Everything We Ever Wanted

‘So this is the idea,’ his boss, Jake, said. ‘For one year, people give up their lives. They quit their jobs, they leave their homes, maybe they sell their homes. They come to central Pennsylvania and build a house from scratch, out of logs and moss and whatever else. While they’re building their house, they have to live in a tent. Even if it’s winter. They build their own furniture. They grow their own food. If they eat meat, they shoot their own food. They’re given some livestock, sheep and things, and make their own clothes. They can choose to be in a community and have a specialized job, or they can really live in the wilderness. Of course, the wilderness isn’t really that far from civilization. A hospital is only twenty minutes away. If they need a telephone, they can find one.’

The whole table stared at him. ‘And people do this?’ Jessica finally said.

‘A lot of people,’ Jake answered. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many people.’

‘It sounds like a cult,’ Steven murmured.

Jake shrugged. ‘Some people see it as a vacation, I guess. I know. I don’t get it, either.’

‘And you have to pay for this?’ Steven asked.

Jake nodded. ‘You pay for the land you live on. I think it’s thirty thousand dollars a year. And they provide training so that you won’t die out there.’

‘Thirty thousand dollars?’ Jessica whispered.

‘And some people stay for more than a year,’ Jake said. ‘They see it as an escape. Freedom.’

Everyone was silent. ‘Maybe in this day and age, with the economy tanking and terrorists blowing up hotels and the housing market crashing, this is what people want,’ Becky suggested.

Charles looked at the photo again. The couple did look happy. But he figured it was a kooky kind of happiness reserved for the same kinds of people who meditated and spoke to plants.

‘They want us to do a magazine about their community,’ Jake explained, ‘to drum up business. I know it’s a little unusual. Not the normal kind of account we typically accept. But we’re hurting for money. And maybe this will be an opportunity for all of you to stretch your skills a little.’

Charles shifted. Stretching their skills was a euphemism for putting aside all judgments about this kind of endeavor and making the best possible product he could. Then again, it wasn’t that different from the slightly contradictory messages he was encouraged to ignore about Fischer’s other clients. Like the car manufacturer that asked him to write an article about their brand-new SUV and just ‘tone down’ the fact that the car got terrible highway and city gas mileage. Or the credit card company that suggested they write a story encouraging shoestring-budget families to charge more on their VISA, thousands of dollars more, so that they would accrue enough rewards points to buy a handheld shoulder massager or an iPod docking system.

Perhaps Jake had selected Charles and the rest of his colleagues for this particular project because they were all the least likely to say no. Steven was unabashedly Christian – spiritual songs floated out from his office, and at last year’s Christmas party, he’d earnestly asked one of the junior designers to check out his church. He never refused anything that was given to him, as if it wouldn’t be Jesus-like to do so. Jessica was at risk for being fired – she had been egregiously late with shots for another magazine, and another photo editor had had to step in and bail her out. Becky was the type who always did whatever anyone asked of her, without complaint. Charles was somewhat the same: he never voiced moral objection to anything they wrote about or stood behind. Whenever he felt tempted to whine, he saw himself at eight years old, running frantically behind his brother into the ocean. When a wave took him down and washed him back to shore, his father stood over him on the beach. What’s the matter with you? You’re alive. You’re fine. Your brother can do it, and he’s two years younger. Stop crying.

Charles had been fresh out of journalism school when Jake hired Charles three years ago. His dad had gotten Charles the interview without asking if he wanted it – Finn, a colleague at the investment firm, had a wife who was high up at Fischer, and if Charles wanted a job as an editor, he could have one. At first, Charles blurted that it didn’t sound like the type of job he was looking for – it seemed an awful lot like advertising. His dad’s face had clouded. ‘Finn didn’t have to talk to his wife, you know,’ he said. ‘Not every job can be The New York Times.’

And then Charles backpedaled, realizing his mistake and thanking his dad for thinking of him. The night before the interview he had dinner with his parents and his father actually asked him about when the interview was and spoke about how it was a decent company, how Charles would probably get farther working for a company like Fischer than slaving as a beat reporter at a fledgling local newspaper. ‘You and your dad could meet up for lunch!’ his mother added wistfully, because Charles’s office would be only four blocks from his father’s. Charles had nodded along, simply trying to keep the peace. Scott sat at the table, too, snickering. No one asked him what was so damn funny. All their father did was glance benignly at Scott, a hopeful smile on his face, desperate to amend whatever he’d done wrong – or maybe he hadn’t done anything wrong, maybe Scott had begun to snub him simply because he had the liberty to do so. Eventually, Scott laid down his fork and scraped back his chair and left the table, as if he’d suddenly realized they all thought he was willingly participating in a family event.

After the interview, Charles drove back to his parents’ house and triumphantly told them that he got the job. His father looked at him blankly, and then guffawed. ‘Well of course you got it. Finn promised me you would. That interview was just a formality.’ And then he went back to his newspaper.

