club dues and greens fees, and train fare to the city five days a week. There were good years in these houses and in these yards. There were pickup basketball games in the driveways, with the kids. There were parties. There were Halloweens and Thanksgivings. And if, after the switch to standard time, they got home well after dark; and if gradually the kids became strangers; and if when the lights were out they only fell asleep exhausted…well, was that so different from what their own parents had done, chasing their own dreams of America?

  Once highly localized in its Habits, the Home has become increasingly nomadic in the last century. It has been known to travel great distances to secure a source of the Mortgages on which it subsists.

  SEE ALSO:

  •DISCRETION •HIERARCHY•MYTHOLOGY •NATURE VS. NURTURE•OPTIMISM •REBELLION •WHATEVER

  INFIDELITY

  ❧

  Tommy made things up for the therapist, told him what he thought he wanted to hear. I wanted to be just like him, he said. It’s my fault, he said. Why? Because if I could have been there in time, I could have dialed 911 and Dad would still be alive. He thought he was being clever. Because what he would never, never, never tell the therapist or anyone else was that there had been times lately when he had secretly wished for something like this to happen. His dad, after all, had been cheating on his mom for half a year—he’d overheard him whispering into the phone, when he thought no one was listening. To Tommy it felt as though, in some obscure way, his dad had been cheating on him. The code had been breached, and would never quite make sense again.

  Infidelity is the hollow-boned relative of the lesser-known Fidelity.

  SEE ALSO:

  •ADULTHOOD •COMMITMENT •DIVORCE•FREEDOM •GUILT •IRONY•MEANING, SEARCH FOR •MIDLIFE CRISIS•QUESTIONS, NAGGING •TANTRUM

  INNOCENCE

  ❧

  Jackie continues to make solid academic progress this term. Her verbal gifts and acute imagination have translated into some distinctive creative writing, although her spelling remains unorthodox, perhaps willfully so. Certainly Jackie is a voracious reader, when allowed to choose her own books from the school library. In our Social Studies unit we are encouraging all of our students to try to see historical events from multiple perspectives. While Math is sometimes a challenge for Jackie, consolidating basic skills will help her tackle
more complex problems. Any parental support with homework would, of course, be welcome. But our major goals for the remainder of the year are social in nature. Although Jackie is often gregarious with adults, she tends to alternate between somewhat withdrawn and rather dominant behavior patterns within her peer group. This is typical of a developmental stage earlier than the highly socialized phase many of her classmates have entered. As discussed at her midyear conference, her difficulty forming and sustaining close relationships with other girls may be related to unresolved feelings about her parents’ divorce. Her controlled demeanor appears to mask a child of extreme sensitivity. Although we understand Jackie’s resistance, and wish to respect her unique spirituality, we continue to recommend that she meet with the school counselor regularly and that she attend our monthly grief lunches. It is the school’s belief that learning to adapt to change at a young age will promote health of mind and body throughout the many challenges our students will encounter across the grades to come.