I Think You're Totally Wrong (27 page)

DAVID:
Pessoa,
The Book of Disquiet
: “I weep over nothing that life brings or takes away, but there are pages of prose that have made me cry.”

CALEB:
You can live in both. Both can make you cry.

DAVID:
No you can't.

CALEB:
Maybe
you
can't.

DAVID:
I live more totally through writing than you do. I make more sacrifices.

CALEB:
I'd say my sacrifices aren't less, just different.

DAVID:
You are—this is an old-fashioned word, and I don't know if I'm willing to say it—but you're more “soulful.” I'll do anything to protect my writing, and I'll do anything to get a book done. I'm ruthless about it, while you, I think, err on the side of experience, of pleasure. Life.

CALEB:
I haven't had enough time to think about it, but let me use the word “monstrous” to describe you not yielding to Laurie's desire to have a second child.

DAVID:
That really seems brutal to you? That's interesting.

CALEB:
You used the word “difficult” to describe Natalie's first two years of existence. To me, those years were an incredibly happy period. Every time my baby cried, even at three a.m., she was saying, “I love you I need you I love you.” When Ava was two months old, I'd put her in my front pack and walk around the neighborhood with this warm, semiconscious living creature bundled against my chest. That's meaning. That's an X factor. Those are good memories.

DAVID:
Not sure what to say other than “We're different.”

CALEB:
For me to accuse you of being a monster—that's unfair, perhaps. You had doubts and made a responsible decision. Who am I to say? And how does Laurie feel?

DAVID:
As I say, she acknowledges that she was ambivalent at the time.… The lake?

CALEB:
Runoff stream.

DAVID:
We'll walk until—what was my point?

CALEB:
About how Laurie was ambivalent, but she's—

DAVID:
When we dropped off Natalie at college, Laurie said she wished we had a child to come home to. I did, too. Laurie's amazing, though. She gets great satisfaction from being of service to other people and—I don't know what to say—I get great satisfaction from being served.

David and Caleb laugh
.

CALEB:
The girls like to get their fingernails painted.

DAVID:
Natalie used to love Build-A-Bear.

CALEB:
They love Build-A-Bear. If I had a son, I'd spend more time on sports and less on writing. I'm not saying this would be bad. I'm looking at the positive side of having girls, but my girls are horrible at sports and they have no interest. Last year we signed them up for T-ball. Ava's six and Gia's five. They just want to play with their friends; they couldn't care less about learning to catch and throw. Some parents stay engaged. They rah-rah the whole time.

DAVID:
That can get wearisome.

CALEB:
There's a kid on third base, her teammate hits the ball to left field, and she runs after the ball in left field instead of running home. Stuff like that.

DAVID:
That's adorable; I could watch that all day.

CALEB:
You have a sister, but you don't talk about her much. Or write about her. All you do is mention the fact you have one.

DAVID:
Let me tie my shoes. My sister, Paula, is a year older. Someone once asked me, “Are you an only child?” And I remember thinking, Whoa! Do I seem like an only child? Paula and I don't get along at all, but she's close to Natalie.

CALEB:
Does she have kids?

DAVID:
No. She and her husband, Wayne, live in Tacoma. He teaches history at PLU [Pacific Lutheran University], and she studied for a doctorate in history at Berkeley but never finished her dissertation.

CALEB:
Just like my mother, who stopped six months short of her Ph.D. in Chinese studies at Columbia. It's odd anyone would get that close and give up.

DAVID:
Paula has worked for more than twenty-five years in the UW admissions office.

CALEB:
Why don't the two of you get along?

DAVID:
First, I think, she's an older sister; no matter what happens, she always treats me like her younger brother, and I probably act like her younger brother. She also really resents that I've written about our family.

CALEB:
Aha.

DAVID:
That's a big thing. Even writing about her obliquely is—

CALEB:
She plays such a minor role.

DAVID:
I honestly would love to ask Paula—maybe I
will—what I've done to make her so rancorous toward me, but when she and I are in the same room together, the air positively vibrates with hostility. When we were kids, she was quite the academic star. And I was, if not the dumb jock, the barely sentient jock. Whenever I did good work, my teachers would accuse me of having had her do it for me. Or they'd say, “It's so hard to believe you're Paula's brother.” She's never found a calling equal to her intelligence, while I, for better and worse, have known what I wanted to do since I was twelve. This is all wildly self-serving on my part, but I think she takes her disappointment over her lack of a “career” and channels it into resentment of me. I also think she and I tend to replicate exactly the completely fucked-up dynamic between my mother and my—

CALEB:
Oh!

DAVID:
You okay? Did you twist your knee?

CALEB:
Hit a slippery spot on that log. I'm okay.

DAVID:
Paula and Wayne will be over at our house, and whenever I say something she disagrees with, which is pretty much all the time, she'll look over at him and roll her eyes.

Caleb laughs
.

DAVID:
Then I said, “I don't think we have a very good relationship. We just don't get along. Why don't we get
together and talk about why that's so? Let's try to be honest with each other.” And she said, “I can't do that.” I may well be mistaken, but I took that to mean, “I'm not together enough to do that.” Christ, I'd love to hear her version of all this, which I'm sure is equally devastating. Tell me about your siblings.

CALEB:
My youngest sister, Min, and her husband, Somjait, are 9/11 Truthers, question the moon landing, don't vaccinate their kids, homeschool, think 150 rich families control the world.

DAVID:
A hundred and fifty rich families probably do control the world.

CALEB:
I'll have them send you pamphlets. Every year it's something different. They stock up on water purification tablets and pandemic ventilators. It's intellecticide. This summer, when the Birthers were questioning whether Obama is American, I joked to Terry, “I'll bet you Min and Somjait buy into that.” They do.

DAVID:
Are they as conservative as your parents?

CALEB:
They caucus for Ron Paul.

DAVID:
He's not that awful.

CALEB:
What? You like Wrong Paul?

DAVID:
I didn't say that. I like his desire to reduce the military. As with Chomsky, I have a lot of problems with him, but I like backbench flamethrowers.

CALEB:
Too much or too little frequency harms a relationship, especially in a marriage.

DAVID:
Tell me about it.

CALEB:
I call it being Wapatoed. We've stayed at vacation rentals in Wapato Point at Lake Chelan three times. Terry likes it because it's child-friendly, has outdoor and indoor pools, a hot tub, decent price, cheap boat rentals, miniature golf, and isn't so nice that we have to worry about the kids destroying the place. Terry uses it as a model for every vacation. Whenever I hear something for the zillionth time, I'll say, “Wapato.” When I tell Terry about “David Shields Weekend,” she'll say, “Wapato.” You probably have the same thing with Laurie.

DAVID:
Basically, I have seventy-six stories and I've told them all twenty-two times.

CALEB:
“My student's prison stories were too stoical.” “I read my ex-girlfriend's diary.” “Writing is my revenge on stuttering.” “Franzen is writing novels from 1850.” “And I sure like Renata Adler's
Speed
—”

DAVID:
Moo!

Caleb laughs
.

DAVID:
It's one of the things you're not supposed to like about marriage, but I do: it's hard to surprise each other after a while.

CALEB:
Kundera says, “Happiness is a longing for repetition.”

DAVID:
I must be really, really happy, then, because my life is
Groundhog Day
, and I can't wait to get up every morning.