That was three years ago. Charles always thought he’d be at a different point in his career at this age. Traveling the world, reporting on famines and bombings and assassinations. Sneaking into trials, interviewing the wrongfully accused. Possibly ghostwriting a book about a senator with secrets. His mother had told him that by the time his great-grandfather was thirty-one, he’d had a private meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, whereas the most influential person Charles had ever met was a hostess of a television quiz show – her program was being converted into a game that a certain cell phone provider’s customers could play on their BlackBerries. And though Jake promised that Charles would get a lot of opportunities to write, usually he passed Charles over for assignments, giving them instead to his freelancer friends.

Every so often Charles would glance through the paper for entry-level newspaper jobs, but they didn’t seem to exist. Newspapers were disappearing across the country. With all the bloggers and Twitterers and iReporters, journalists were becoming extinct, too. Starting over with another career seemed exhausting, though – and anyway, he had to stand on his own two feet. It was bad enough that he’d had to draw from his trust for the house’s down-payment. His mother always told him not to feel bad about using money from the trust – it was his. There was no use feeling ashamed. But Charles couldn’t help it – everything made him feel ashamed. Every choice seemed incorrect. What would his life have been like if he’d gone to law school? Where would he be now if he’d taken that job at the newspaper in that little town in Montana, the one for which he’d applied on a whim and had been hired sight unseen?

And there were other choices, too, that quietly dogged him. Where would he be now if he and Scott wouldn’t have gotten into that fight the day of his graduation? What would be happening now if he hadn’t said what he had said? Would Charles still be with his high school girlfriend, Bronwyn? Would she still be speaking to him, at least? And would this nonsense with Scott and the wrestlers have even happened?

Or maybe it was foolish to think like that – one episode couldn’t have altered Scott’s entire trajectory. Scott was who he was before Charles said what he said. The past was the past. The best thing Charles could do was put it out of his mind.

By the time the meeting ended, the editorial team had decided the story lineup for the Back to the Land promotional magazine. There would be a short piece about the land the organization had annexed in central Pennsylvania for the community, a valley rife with deer and rabbits for shooting, streams for drinking, and hearty trees for log cabins. Charles had no idea how a plot of land in the middle of Pennsylvania could be desolate and remote enough to trick people into thinking they were truly alone. Sure, parts of the state were quieter than others, but evidence of modern civilization was everywhere. It was in a McDonald’s wrapper that blew northward from the turnpike. It was in the smell of a factory, the roar of a truck, the itchy tag on the back of a t-shirt. Or would the people of Back to the Land make their own t-shirts? And would they mix up their own medication, resort to Native American-style poultices and inhalants?

And yet, people thrived living this way, even chronically sick people with cancer and diabetes and autoimmune diseases. That was another story for the lineup – an interview with a doctor who had treated several people before they moved to Back to the Land, and then tested them again once they’d been living there for a year. Their improvements were amazing – allegedly, the lifestyle’s simplicity and lack of commercial pollutants had remarkable healing powers. But it had to be a placebo effect, Charles thought. They got better because they wanted to get better.

After the meeting, Charles went outside to get some air. He took the elevator eleven flights down and walked through the marble lobby and exited onto Market Street. There was a traffic jam outside the building, the cars wedged at odd angles, honking. Suburban Station loomed across the avenue, a phalanx of hot dog and pretzel carts on the sidewalk. Two cleaning women in pink smocks and white athletic shoes paused at the corner, talking animatedly with their hands.

The meeting had been especially difficult to sit through, and not just because the concept was ridiculous. His mind couldn’t stay focused on work. He kept returning to what was happening, what might be happening, what his brother might have done. Pressure was everywhere. Hazing was everywhere. It was so easy to turn frustration into misguided rage. Charles also knew Scott wouldn’t just roll over and play dead. It was unclear whether Scott even understood the magnitude of the situation – that, with a few bad decisions, so much could be ruined. Reputation meant nothing to Scott. Neither did history nor tradition or, well, family. Charles recalled how, long ago, he’d been ordered to look after Scott at one of his parents’ Fourth of July parties. Scott, then about six, grabbed a pack of matches teetering on the side of the grill and struck one. He waved it near the old trellises, threatening to set them on fire. ‘You can’t do that to the house,’ Charles hissed, appalled. It was the equivalent of harming an old relative.

Scott struck the match anyway, a cruel smile on his face. The trellises’ rotted, brittle timber was just waiting for an excuse to burn. Their father blamed Charles for not watching his brother more carefully, and Charles, frustrated and confused, said, ‘I tried to stop him, but he didn’t listen.’ And then, after a moment, ‘It’s because he’s adopted, right? Because he’s not one of us?’

His father flinched. Charles could still conjure up his dad’s red, looming face in his mind even today, at thirty-one years old. ‘Don’t you ever say that again,’ his father growled.

And, almost certainly because of the conversation he’d had with his mother last night, Charles’s old girlfriend Bronwyn was on his mind, too. Various vignettes of her had flashed through his mind all morning – Bronwyn on the living room couch, outlining the type of cummerbund Charles must wear with his tux so it would match her prom dress. Bronwyn standing on the patio next to the grill, trying to make small talk with Scott when his brother had unwittingly arrived home from somewhere when Charles was entertaining a group of friends. Bronwyn always tried to invite Scott into the conversation, so diplomatic and eager for everyone to get along. It’s not going to get you anywhere, Charles tried to tell her. He chooses to be an outcast.

And, of course, Charles envisioned Bronwyn in the mud room, standing behind Charles as he held Scott by the throat, all those hideous things spewing from his mouth. He would hear that gasp until the end of his days.

‘Charles?’

He raised his head now. ‘Charles?’ the voice said again. Caroline Silver was striding across the courtyard. She worked in the marketing department for Jefferson Hospital, and Charles edited their promotional magazine for donors. The magazine only came out biannually; Charles hadn’t seen her or needed to talk to her in a while.

He watched as Caroline crossed the square, trying to smile. ‘I’m here to see Jake,’ she explained, shaking his hand. ‘Just for a late lunch meeting. Goodness, it’s been a while, huh?’

‘It has,’ he answered.

And then she cocked her head, her expression shifting. Charles could tell she was reaching back to recall just how long it had been since she’d seen him, remembering what had happened between then and now. And then, as though Charles really did have an inside view of her head, Caroline shifted her weight and covered her eyes. ‘Oh Charles. Your father. Oh my goodness. I’m so, so sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ Charles said automatically.

‘We read about it in the paper. So awful.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I meant to call. I didn’t know what was appropriate though.’

‘It’s fine.’ He smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’

‘What a shame.’ She clucked her tongue. ‘He wasn’t even very old, was he?’

He shook his head. ‘Healthy every day of his life before it happened.’

‘You must really miss him.’

The vendor on the corner slammed the metal lid that housed the hot dogs unnecessarily hard. Charles stared across the street at a budding dogwood tree. Further down that block was the Italian restaurant his father sometimes visited for lunch. Once, when Charles had walked down this block to a lunch place on Walnut, he’d glanced into the Italian restaurant’s front window and saw his father alone at the bar, his tie flung over his shoulder, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. There was a ball game on TV, and the waiter was leaning on the bar, watching. Charles’s dad had looked so comfortably alone, a posture Charles had never mastered himself. Charles had panicked, crossing furtively to the other side of the street so his father wouldn’t see him. He had no idea what his dad would have done if he’d noticed Charles walking by – ignore him? Or grow furious that Charles was walking down his block, invading his space? His father certainly wouldn’t have invited him into the bar – despite his mother’s Pollyannaish suggestion the day before Charles’s interview, Charles and his father had never met for lunch. And anyway, what would they have talked about?

Caroline shifted onto her left hip, waiting for Charles’s answer. Did he miss his father? He didn’t really know. ‘I–I should be going,’ he said, turning blindly toward the street.

‘Of course,’ Caroline said, her voice dripping with foolhardy sympathy. Maybe she thought he was overcome with missing his father to properly respond. Charles still said nothing, staring at the shiny spots of mica in the sidewalk, the xylophone part of a Rolling Stones song he’d heard on his iPod this morning thrumming absurdly in his head. Finally, Caroline patted his arm and told him to hang in there. Charles watched her push through the revolving door, cross the lobby, accept a badge from security, and disappear around the corner toward the elevator bank, her shoulders held high.

Charles leaned against the cold slate of his building, wishing he could nap beneath one of the big stone benches. The burbling fountain smelled pungently of chlorine. There was a sharp pain at his right temple, maybe the beginning of a migraine. The cleaning ladies were still standing on the corner, chatting. Had one of them been her? The security guard who’d called the ambulance for Charles’s father had met the family in the ER lobby later that same night. ‘A cleaning lady found him,’ the guard had said. ‘She called down to the front desk, and I called 911.’ About a week later, after Charles’s dad had died, Charles tracked down the agency that employed the building’s cleaning staff and asked for the woman’s name. The agency was evasive, saying that the woman had quit and they didn’t have a forwarding number.

Maybe she was in this country illegally. Maybe she felt guilty and embarrassed that she had come upon such a thing – a grown man soaked in his own urine, an executive limp and lifeless on a bathroom floor. But the woman was out there, certainly, and she had something Charles wanted. If only he could just see her. And if he was brave enough, if only he could ask her about his father’s final moments of consciousness. Had he said anything? Regrets, maybe? A sudden confession of love?

The hand on his watch slid to the three. Charles peeled his body from the wall, straightened his shirt, and prepared to go back to work. The sun came out for a moment, turning the marble fountain base in front of his building amber. It was an exact match, Charles realized, to his dad’s headstone.

3 (#ulink_2e9109d1-96e7-593e-a924-10decad03fd9)

Normally, Sylvie looked forward to the bi-weekly Tuesday board meetings at Swithin. She loved sitting in the library, drinking tea, plotting, gossiping, the Philadelphia classical station on quietly in the background – it was less a board meeting and more a nice cozy get-together with people she’d known for years. But she dreaded this one, not getting into the shower until the last possible moment. She found herself wishing the weather would abruptly turn biblically catastrophic, raining down frogs or locusts or bumblebees, forcing the Department of Transportation to close the roads. She found herself longing for a sudden high fever – though nothing dangerous, just a passing flu. She even took her temperature as she sat at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee.